Ms. Phillips career has covered almost every area of the music business. In addition to recording several solo albums, from the classic Born To Be Blue, to her most recent release, Ballet Time on which she sings with such old friends as Dave Brubeck and Marian McPartland, she has worked as a singer, choral arranger and conductor with many of the music world's leading artists and is widely known in the industry as the writer/arranger/producer of many national commercials. Ms. Phillips Christmas show, a jazz opera Bending Towards the Light ¦ A Jazz Nativity, tells the traditional story though jazz and has featured such greats as Lionel Hampton, Dave Brubeck and Tito Puente. It is performed in New York and other cities annually.

To introduce today's children to the Great American Songbook, Anne and her husband, tenor saxophonist Bob Kindred, have begun Children's Jazz Choirs through their not-for-profit organization, Kindred Spirits. In keeping with her passion for keeping those songs alive she also leads SING! SING! SING! a Sing-in monthly at The Triad on 72nd Street in NYC.

In the classical area this year, her ten minute opera Tempo Fuori del Tempo  was presented at Weill Recital Hall as a part of an evening of Opera Shorts, and her Easter Cantata, Sing, For The Lord Has Risen was presented in concert by the Remarkable Theater Brigade at Jan Hus Church. Her song cycle An Alaskan Trilogy, a setting of three poems by Alaskan poet, Phoebe Newman, was performed at the CUNY Grad Center in collaboration with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. More of her songs were recorded by soprano Monica Harte on the classical label MSR Records.

Other works include What Are We Doing To Our World? a musical expression of concern for the environment, Damn Everything But The Circus, a full musical, The Great Grey Ghost of Old Spook Lane, a children's musical. Ms. Phillips has been on the faculty of the Jazz Department at NYU, music Director for the 9AM service at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church and was a National Trustee of NARAS, the Recording Academy.

Tom Cipullo
Composer

Hailed by the American Academy of Art & Letters for music that displays "inexhaustible imagination, wit, expressive range and originality," composer Tom Cipullo's works are performed regularly throughout the United States and with increasing frequency internationally. The winner of a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2013 Sylvia Goldstein Award from Copland House, and the 2013 Arts & Letters Award from the American Academy, Mr. Cipullo has received commissions from the Mirror Visions Ensemble, SongFest at Pepperdine, the Joy in Singing, Sequitur, Cantori New York, tenor Paul Sperry, mezzo-soprano Mary Ann Hart, the Five Boroughs Music Festival, pianist Jeanne Golan, soprano Martha Guth, the Walt Whitman Project, baritone Jesse Blumberg, the Cecilia Chorus, Music of Remembrance, and many others. He has received awards and fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Copland House, the Liguria Study Center (Bogliasco, Italy), the Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain), the Oberpfaelzer Kuenstlerhaus (Bavaria), ASCAP, Meet the Composer, and the Jory Copying Program. The New York Times has called his music "haunting," and The Boston Globe remarked that his work "literally sparkled with wit." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has called him "an expert in writing for the voice." Recent honors include the Minneapolis Pops New Orchestral Repertoire Award (2009) for Sparkler, the National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Award (2008) for the song-cycle Of a Certain Age (commissioned by the soprano Hope Hudson), the Aaron Copland Award from Copland House (2007), and the Phyllis Wattis Prize for song composition from the San Francisco Song Festival for Drifts & Shadows (2006).

Mr. Cipullo is the composer of one opera, Glory Denied. The work, after the book by journalist Tom Philpott, is based on the true story of America's longest-held prisoner of war. The piece was premiered by the Brooklyn College Opera Theater in 2007, given its professional premiere by the Remarkable Theater Brigade in New York in June of 2008, and recently presented by Chelsea Opera and by Urban Arias in Arlington, Virginia. Critical reception to the opera has been enthusiastic. Of the Chelsea Opera production (2010), Allan Kozinn of The New York Times wrote:

Mr. Cipullo's vocal writing is angular and declamatory at times, but he has a keen sense of when to let that modernist approach melt into glowing melody, and he has an even keener ear for orchestral color. November 12, 2010

Mr. Kozinn went on to cite "the efficiency of [the opera's] structure," and referred to the work's second-act "showstoppers." A production by the UrbanArias company in Arlington, Virginia (2011) was reviewed by Joan Reinthaler of The Washington Post. Under a headline that exclaimed "Vietnam-Era Saga Glory Denied Doesn't Withhold a Single Musical Wish," Ms. Reinthaler praised a "luminous score that offered vivid embodiments of the protagonist's mental states." Glory Denied was presented by the Fort Worth Opera in the spring of 2013 to rave reviews. The Fort Worth Star Telegram called Glory Denied "a powerful drama of great music and acting intensity," Fort Worth Weekly cited it as "a powerfully realistic thriller and an abashedly honest commentary on the America of the 1960s and 70s," and D Magazine recognized the work as "an intimate operatic masterpiece." Theater Jones called Glory Denied "horrifying, riveting, involving, shocking, inspiring, overwhelming, appalling, and devastating - in that order." Albany Records will release a recording of the Fort Worth production in the fall of 2013.

Tom Cipullo's song cycles A Visit with Emily, Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House, and Of a Certain Age are published by Oxford University Press. Other works are distributed by Classical Vocal Reprints. His music has been recorded on the Albany, CRI, PGM, MSR Classics, GPR, Centaur, and Capstone labels.

Mr. Cipullo's recent events include the premiere of Excelsior, a new song cycle composed for baritone Jesse Blumberg and pianist Martin Katz, Something About Autumn written for soprano Martha Guth, and Passionate Sacrament for violin and piano, premiered at the Montale Auditorium of Genoa's Teatro Carlo Felice as part of the festivities surrounding the Paganini Violin Competition. In late May 2011, the Mirror Visions Ensemble gave the New York premiere of the cantata Insomnia at Weill Recital Hall. Upcoming projects include a commission from the Cecilia Chorus for a new work for 150 voices and orchestra to be premiered in Carnegie Hall in April 2014, a chamber opera with a libretto by David Mason for Music of Remembrance in Seattle, and a new evening-length opera, Mayo, based on the life of Mayo Buckner.

Mr. Cipullo received his Master's degree in composition from Boston University and his B.S. from Hofstra University, Phi Beta Kappa with highest honors in music. He studied composition and orchestration with David Del Tredici, Elie Siegmeister, and Albert Tepper. Mr. Cipullo is a founding member of the Friends & Enemies of New Music, an organization that has presented more than 80 concerts featuring the music of over 200 different American composers.

Ben Moore
Composer

The music of American composer Ben Moore has been performed by many leading singers including soprano Deborah Voigt, mezzo-sopranos Susan Graham and Frederica von Stade, tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Robert White, baritone Nathan Gunn and five-time Tony winner Audra McDonald. His work has been called “brilliant�?and “gorgeously lyrical�?by the New York Times while Opera News has praised the “easy tunefulness�?and “romantic sweep�?of his songs.

Recordings include Voigt’s recital CD entitled All My Heart (EMI) with eight Moore songs, Nathan Gunn’s Just Before Sunrise (SonyBMG), Lawrence Brownlee’s This Heart that Flutters (Opus Arte) and Susan Graham at Carnegie Hall (Warner Classics). In April of this year Delos Productions will release Dear Theo, an album featuring three of Ben’s song cycles. These include a cycle on poems by women entitled So Free Am I (commissioned by the Marilyn Horne Foundation), a setting of John Keats�?Ode to a Nightingale, and Dear Theo which is based on the letters of Vincent van Gogh. Last year Nathan Gunn, Lawrence Brownlee and Isabel Leonard performed Ben’s music in separate concerts at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall.

In February 2015 Moore’s first opera, Enemies, a Love Story, will receive its world premiere at Palm Beach Opera directed by Sam Helfrich and starring bass baritone Daniel Okulitch. A recipient of an Opera America development grant, ‘Enemies�?is based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer and is set to a libretto by Nahma Sandrow. It is at once a comedy of a man who ends up juggling three wives, and a dark story chronicling the legacy of the Holocaust.

Besides art song and opera Moore’s works include musical theatre, cabaret, chamber music, choral music and comedy material. In 2006 the Metropolitan Opera’s farewell gala for Joseph Volpe, broadcast nationally, featured two Moore songs, one for Deborah Voigt and one for Susan Graham. 2006 also saw the release of the volume Ben Moore: 14 Songs published by G. Schirmer. Reviewing the album, Classical Singer Magazine wrote: “…you can find a breath of fresh air in the settings included in this volume…This composer is not afraid of the past, but rather embraces many of the most beautiful aspects of his artistic heritage while imbuing his work with its own personal colors and tones.�?/p>

Born on January 2, 1960, in Syracuse, New York, Moore grew up in Clinton, New York and graduated from Hamilton College. With an MFA from The Parsons School of Design, Ben also pursues a career as a painter.

Tickets may be purchased on-line (link through www.ChelseaOpera.org) or by calling 1-866-811-4111. This production is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency as well as by the Friends of Chelsea Opera. For more information, visit www.ChelseaOpera.org or call 260-1796 or 917-912-3778.

Chelsea Opera is a professional company presenting fully staged operas with chamber orchestra. Performing in the intimate space at St. Peter’s in Chelsea, New York City, the company provides an important venue for professional singers to advance their artistry while making opera attractive, affordable and accessible to a broad spectrum of the community. The company is also committed to providing opportunities for young people to learn about and become interested in opera either as a source of entertainment or future employment. As New York Times music writer, Anthony Tommasini noted this past June: “With American opera companies large and small struggling financially and a few going under, there was a patch of encouraging news [as] this scrappy company celebrated its fifth anniversary…�? Now in its TENTH SEASON, Chelsea Opera continues its fine work in the arts. Be sure to become a part of the magic we make and experience for yourself.