Arts on the Mind

Anne Basting is a writer, artist, and advocate for the power of creativity to transform our lives. She is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and Founder of the award-winning non-profit TimeSlips.org, which trains, inspires, and supports caregivers to infuse creativity into care. Her writing and large-scale public performances have helped shape an international movement to extend creative and meaningful expression from childhood, where it is expected, through to late life, where it has been too long withheld.

Her books include Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Elder and Dementia Care (Harper), Penelope: An Arts-based Odyssey to Transform Eldercare (U of Iowa), and Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia (Johns Hopkins). Internationally recognized for her speaking and her innovative work, Anne is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and numerous major awards and grants. She believes that creative engagement can and should be infused into every aging care system and has trained/consulted with Meals on Wheels, libraries, home care companies, senior centers, memory cafes, museums, adult day programs, and every level of long-term care.

In 2019, Anne collaborated with a team of artists, elders, and caregivers on her largest project yet – a reimagining of the story of Peter Pan with 12 rural Kentucky nursing homes. She is currently obsessed with growing the memory cafe infrastructure across the United States.

Instagram: adbasting; Twitter: annabastino

Young American baritone Ryan Bradford is quickly creating a name for himself with his "warm,  and sumptuous baritone."

He recently made his Lincoln Center debut with Chamber Music Society Lincoln Center in the world premier chamber opera A Song by Mahler by Marc Neikrug. Other performances include the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and The Royal Conservatory in Toronto.

He was a Marc and Eva Stern Fellow with LA Opera and Songfest and during the 2018-2019 season made a return to the Oakland Symphony, San Rafael Symphony, Rapides Symphony, and Livermore Valley Opera as well as joined Chamber Music Silicon Valley as a vocal fellow. He completed a residency with Opera Colorado for their 2016-2017 season singing Happy and covering Jake Wallace in La Fanciulla del West as well as covering Hannah Before in As One. For their touring productions he sang Belcore in L'elisir d'amore and covered Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

During the 2015-2016 season Ryan was a Mosher Studio Artist with Opera Santa Barbara. There he performed Masetto and covered the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni. A strong proponent of new music, Ryan sang the role of Henry in David Conte's The Gift of the Magi with Hidden Valley Opera in Carmel, CA conducted by former Glimmerglass conductor, Steward Robinson. In the summer of 2016, he premiered the role of Michael in the world premiere opera Ours (Estacio, Chafe) with Opera on the Avalon. 

Ryan Bradford made his Virginia debut as John Brooke in Little Women with Opera on the James and performed a German Lieder recital series with legendary mezzo-soprano Fredericka Von Stade as graduate student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. During the 2014-2015 season he completed a residency with Shreveport Opera where he sang The Baron in La Traviata, Samuel in The Pirates of Penzance, as well as Dandini in La Cenerentola. Other 2013 engagements for the San Francisco native came as John Brooke (Little Women) for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Guglielmo (Così fan tutte) for both SFCM and the Santa Cruz Symphony, and Masetto (Don Giovanni) for Hidden Valley Opera, Carmel, CA.

Oratorio credits include recent soloist roles in Handel's Messiah with the Rogue Valley Symphony, Poulenc's Le bal masqué with Opera Parallèle, Bach's B Minor Mass with American Bach Soloists, and Schubert's Mass in G with DePaul University. A DePaul University alumnus (BM in Voice Performance and BA in Italian), he received a master of music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has received distinction from the East Bay Opera League, Florida Grand Opera Young Patronesses, and Pacific Musical Society.

A naturally gifted singer known for her commanding stage presence and profound artistry, Jennifer Johnson Cano has garnered critical acclaim for committed performances of both new and standard repertoire. In response to her performance as Virginia Woolf in The Hours with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera News praised her “impressive tone and dead-on pitch throughout a wide range, and a fierce command of words,” calling her “a matchless interpreter of contemporary opera.” The New York Times noted her “mellow sobriety — and, in Woolf’s darkest moments, stricken intensity.” As Offred in Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale she was lauded by the Times as “towering…restless, powerful, profound, she is as formidable as this astonishingly demanding role deserves." With more than 100 performances on the stage at The Metropolitan Opera, her most recent roles have included Nicklausse, Emilia, Hansel and Meg Page.

Cano undertakes a balance of orchestral, opera and chamber music performances each season.  She appears with major orchestras and conductors, and has collaborated on numerous projects with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst as well as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel in both the US and Europe. She has performed with the New York Philharmonic in both New York and Vail, as well as the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck.

Highlights of Ms. Cano's 2021-22 season included performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin in a world premiere of Kevin Puts's The Hours, a debut with the Chicago Symphony and Riccardo Muti and a return to the San Francisco Symphony for Beethoven's Ninth. She starred in the New York premiere of A Song By Mahler, a new chamber opera by Marc Neikrug at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.  She made operatic debuts in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (Mother Marie) with the Houston Grand Opera, the world premiere of Gregory Spears' Castor and Patience (Celeste) with the Cincinnati Opera and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle (Judith) with the Roanoke Opera.

This season she performs at the Metropolitan Opera in Falstaff (Meg Page) and makes her company debut with the Atlanta Opera in Don Giovanni (Donna Elvira); she also appears with the New York Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony and Atlanta Symphony.  Jennifer returns to the Chamber Music Society of New York, where she performs Mahler's Rückert-Lieder; and to the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society in an All-Bach Program with the Gamut Bach Ensemble.

Previous operatic appearances have included Donna Elvira, Carmen and Offred with the Boston Lyric Opera; the role of the Fox in The Cunning Little Vixen with the Cleveland Orchestra and Welser-Möst; the Mother the Dragonfly, and the Squirrel in L'enfant et les sortilèges with the San Francisco Symphony; performances of El Niño with John Adams and the London Symphony Orchestra; Carmen with the New Orleans Opera and the title role in Orphée with the Des Moines Metro Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

A native of St. Louis, she earned degrees from Rice University and from Webster University, where she was honored as a distinguished alumna and commencement speaker in May 2017. Her debut recital recording with pianist Christopher Cano, “Unaffected: Live from the Savannah Voice Festival,” was recorded live and unedited. Recent recordings include a live performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony as well as Bernstein's Symphony No. 1 "Jeremiah" with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She also recorded Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble.

Ms. Cano joined the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera after winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and made her Met debut during the 2009-10 season. Among her honors are Winner of the Young Concert Artist International Auditions, a Sara Tucker Study Grant, a Richard Tucker Career Grant and a George London Award.

Anjan Chatterjee is Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. He received his BA in Philosophy from Haverford College, MD from the University of Pennsylvania and completed his neurology residency at the University of Chicago.

The past Chair of Neurology at Pennsylvania Hospital, Dr. Chatterjee’s clinical practice focuses on patients with cognitive disorders. His research addresses neuroaesthetics, spatial cognition, language, and neuroethics. He wrote The Aesthetic Brain: How we evolved to desire beauty and enjoy art and co-edited: Neuroethics in Practice: Mind, medicine, and society, The Roots of Cognitive Neuroscience: Behavioral neurology and neuropsychology and the forthcoming Brain, Beauty, and Art: Bringing Neuroaesthetics in Focus. His editorial services include: American Journal of Bioethics: Neuroscience, Behavioural Neurology, Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Empirical Studies of the Arts, European Neurology, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, European Neurology, Neuropsychology, and The Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. He received the Norman Geschwind Prize in Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology by the American Academy of Neurology and the Rudolph Arnheim Prize for contributions to Psychology and the Arts by the American Psychological Association.

Dr. Chatterjee is a founding member of the Board of Governors of the Neuroethics Society, the past President of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, and the Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology Society. He is on the Board of the Global Wellness Institute, and has served on the Boards of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Haverford College, the Norris Square Neighborhood Project and the Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

As Chief Bioscientist at The Franklin Institute, Jayatri Das helps us understand ourselves. How do our brains work? How do our neighborhoods affect our health? How will new technologies change our future? As an awesome science communicator, she brings us all into the conversation!

Jayatri has led exhibit development of both Your Brain, a national award-winning exhibit about the neuroscience and psychology of the human brain, and SportsZone. She also leads The Franklin Institute’s programming initiatives about materials science, nanotechnology, synthetic biology and other areas of emerging science and their impact on our everyday lives.

Jayatri earned her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Princeton University and conducted postdoctoral research in biology at the University of Pennsylvania, investigating the biochemical processes that allow living things to adapt to different environments (and hunting for wild fruit flies from Florida to Canada along the way). Watch her Science Story about a moment of unexpected discovery!

Prior to joining The Franklin Institute, Jayatri held a Science and Technology Policy Fellowship at the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. In 2016, she was honored with the American Alliance of Museums’ Nancy Hanks Award for Professional Excellence. Jayatri is an invited Fellow of the Center for Neuroscience & Society at the University of Pennsylvania.

Follow her on Twitter at @JayatriDas.

Visual artist, designer, and director Doug Fitch, who collaborates on A Song by Mahler with lighting designer Nicholas Houfek, is known for his acclaimed and innovative productions of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre and Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen for the New York Philharmonic, Puccini’s Turandot for The Santa Fe Opera, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel for LA Opera, HK Gruber’s Gloria—A Pig Tale for The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with the New York Philharmonic and The Juilliard School, and Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat for the Festival. “The thing about A Song by Mahler,” Mr. Fitch says, “is that there’s nothing else like it. I love how musically and dramatically efficient this opera is and how it reinvents the form while being completely adherent to the storytelling.” The Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Giants Are Small, Fitch was the inaugural visiting artist at SUNY, where he created an opera of images, How Did We...? , and he has directed projects for Canada’s National Arts Centre, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and Tanglewood.

The FLUX Quartet, "one of the most fearless and important new-music ensembles around" (San Francisco Chronicle), has performed to rave reviews in venues worldwide, including the Tate Modern with BBC Radio3, Park Avenue Armory, Kennedy Center, Mount Tremper Arts, EMPAC, Walker Art Center, Carnegie's Zankel Hall, as well as international festivals in Australia, Europe and Asia. It has also premiered new works on numerous experimental incubators, including Roulette, The Music Gallery, and Mount Tremper Arts. FLUX’s radio appearances include NPR’s All Things Considered, WNYC’s New Sounds and Soundcheck, and WFMU’s Stochastic Hit Parade. The group’s discography includes recordings on the Cantaloupe, Innova, New World, Passin Thru, and Tzadik labels, in addition to two acclaimed releases on Mode encompassing the full catalogue of Morton Feldman’s output for string quartet.

Strongly influenced by the "anything-goes" philosophy of the fluxus art movement, violinist Tom Chiu founded FLUX in the late 90's. The quartet has since cultivated an uncompromising repertoire that combines late twentieth-century iconoclasts such as Cage, Nancarrow, Scelsi, and Ligeti with today's visionaries, including Oliver Lake, Michael Hersch, David First, Alvin Lucier, Michael Schumacher, Sean Shepard, Wadada Leo Smith, Julia Wolfe, Matthew Welch, and others. Having premiered over 100 new works, FLUX has been awarded grants from the American Composers Forum, Aaron Copland Fund, Meet-The-Composer, New Music USA, and Chamber Music America. FLUX also discovers emerging composers from its many college residencies, including Wesleyan, Dartmouth, Williams, Princeton, Bard, and the College of William and Mary.

The spirit to expand stylistic boundaries is a trademark of the FLUX Quartet, and to that end the quartet avidly pursues interdisciplinary projects, resulting in acclaimed new works with choreographers Pam Tanowitz and Christopher Wheeldon, avant balloonist Judy Dunaway, digital collective The OpenEnded Group, and visual artist Matthew Barney. In the upcoming season, FLUX will perform and record the full string quartet output of Toshi Ichiyanagi, widely acknowledged as an influential pioneer of the Japanese avant-garde.

Nicholas Houfek is a New York City-based lighting designer working in music, dance, and theater. Selected projects include: Claire Chase’s Density Project (The Kitchen,) International Contemporary Ensemble, Oyá by Marcos Balter (NY Philharmonic, Soloist for Light,) Natalie Merchant, Maya Beiser, Ojai Music Festival, Silk Road Ensemble, Tyshawn Sorey’s Perle Noire directed by Peter Sellars (OMF, Oberon-ART,)Marc Neikrug’s A Song by Mahler, Anohni’s She Who Saw Beautiful Things at The Kitchen, Suzanne Farrin’s La Dolce Morte at the Metropolitan Museum of Art directed by Doug Fitch, George Lewis’ Soundlines featuring Steve Schick and directed by Jim Findlay (Skirball,) Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s In The Light of Air, Ash Fure’s The Force of Things (Mostly Mozart,) and The 39 Steps (Olney Theatre Center). In addition to traditional lighting for live performance Mr. Houfek has been developing a light organ software interface called the ColorSynth that acts as an intermediate between a performer and their lighting. Mr. Houfek has also designed for the Martha Graham Dance Company, Cedar Lake Contemporary Dance, and Ian Spencer Bell Dance; is an ensemble member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, a member USA829, and a graduate of Boston University.

Dasha Kiper is the clinical consulting director of support groups at The CaringKind (formerly 'The Alzheimer's Association'). She was born in Russia, raised in San Francisco, and makes her home in New York. She first became a live-in caregiver as a graduate student at Columbia University where she received an MA in Clinical Psychology. For the past decade she has counseled caregivers, led support groups, and trained and supervised mental health professionals, as well as former caregivers, who now lead support groups.

Kiper’s 2023 book Travelers to Unimaginable Lands blends science and storytelling to illuminate the complex relationship between the mind of someone with dementia and the mind of the person caring for them. After getting her master’s degree in clinical psychology, Kiper became the live-in caregiver for a Holocaust survivor with Alzheimer’s disease. For a year, she endured the emotional strain of looking after a person whose condition disrupts the rules of time, order, and continuity. Inspired by her own experience and her work counseling caregivers in the subsequent decade, Kiper offers an entirely new way to understand the symbiotic relationship between patients and those tending to them. Her book is the first to examine how the workings of the “healthy” brain prevent us from adapting to and truly understanding the cognitively impaired one.

A native of New Jersey, cellist Zachary Mowitz made his solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in July 2018 as winner of the Greenfield Competition. He graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in 2018, where he studied with Carter Brey and Peter Wiley and served as principal cello of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. He subsequently studied at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with Gary Hoffman in Belgium, and at the Royal College of Music with Richard Lester. During the 2018-19 season, he played in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra as Guest Principal Cello. He is currently an Associated Artist at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and a Community Artist Fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Composer Marc Neikrug has had an international career for 30 years. He has written chamber music, symphonic music, music-theater, and opera. Major performances have taken place with the New York, Los Angeles, and Buffalo Philharmonics, as well as the symphonies in Pittsburgh, Houston, Atlanta, Cincinnati, New World (Miami), St. Louis, Washington DC, Chicago, Utah, Dallas, Phoenix, New Mexico, the Minnesota and Cleveland orchestras, and the St. Paul and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestras.

His works have been performed internationally, by the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, the BBC Symphony, London Synfonietta, English Chamber Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony, Liege Orchestra, Lisbon Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Osaka Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra. Festival performances have been at Ravinia, Tanglewood, Hollywood Bowl, Aspen, Angel Fire, La Jolla, Marlboro, Menlo, London’s South Bank, Aldeburgh, Berlin Festival, Frankfurt Festival, Schleswig Holstein, Zurich, Melbourne, Tokyo’s Music Today, and Jerusalem.

Among noted performers of his music are Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Alan Gilbert, David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, Lawrence Foster, Oliver Knussen, James Galway, Pinchas Zukerman, Maximilian Schell, John Turturro, and the Emerson, Vermeer, Tokyo, and Orion Quartets. His music-theater work Through Roses was commissioned by London’s South Bank Festival with the National Theater. Since its premiere in 1980 it has had hundreds of performances in fifteen countries and has been translated into 11 languages. There are three CDs on Deutsche Grammaphon, Enya, and Koch International.

There have also been two films produced: a documentary by Christopher Nupen, and a feature film directed by Jurgen Flimm and starring Maximilian Schell. Los Alamos, an anti-nuclear opera written in 1988, is the only American opera ever commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Its American premiere was at the Aspen Music Festival. Neikrug has been composer-in-residence at the Marlboro, Santa Fe, Angel Fire, Bravo Vail, and La Jolla festivals. Works have been recorded on Deutsche Grammaphon, Koch International, Stereophile, Laurel, and Enya records. His publishers are G. Schirmer and Chester Music.

One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award's inception in 1974, David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber music collaborator. He has appeared with many of the major orchestras in the United States and abroad, and has served as principal clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and others. A sought after a chamber musician, he collaborates frequently with distinguished ensembles and artists. Shifrin has been an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989 and served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. He is currently the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Ore. Shifrin also continues to broaden the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra by commissioning and championing the works of 20th and 21st century American composers.

Shifrin is Professor in the Practice of Clarinet at Yale University, where he teaches a studio of graduate-level clarinetists and coaches chamber music ensembles. He is also the Artistic Director of Yale’s Oneppo Chamber Music Series and the Yale in New York concert series. Previously, Shifrin served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music, and the University of Hawaii.

Mr. Shifrin's recordings have consistently garnered praise and awards. He has received three Grammy nominations - for a collaborative recording with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center of the collected chamber music of Claude Debussy (Delos), the Copland Clarinet Concerto (Angel/EMI) and Ravel's Introduction and Allegro with Nancy Allen, Ransom Wilson, and the Tokyo String Quartet (Angel/EMI). His recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, performed in its original version on a specially built basset clarinet, was named Record of the Year by Stereo Review.

Susan Shifrin is the founder and director of ARTZ Philadelphia. She founded ARTZ Philadelphia in 2013.

She is an art historian, curator, educator and arts accessibility advocate.  She received her PhD from Bryn Mawr College and has worked on the staffs of a number of large and small museums up and down the East coast. Susan says: “I was inspired to start ARTZ Philadelphia after having hosted a series of workshops and programs for visitors with dementia at the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, where I was the Museum’s educator for a number of years. I was profoundly affected as I watched visitors, many in the later stages of dementia, come to life in the Museum as they looked at and talked about art with each other, with me, their caregivers, and the college students who worked at the Museum. It was so moving to watch this transformation in people who, in some cases, had rarely spoken about or shared their lives with others. Art was their vehicle for expression, interaction, creativity, and mutual respect. And for laughter – plenty of laughter.”

Rea Tajiri is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and educator who creates installation, documentary and experimental films. Her work situates itself in poetic, non-traditional storytelling forms to encourage dialog and reflection around buried histories.

Tajiri is a Sansei who grew up in Rogers Park, Chicago and Van Nuys, California. She earned her BFA and MFA degree from the California Institute of the Arts where she studied post-studio art. Upon graduation, Tajiri began working in video art, two early shorts were included in the Whitney Biennials of 1989 and 1991.

One of her early works, History and Memory: For Akiko & Takashige went on to receive the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association and a Special Jury Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival and Best Experimental Video from the Atlanta Film and Video Festival. This documentary short has screened in over 250 venues around the world. History and Memory is distributed by Women Make Movies, Video Data Bank and EAI. You can also watch it on the Criterion Channel.

After completing this film, Tajiri, developed an interest in the history of social movements and was approached by civil rights organizer Pat Saunders to co-produce a film on the life of Harlem human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama. They received a production grant from the PBS series “P.O.V.” to complete the film entitled: Passion for Justice. This film is distributed by Women Make Movies.

After completion of this documentary, Tajiri directed her debut dramatic feature film Strawberry Fields, produced by Open City Films and ITVS. Strawberry Fields received its international premiere at the Venice International Film Festival and won the Grand Prix at the Fukuoka Asian Film Festival. The film received theatrical release through Phaedra Cinema and is currently available to watch on the Criterion Channel.

Tajiri has received fellowships for her work from the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, the Leeway Transformation Award, Rockefeller Foundation, NEA Visual Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has also received support for her work from Independence Media, CAAM Documentary Fund, ITVS Open Call, ITVS Diversity Development Fund, and JustFilms/Ford Foundation. Since 1989, Tajiri has had an ongoing collaboration with choreographer Kate Foley designing video set projections for her dance concerts. Foley choreographed dance set pieces for Tajiri’s short films Aloha and Little Murders and appears in Tajiri’s video Hitchcock Trilogy.

Tajiri has been a visiting filmmaker at numerous universities and colleges across the country including Hampshire College, University of Colorado Boulder, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of California Santa Barbara, Georgetown University, Smith College, Brown University and was a Visiting Professor at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is currently an Associate Professor at Temple University, Film Media Arts.

In 2014 Rea Tajiri completed her feature-length documentary Lordville. This hybrid documentary was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at CAAMFest, VCFest in 2014. The film screened recently at Yerba Buena Arts Center. Her current 2022 documentary feature, Wisdom Gone Wild will premier at the Blackstar Film Festival.