AJ Rodriguez is a San Jose Bay Area tenor who has performed from coast to coast and has been praised for his "earnest lyricism." He has performed with noteworthy organizations such as Beth Morrison Projects and the NY Philharmonic. Within the past year, in the world premiere The Smallest Sound in the Smallest Space, an interdisciplinary stage play involving opera-- a "plopera," if you will, with the Why Collective. Along with a passion for performing, he has a deep love for education and interdisciplinarian work. He has long-term goals to find ways to bridge a gap in the accessibility of music and arts in low-income/disadvantaged communities. He holds a Masters Degree from the Manhattan School of Music and currently resides in NYC where he has co-founded the Lyric Arts Collective.

Alberto has been providing interpreting services in the educational, medical, and performing arts world throughout the NYC area for the past 15 years. A proud CODA and native ASL user, he has grown up existing in both the Deaf and hearing world all his life. He credits the beauty of American Sign Language and the Deaf community for allowing him to see and experience things he never could have imagined. Currently serving as the voice interpreter for ASL Slam NYC, Alberto’s credits include off-Broadway works such as A Commercial Jingle for Regina Comet, Twilight Zone Spooktacular, and From The Ground Up. He has interpreted for settings such as The Obama Foundation Democracy Forum, musical concerts for artists such as Post Malone, and Bad Bunny, and most recently served as the interpreter for Justina Miles, Deaf performer for Super Bowl LVII, on talk shows CBS Mornings and ABC’s The View. Born and raised in the Bronx, Alberto enjoys his downtime exploring all that NYC has to offer, traveling, listening to music, and spending time with family and friends.

Musician/Educator/Wearer-of-Many-Hats Derek J. Weagle (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based artist and healer invested in the disruption of social and academic barriers around classical music, as well as the preservation of music-making as an act of joyful humanness. With a practice rooted in syncretism, Derek can be found equally comfortable in roles ranging from conductor to composer, performer to teacher. They hold a B.M. in Music Education from UMass Lowell and an M.M. in Composition with a minor in Choral Conducting from New England Conservatory, as well as a Certificate in Sound Healing from the Sage Academy of Sound in Woodstock, NY, and a Certificate in Biosonic Sound Repatterning with Dr. John Beaulieu. Derek will receive an Artist Diploma in the Gabriela Ortiz Composing Studio at the OAcademy Music Conservatory as a member of a select cohort of twelve international artists in June 2025. For more information on Derek’s artistic practice and services offered, see their website at www.derekjweagle.com.

Ian Sutherland is a writer and filmmaker from Chicago.

norm mattox is a poet and a retired spanish bilingual educator whose poetry tells a story of love and resilience in our times of challenge, struggle, and transformation. norm's published collections include: Get Home Safe, Poems for Crossing the Community Grid, published in 2016, Black Calculus published in 2021 by Nomadic Press (Pushcart Prize nominated), four crescents published by Collapse Press in 2023, and evaporating rage, published by Black Lawrence Press in 2024. norm’s poetry also shows up in a number of anthologies: Love Letters to Gaia, Letters for the End Times; Vols 1 & 2, maintenant 18, a shape produced by a curve to mention a few. norm is presently working on a couple of projects for the 2025 season.

Dicky Dutton is a floofy humanoid comforted by the discoveries of other wayward floofies. They take steps in the ground knowing the Mother pulls the weight out of her feet, and even though it hurts, the feelings in her body are real. Something about that feels good, so we keep stepping into spaces where music and making happen. They have performed with Opera Philadelphia, Philadelphia Choral Arts, the Philadelphia Voices of Pride, Cincinnati Opera, Aural Compass Projects, Arizona Opera, and the WHY Collective among others. They are excited to be back with the WHY Collective - “I hope you find something in this darkness!”

Adrianna Mateo is a rare triple-threat artist: solo violinist, singer-songwriter, and actress. She is known for her depth, nuance, and appeal to both commercial and classical music audiences. Her 2024-2025 performances include performing a violin concerto written for her by composer Mitchell McCarthy with Contemporaneous (featuring an original cadenza); acting, singing, and playing violin in Rocky Duval’s “Hildegard, Reborn” at Lincoln Center (Bruno Walter Auditorium); singing original songs at National Sawdust (presented by Daniel Bernard Roumain); and acting in Amanda Seyfried’s “Long Bright River” (Peacock). Previously, she performed at Carnegie Hall (concertino violin soloist with the Refugee Orchestra Project, conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya in a sold-out concert), debuted on Broadway subbing for concertmaster (Tootsie), sung on MTV and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, acted onstage at the Metropolitan Opera in the same scene as Anna Netrebko, and performed internationally as a solo artist in Africa, Asia, and Europe. She will eventually learn how to drive.

Chinese American soprano Abagael Cheng (she/her) is a singing artist, actor, producer, and activist who strives to break the boundaries of classical performance and move audiences toward social activism. Cheng sees her role in social justice and the arts to be one and the same: shifting culture through storytelling. She aims to deepen relationships within and between communities by engaging audiences with politically relevant narratives and centering collaboration in her productions. A NYC-based creative, her primary medium is the theatrical song recital, in which she curates programs of song, spoken poetry, and movement. Her most recent self-produced works include Awakening, co-produced with City Lyric Opera and inspired by the tradition of protest music, and The Hunger & The Haunt, an upcoming performance at Culture Lab LIC that explores ancestral nourishment among the AANHPI diasporic community. To learn more, visit www.abagaelcheng.com.

Mirai Shinde (Cortlandt Manor, NY) began her dance training at the University of Michigan graduating summa cum laude with a BA in Music. After graduating, she continued her training in modern and contemporary styles at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and the José Limón Institute. Over the past year, she performed to the work of composer Reena Esmail at Worcester Mechanics Hall with the Kritya Dance Ensemble and danced as a second company member at the Limón Dance Company. She is also a classically-trained operatic soprano of over a decade, and she constantly seeks ways to enrich her movement expression with her musical experience.

Franco-American mezzo-soprano Sophie Delphis has performed with SongFest as a Stern Fellow, the iSING Festival, UMS (University Musical Society), National Sawdust, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Tianjin Symphony Orchestra, Bronx Opera, Opera on the James, Bare Opera, Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, Opera Pomme Rouge, Floating Tower and Monk Parrots, among others. Her operatic roles include: Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro), Giunone (La Calisto), Carmen and Mercédès (Carmen), Flora (La Traviata), Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Marla Maples (The Drumf and the Rhinegold, premiere), Cenerentola and Tisbe (La Cenerentola), Concepción (L’heure espagnole), Mother/Yaga the Witch (Ami and Tami, English-language premiere), Hansel, (Hansel and Gretel) and Elle (La voix humaine). An avid recitalist, Sophie regularly produces recital programs and fundraiser concerts for musical and cultural organizations in the United States and China. Recent and upcoming works include: Ravel's Chansons madécasses and Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, Bolcom's Cabaret Songs, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten and Messiaen's Harawi. Along with classical repertoire, she enjoys collaborating with composers, improvisers and theatre artists on new works. Sophie can be heard as the Mother/Witch in the original English cast recording of Matti Kovler’s Ami and Tami and as a soloist on the Grammy Award-nominated Naxos recording of Milhaud’s Oresteia trilogy, produced by UMS in association with the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance. She currently resides in New York City, where she is pursuing a doctoral degree in voice performance at the Graduate Center CUNY. In addition to performing, Sophie is passionate about writing, linguistics and non-musical art forms. She teaches French language and poetics, as well as interpretation of mélodies repertoire. She serves as the house translator for the Paris-based classical and jazz label NoMadMusic.

Brian Ellis is a creative coder, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. His artistic drive lies in using code to democratize creative expression. He founded the Brooklyn Motion Capture Dance Ensemble to explore this concept through the medium of dance, writes participatory chamber music to explore it through concert music settings, and develops open source tools to enable others to create similar work. Brian maintains many performance practices, incorporating classical guitar, mountain dulcimer, live electronics, and no-input-mixing. He also built and maintains motion-into-midi.com, an open-source tool that lets anyone do motion capture with just their laptop. As a composer, Brian writes chamber music that focuses on audience collaboration, often employing QR codes, cellphone orchestras, and movement-based reactivity, and has worked with Third Coast Percussion, Chromic Duo, Unheard-of Ensemble, Bergamot String Quartet, The Arm, Apply Triangle, the Subaerial Collective, the Playground Ensemble, and members of zFestival and SōSI. He has presented works with Lincoln Center, the NY Philharmonic, 21st Century Guitar Conference, ICMC, TURN UP, SEAMUS, MICC, SPLICE, NYU-ITP, NYCEMF, and ROCC. Form_Responses1 Brian Ellis is a creative coder, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. His artistic drive lies in using code to democratize creative expression. He founded the Brooklyn Motion Capture Dance Ensemble to explore this concept through the medium of dance, writes participatory chamber music to explore it through concert music settings, and develops open source tools to enable others to create similar work. Brian maintains many performance practices, incorporating classical guitar, mountain dulcimer, live electronics, and no-input-mixing. He also built and maintains motion-into-midi.com, an open-source tool that lets anyone do motion capture with just their laptop. As a composer, Brian writes chamber music that focuses on audience collaboration, often employing QR codes, cellphone orchestras, and movement-based reactivity, and has worked with Third Coast Percussion, Chromic Duo, Unheard-of Ensemble, Bergamot String Quartet, The Arm, Apply Triangle, the Subaerial Collective, the Playground Ensemble, and members of zFestival and SōSI. He has presented works with Lincoln Center, the NY Philharmonic, 21st Century Guitar Conference, ICMC, TURN UP, SEAMUS, MICC, SPLICE, NYU-ITP, NYCEMF, and ROCC.