Santa Fe New Music Youth Opera Project—The Language of Birds

Key Program Staff

John Kennedy (Music Director and Conductor)
Composer/conductor John Kennedy is a dynamic and energetic figure in American music. Recognized for his artistic leadership, imaginative programming, audience development, and expertise in the music of our time, Kennedy has conducted celebrated performances of opera, ballet, standard orchestral and new music.
He presently serves as the Artistic Associate to Spoleto Festival USA, in a central role planning and leading many of the Festival’s music presentations He has guest conducted for many organizations including New York City Ballet and the Lincoln Center Festival. Kennedy has led countless premieres and worked with many leading composers of our time in performances of their work, including Robert Ashley, Henry Brant, John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Steve Reich. He has conducted numerous American premieres of leading international work, including orchestral works by Michel van der Aa, Pascal Dusapin, Michael Nyman, Somei Satoh, and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky.   As a composer, his works have been performed worldwide and featured at major festivals including the Paris Festival d’Automne, Aspekte Salzburg, the Zurich June Festival, London’s Wigmore Hall Piano Fest, the Singapore Arts Festival, and the Kanagawa Arts Festival. Kennedy has been commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera (Trinity, 2007), Sarasota Opera (The Language of Birds, 2004), the Contemporary Youth Orchestra of Cleveland, Bay Area Pianists, the Walt Whitman Project, and many others. Numerous choreographers have worked with Mr. Kennedy’s music, including Albert Evans in a solo ballet for Peter Boal, and Mr. Boal in a work for Pacific Northwest Ballet. A member of the board of the American Music Center, he was its President from 2002-2005.

Rozella Kennedy (General Manager)
Rozella has 25 years experience in program development and management, in media, the arts, and social service sectors. She has worked in New York City; Paris; Bristol, UK; and Santa Fe: in roles ranging from correspondent to website producer to managing editor, and as a marketing and communications manager for the ACLU (national office), the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Time Warner's NY1 News, among others. In Santa Fe, Rozie co-founded Santa Fe New Music and handled the operational establishment of Creative Santa Fe. A bilingual French speaker and teacher, she is Principal of Santa Fe Accompli, which offers services in strategic planning, project management, and project implementation.

Marilyn Barnes (Chorus Master, The Language of Birds)

Marilyn Barnes graduated from the University of Idaho and later taught music in Alaska for several years, receiving many top awards for her high school choirs, while maintaining a performance career. After study at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, she received her Masters in Opera Performance Cum Laude from the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. During graduate school, she conducted and was section leader for many of the large church choirs in the Hartford area. She continued to perform in the New York area, at Bucks County Playhouse, and went on tour with the National Theater for Children. Since 1990, she has lived in Santa Fe, and she now teaches in the Performing Arts Department at the College of Santa Fe and teaches choir and musical theater at Santa Fe High. She has been section leader of several local choirs, and founded the Zia Singers women’s chorus and conducted them for ten years. A permanent member of the Santa Fe theater group Theaterwork, she maintains a performing career: in opera (world premiere of Spencer, Cosi fan Tutte, Riders to the Sea, Hansel and Gretel, and the zarzuelas La Dolorosa and Luisa Fernanda); in choral work (Vivaldi Gloria, Rutter’s Requiem in G); in musical theater (Balancing Act, Closer than Ever, Quilters, the world premiere of Guadalupe! (John Kennedy), Three Penny Opera, The Sound of Music, and the plays Dialogue of the Carmelites, Amadeus, and A Few Stout Individuals); and with many solo and duet recitals. She resides with her husband and daughters in Santa Fe.

Barbara Geary (Stage Director, The Language of Birds)
New to Santa Fe, Barbara Geary has had a varied theatre career, careening through dance, mask performance, ensemble theater and Shakespeare. A graduate of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, she has performed and created shows with The Victims of Circus Dance, The Dell’Arte Players Company and Imago-Theatre Mask Ensemble. Her directing credits include Twelfth Night, As You Like It, the acclaimed contemporary commedias Love Potion # Mine and 3 Dottores 3, as well as an extended, sold-out run of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY. With the Dell’Arte Youth Academy, she directed the ensemble and created pieces for the Physical Expression and Experimental/Political Theatre classes. Barbara has played the Devil in The Soldier's Tale with Ensemble X, made her mark as Anne Bonney at the Pirate Festival in the Florida Keys and developed the course, Physical Expression For Animators at the Rochester Institute of Technology. As a performer she has most recently been seen as Artemisia Gentileschi in Artemesia, The Woman In Green in Big Fat Liar/ Peer Gynt, Madame Pernell in Tartuffe and locally as a super in the Santa Fe Opera’s Timid Twosome. Barbara also has extensive experience as a mask maker and visual artist, exhibiting her ceramic sculpture around the country.

Kathryn (Katie) T. Crosman (Production Coordinator)
A native of San Jose, NM, Katie is a graduate of New Mexico State University with a Bachelor of Music and a major in vocal performance. As a child and teen, she appeared as a singer/actress in several Theaterwork productions, including Scenes from an Execution, The King Stag, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and Guadalupe!, (composed by SFNM’s John Kennedy). Ms. Crosman has also performed as a Chorus Member in several Santa Fe Opera productions including La Boheme, Tosca (as Countess Maritza), The Magic Flute (as the First Sprite), Modern Painters (as Rose La Touche), and in the Santa Fe Opera’s Outreach Program production of Noah’s Flood (as the Gossip). Ms. Crosman has also sung with the New Mexico Pro Coro Choir and for the Santa Fe Playhouse Theater. In addition to pursuing her singing career, she is currently working in the Santa Fe Public Schools as a vocal coach for middle and high-school students.

Allegra Lillard (choreographer, The Language of Birds)
Allegra is a celebrated dancer and the founder and director of “Dance for Joy” dance studio for children in Santa Fe. She began dancing in Texas, trained with Wichita Falls Ballet Theatre and at Walnut Hill School for the Performing Arts in Massachusetts. In her professional dance career, Allegra Lillard was featured in solo and principal roles in the Atlanta Ballet, Ballet British Columbia, Ballet Hawaii, Hawaii Ballet Theatre and the Oregon Ballet Theatre. In Santa Fe, Ms. Lillard was involved with the National Dance Institute of New Mexico as Associate Artistic Director. She has taught and choreographed for the College of Santa Fe, Charisma Dance Company, The School of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Eldorado Children’s Theatre, and others. Allegra's "Dance for Joy" studio shares studios at Ironstone Gardens with Audrey Derell’s Charisma Dance Company.

Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet (Vocal Coach, The Language of Birds)
Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet is a dramatic soprano recognized as a leading force in the German and contemporary music repertoire. In Europe, she has appeared on the stages of the Liceu, Opéra National de Paris, De Nederlandse Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Teatro La Fenice, Bregenz Festival and the Teatro Comunale di Firenze. London’s Guardian recently wrote of Ms. Charbonnet: “Musically and dramatically, hers is an astonishing characterisation. Her voice - dark-sounding, rich and strong - is capable both of scything through Strauss’s vast orchestra with ease and of transforming into a fragile, unearthly pianissimo in moments of lyricism. Dramatically, she is exceptionally subtle.... Much of what Charbonnet does is the stuff of genius.” Jeanne-Michèle moved with her family to Santa Fe in 2005.