Dr. Amy Stebbins (Cofounder and Chair) is a writer-director specializing in contemporary music-theater. Her interdisciplinary works have been commissioned by opera houses, symphony orchestras, festivals, and universities. Amy teaches seminars on the practice and theory of contemporary opera at the Ruhr University in Bochum. She serves on the selection committee of the Academy for Theater and Digital and on the board of the Carl Orff Foundation. Her advocacy for institutional reform in new opera development has taken the form of Transatlantic exchanges, and the creation of New Opera Dialogues together with composer Hauke Berheide in 2018.
George Cederquist is the Artistic Director of Chicago Fringe Opera as well as the Theatre Department Chair and Artistic Director of Opera at North Park University. One of ten Americans to receive the 2011 German Chancellor Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, George served as a Regieassistent at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. George holds an MFA in Directing from Northwestern University and a BA in Theatre Studies and English from Yale University. Now in its ninth season, George hosts OPERA BOX SCORE on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and WNUR 89.3 FM Chicago. The show tackles the week’s opera headlines in an irreverent sports talk radio format. George is a member of Steep Theatre Company and the American Guild of Musical Artists, and is a dual US-UK citizen.
Sandra Eberle (Board Member) is a production manager, who has worked in the artistic management (KBB) of the Bavarian State Opera since 2005. During that time she has served as the production manager on over thirty world premieres for the opera house’s summer "Munich Opera Festival", and since 2021 also for the "Ja, Mai Festival" dedicated to early and contemporary music theater. Born in Stuttgart, she studied Musicology, Phonetics and Psychology in Munich. One of her current professional focal points is discovering new ways to open up entrenched institutional processes for inquiry into new work development.
Dr. Ulrich Kreppein (Board Member). How does reality sound? This question is at the heart of Ulrich Kreppein's musical work. His compositions have been awarded numerous prizes and include operas, orchestra works, and chamber music. Currently he is working on his opera "Caligari", which will premiere in 2025.
Kreppein is a professor of composition at the HfMDK in Frankfurt. Prior to that, he worked as a deputy professor at the HfM Weimar. He studied at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf, at Columbia University, and completed his PhD at Harvard University. His teachers include Manfred Trojahn, Tristan Murail, Julian Anderson, Helmut Lachenmann and Chaya Czernowin.
Hauke Berheide (Cofounder and Honorary Board Member) is a classical composer who specializes in opera. He has won the Rome Prize (German Academy Villa Massimo 2012) and the Munich Opera Festival Prize (2016), among other awards. Hauke has received commissions from the Bavarian State Opera Munich (Mauerschau), among others. Other notable collaborations include those with the Ensemble Modern, the Düsseldorf Symphonic, the Hamburg Philharmonic, and renowned European musicians such as Oksana Lyniv, Axel Kober, Michael Boder, André de Ridder, the Auryn Quartett, and Wenzel Fuchs. Hauke also composes orchestral music.
Dr. Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby (Board Member, on leave) holds a position as the only dramaturg of the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet. She received her PhD in musicology at the University of Oslo in 2013. Her dissertation, “Salome Ever and Never the Same: (Re)Productions of a Canonized Opera”, discusses opera as a material exemplification of canonicity as process by studying productions of Richard Strauss’s Salome between 1974 and 2011. Before joining the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet in 2013, she was a research fellow at the Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a journalist at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.