Ensemble for the Romantic Century
New Works Reading Series - Soapbox Gallery
Soapbox Gallery
636 Dean Street
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11238
Thursday, March 23, 2023 7:30 pm
‘Gouldberg’
Script and Music Design by Eve Wolf
Directed by Donald T. Sanders
Special thanks to The Augustine Foundation for making this series possible.
Thanks to NASA for the use of The Golden Record and The Voyager Launch
CAST
(in order of appearance)
Gary Gold/Humphrey Burton/Guard/Elevator Operator/Tim Page/Alex Trebek………………………………….Neil Hellegers
Pianist………………………………………………………………………..Ji-Yong Kim
Glenn Gould………………………………………………………………………...Kerry Malloy
Music Direction: Eve Wolf
Production Design: Vanessa James
Lighting Design: Beverly Emmons
Casting: Sue Zizza
Script Consultant: Renée Silverman
Production Stage Management: Paul Blankenship
Video Production: Sebastian Adamo
Technical Coordinator: James Greenfield
Program
Act I
The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 by J.S. Bach
Aria (live)
The Dumplings “Good Things Come in Pairs”
Variations 1,2,3 (live)
Humphrey Burton Interview of Glenn Gould - March 15, 1966
Variation 4 (recorded) Glenn Gould- March 15, 1966
Variations 5,6,7,8 (live)
Recorded Outtakes (recorded) Glenn Gould
Variation 12 Glenn Gould in 1981
Variation 13 (live)
“The Hundredth” - Ralph Vaughn Williams arrangement (recorded excerpt)
Leonard Bernstein speaking at New York Philharmonic concert April 6, 1962
Variation 15 (live)
Für Elise -- (Muzak)
Hindemith Fugue (recorded) Glenn Gould in 1966
Hindemith Fugue Coda (live)
Act II
Variation 16 (recorded) Glenn Gould in 1981
Variation 17,18,19 (live)
Tim Page Interview - August 1982
Aria (recorded excerpt) Glenn Gould in 1955
Aria (recorded excerpt) Glenn Gould in 1981
Variations 20,21,22,23,24 (live)
“As long as we’ve got each other” (1970s Sitcom)
Hansel and Gretel Overture (excerpt) recorded
Webern Variations, op. 27 (recorded) Glenn Gould
Variation 25 (live)
Variations 26,27,28,29 (live)
The Voyager Golden Record - Kurt Waldheim’s greeting to extraterrestrials
The Voyager Launch - September 5, 1977
Variation 30, Aria da Capo (live)
PROGRAM NOTES
by James Melo, ERC’s Musicologist
The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982) was unquestionably one of the most controversial and galvanizing performers of the 20th century. His name is instantly recognizable among all music lovers, and virtually everyone has some awareness of who he was, what he did, and the rich anecdotal track that he left behind. Throughout his career, Gould created a public persona that combined many aspects of the figure of the professional performer. His uncompromising individuality, his highly unorthodox views on interpretation and on the legacy of some composers (he thought Mozart was a minor composer), and his newsworthy quirks of behavior all conspired to create an aura of celebrity that survives to this day.
Gould was an artist completely beholden to his artistic calling. He did not have any significant romantic relationships (at least, none that anyone can confirm), he cultivated friendships primarily through the distance afforded by the telephone and letters, preferred to live in isolation and, not far into his career, abandoned live concerts altogether, in favor of the recording studio. Helplessly hypochondriac, afflicted by a number of compulsive behaviors that filtered through all aspects of his life and career, he became an inexhaustible source of anecdotes that turned him into a media sensation. His desire for complete control of his performances was carried to extremes. He would only perform using a chair that his father had built for him, and he brought it wherever he went. At the end of his life, the chair was almost disintegrating from overuse, but he never parted with it. He dreaded cold temperatures and was known to wear full winter gear (including his absolutely essential mittens) even in the warm days of summer. The temperature control in the concert halls and in the recording studios was a matter of great anxiety to producers and theater personnel. He would often plunge his hands into extremely hot water prior to a concert. He famously played sitting in an extremely low position relative to the keyboard and, perhaps most famously of all, hummed quite audibly during performance. If I may interject a personal story, I remember the shock that I receive when I listened to his recording of Bach for the first time, a few decades ago. I was living in Brazil, alone in an apartment in São Paulo, and was in the habit of listening to music in the dark, while lying on the floor, in the middle of the night. I would put my headphones, turn off the lights, and prepare for a few hours of pure musical bliss. On that occasion, upon hearing a loud voice so prominently intertwined with the music, I literally jumped in a panic and stood in the middle of the living room, looking for the person I was sure had broken in. It took me a few moments to recover and then to realize that the voice was Gould’s.
Gould’s views on music, and his approach to interpretation in general, have created a club of devotees that is unquestionably a majority over his equally vocal detractors. It seems that the only unacceptable reaction to him and his legacy is indifference. His individuality was so great, and he was so uncompromising in his musical views, that the great conductor Leonard Bernstein felt compelled to address the audience at a Carnegie Hall concert in 1962, when he conducted Glenn Gould in a performance of Brahms’ Piano Concert no.1, with the New York Philharmonic. The rehearsals were probably a veritable test of endurance for the conductor, because before the performance began he turned to the public and exempted himself from any responsibility for the interpretation of the work, particularly the unbearably slow tempo of the first movement. Glenn Gould would not have it any other way.
The work that is most closely associated with Glenn Gould’s name and reputation is J.S. Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, BWV 988. Gould’s two recordings of this towering masterpiece of Western music, made at two crucial junctures of his career (1955, when he was 22 years old, and 1981, one year before he died) can be credited with having placed the “Goldberg” Variations securely in the collective imagination. There is a great number of music lovers who first encountered the “Goldberg” through one of Gould’s recordings, and among them there are clearly two factions, the ones who adore the first recording, and others who respond more strongly to the less radical second version of the work. Gould himself acknowledged that the changes that can be heard in the second recording resulted from his own evolving relationship with the work, rather than as a response to scholarly or musicological concerns. The unorthodox interpretation that he brought to the first version of the “Goldberg” continues to divide musicians, composers, and the public at large. There is no denying the highly personal solutions he applied to his readings of the variations, many of which did not have a clear connection with the interpretative tradition that places such a high premium on fidelity to the composer’s text. But then, in the case of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, what really is the composer’s text? We don’t have Bach’s autograph score, there are no sketches or other materials that could shed light on issues of tempo, articulation, dynamics, and other performance factors. The “Goldberg” survives in 19 printed copies, one of which was Bach’s own personal copy. It was discovered in 1976 and is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. All the modern editions of the “Goldberg” stem from this printed copy. That means that, by the time Gould made his first recording, Bach’s personal copy was not yet known. On the other hand, his second recording was completed only five years after the discovery of Bach’s personal copy, which may not have left much time for editorial decisions based on it to filter through the difference musical channels. One aspect that, in retrospect, emerges very clearly from Gould’s first recording is his choice of extremely fast and extremely slow tempos, both of which became less extreme in the second recording. In addition, his approach to dynamics, articulation, ornamentation, and other interpretative issues remains highly idiosyncratic in most cases.
What kind of work is the “Goldberg” Variations? In its most basic structure, it is a set of 30 variations (or, perhaps more accurately, “recompositions”) of a bass line and its implied harmonic progression. This is significant because, in general, the genre of “theme and variations” in Western music involves variations on a melodic theme, often through tempo, rhythmic, and harmonic variations (including changes of key) and a reliance on embellishment and ornamentation of the primary melody. One precedent for Bach’s “Goldberg” was a passacaglia by Georg Friedrich Händel, which consists of 64 variations on an eight-measure chord progression. Bach knew the work and was interested in that approach, but he found the eight-measure chord progression inadequate. He thus composed an aria in four phrases, each one eight measures in length, for a total of 32 measures. It is this self-contained “sarabande” (it is note labeled as such, but it is clearly written in the style of the Baroque sarabande) that forms the basis for the set of 30 variations that follow. Bach planned the sequence of the variations very carefully and with attention to contrast and variety that were nevertheless unified through the overall design. Every third variation is a canon that start at increasingly wider intervals (at the unison, at the second, at the third, etc.), until he reaches a canon at the ninth. Where the canon at the interval of a tenth should be, Bach writes a quodlibet, a type of piece that consists on a mélange of popular tunes, and which was often improvised. Bach’s family was very familiar with this type of work, and there are documents testifying to the practice of this genre of improvised composition in his household. In the context of the “Goldberg”, the quodlibet has the important role of putting a halt to the sequence of the variations by breaking the pattern established by the succession of the canons. After the quodlibet, the aria returns verbatim, a practice that was unique at the time. The effect of the aria’s return is surely one of the most sublime moments in music, coming as it does after the highly challenging and incredibly complex variations. It not only offers a moment of repose to the performer and the audience, but also brings the work full circle. The variations that surround each of the canons are written in a variety of Baroque forms, from two-part inventions to dance forms, and in a free style of composition that is often referred to as “arabesques” (embellishments, bon-bons, works that lighten up the intensity of the work). Variation 15 provides one of the major emotional groundings of the work, the other being Variation 25, known as the “Black Pearl” after Wanda Landowska (one of the pioneers of the revival of the “Goldberg”) referred to it as such.
Bach wrote the “Goldberg” Variations for a harpsichord with two keyboards, and specified which ones should be played using a single keyboard or both. The variations that originally required the two keyboard pose particularly challenging technical problems when they are performed on the modern piano or on a single keyboard harpsichord. Hand crossings, overlapping of the two hands, and difficult switches in register are some of these problems. The question of the tempo for some of the variations is also affected by the awareness of which ones allowed more flexibility in articulation for being played on the two keyboards. The musical and technical virtuosity of the composition has been a source of wonder and interest on the part of keyboard players, composers, musicians in general and, surprisingly, among the lay public. It is a matter of wonderment how a work of such complexity and length (well over one hour with the repeats) has become popular and beloved across so many different strata of the public. It has been used in several movies in a great variety of dramatic situations, including a disturbing (if memorable) moment in The Silence of the Lambs when Hannibal Lecter kills the guards in the cage, who had come to feed him, and right there and then puts a tape in the tape recorder and listens to the aria of the “Goldberg”, blissfully and ecstatically, after having just committed a monstrous act. The story that circulates about the composition of the “Goldberg” Variations is not to be relied upon. It was first reported by Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Bach’s first biographer, who wrote it in 1802, approximately 60 years after the publication of the work (1741). It is told that the variations were written at the request of count Heinrich Carl von Keyserling, former Russian ambassador to the court of Saxony, and intended for the young Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who was in the service of the count, to play for him during his sleepless nights. One wonders, at first, what this highly complex and nuanced composition would do to alleviate the count’s purported insomnia. More troubling, however, is the fact that Goldberg was 14 years old at the time of the work’s composition, and he would have to be a preternaturally accomplished keyboard virtuoso to be able to handle the work. Also, there is absolutely no hint of a dedication, anywhere in the work, to either count Keyserling or to Goldberg, which would be unthinkable if the work had commissioned by the count and for Goldberg. Bach’s title page makes no mention of either of them, but simply specifies that the work consists of an “aria and diverse variations, for the pleasure of the connoisseur”, etc. The name “Goldberg” Variations, however, is now firmly associated with the work, and the accuracy of the original story has become a moot point.
One thing is clear for all to see and hear: out of an unprepossessing and perfect ordinary chord progression, Bach built a towering cathedral of music, bequeathing to us a work that epitomizes his unsurpassed skills as a composer, performer, and the consummate master of the most sophisticated compositional techniques in the history of Western music.
A NOTE FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT
Eve Wolf, Founder and Executive Artistic Director of ERC
My new play, Gouldberg, takes place on March 11, 2020 -- the day that the World Health Organization officially declared that Covid-19 was a pandemic. Glenn Gould had previously faked his own death and is now living under an alias - as the 87-year-old Gary Gold - in the ‘far north’ of Canada. He is recording his 13th version of the “Goldberg” Variations. He is blissfully unaware of the pandemic, and yet living in total isolation. I wrote the play during the pandemic, which seemed fitting given the general isolation - akin to Gold in his cabin in Canada. During the pandemic, many of us were alone. But were we really alone? Or, if we were on Zoom, were we really not alone? Was recording real or was the real a recording? What is the difference? The pandemic blurred some of those lines. And so did Gould.
The play functions in a number of seemingly contradictory directions. The subtitle of Gouldberg is “Lord Grant Us the Peace the Earth Cannot Give.” This was a line that Glenn Gould remembered hearing at the end of church services each week. On the one hand there is Gould, the man - someone who had a life that was far from peaceful. Gould was beleaguered by many problems - extreme hypochondriasis, drug dependence, relationships conducted mainly by telephone, germaphobia (also pandemic-fitting), sleep disorder in which day and night were reversed, loneliness. Gould yearned for a permanent relationship, which he found for some time with the painter Cornelia Foss, the wife of the composer Lucas Foss; she remembered Gould as funny, warm, kind, and romantic. Gould sought peace -- in nature, in solitude, in the recording studio, and in music in general. Many of Gould’s other characteristics that are considered highly eccentric are not so, in my opinion. As a pianist myself, I have observed that many of the things that are most caricatured about Gould are really very common attributes of pianists -- let’s call it a kind of “normal pianistic OCD” - in practicing and in the love/hate relationship with performing. Plunging hands in hot water; popping pills (beta blockers in many musicians’ cases); wearing gloves to keep hands warm before performing; refusing to shake hands with over-excited fans who can almost break ones’ bones are not so rare. Even the fact of singing or humming while playing is not uncommon, although for some it can often be almost inaudible. (One of my own teachers, a very well-known pianist, also hums and groans while playing.) And eccentric body positions and playing habits are also not unheard of. Viewed from this angle, I don’t particularly see Glenn Gould as much more “eccentric” than many pianists I have met, and certainly I have met many with relationship problems, insomnia, etc. In a sense, I see Gould as an exaggerated Everyman (since we all have some level of neurosis) - perhaps a more passionate one than most and of course, a great artist. He was passionate about so many things - music, being in nature, working in the recording studio, lecturing, studying scores, and making extraordinary experimental contrapuntal audio creations.
On the other hand, juxtaposed to the all-too-human Gould are the “Goldberg” Variations. They stand as the expression of another person - Bach, whose work seems beyond human, spiritual, universal. (and whose life was also filled with all-too-human struggles). But the “Goldberg” Variations have also become something other than what they were initially. The unusual and international interest in them, which was created by Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording, have made the “Goldbergs” attain a life of their own, even more so than other iconic pieces, and most likely much more than Bach ever could have imagined. Would happen. There has been a sort of Talmudic phenomenon surrounding the Variations. The text (music score) exists, (like the Five Books of Moses) and there are many interpreters and interpretations upon others’ interpretations, so that the text takes on a significance even greater than itself. The “Goldberg” Variations represent, to me at least, something mathematical, mystical, and not of this world -- in the relationship of their parts, the use of numerology, the construction of exquisite architecture, and the layers and layers of many other pianist’s interpretations. And yet they are expressively so human – indicative of human beings search for meaning or as some kind of spiritual meditation that also connects to the universal.
That brings me to another layer of the play -- the Voyager flight and the “Otherworldly Pianist”. The Voyager Flight I, (September 5, 1977) launched 16 days after its twin Voyager 2. Both are currently hurtling forward (Voyager 1 is now billions of miles outside the heliopause, as far from that boundary as Neptune is from Earth, and speeding onward at about a million miles a day.) Both spacecrafts carry a greeting to any form of life that may be encountered. The message is carried by a phonograph record - a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth- people in fifty-five languages. Among other music on The Golden Record, there is Glenn Gould playing Bach (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1). In the play I imagined the record reaching another civilization and being played by a pianist from another planet. Because Bach contains something of the universal, I imagined it to be understandable and reinterpretable yet again in another galaxy. The play opens with an “Otherworldly” pianist floating in outer space. This is a description of the scene, which will be realized when this play is fully staged.
“A dreamscape in a distant galaxy. A white piano floats in outer space as an Otherworldly Pianist, moored by a single silver cable, plays Bach. The cable cascades down millions of miles - through the canopy of the Milky Way - down to Earth - to sparkling fields of moonlit snow where a secluded cabin sits. The silver cable enters one of the cabin’s frosty windows and entwines with exquisite technological objects - microphones, brushed silver computers, iPhones - all umbilically connected to the Go-pro video camera of a solitary figure, an old man in a wingback chair.”
Gould is somehow umbilically connected to this other pianist, as he is to all the pianists in the world who study and perform the “Goldberg” Variations. Is Gould really alive? Is he really in the “Far North” of Canada? Or is he dead and the Far North of Canada is the other side? Or is Gould dead but remains alive the way Elvis is alive? Is he alive because pianists keep reinterpreting his interpretations? Because his work continues to impact generation after generation of pianists? Who is Gold really? Is he an imagined Gould in the future, or is he the transmutation of Gould into the continuously evolving new interpretations that are being born in every new generation of pianists? - In other words, is he the latest iteration of the Goldberg Variations? Two things seem fairly certain though: in the end, Glenn Gould does live on. And the “Goldberg” Variations expand in meaning with each pianist that performs them.
BIOS
(in alphabetical order)
Max Barros (Co-Artistic Director ERC, pianist) has been hailed by the critics in Brazil and the US as one of the most versatile pianists of his generation. He won the soloist of the year the São Paulo Arts Critics Association (1985), the “Discovery Award” from the French Diapason magazine for his recordings of Camargo Guarnieri’s piano concertos with the Warsaw Philharmonic for Naxos. He has been praised for his “elegance of rhythm” and “refinement of tone” (New York Times) and his “unfaltering brio” (Gramophone). He is in the process of recording the complete piano works of Camargo Guarnieri for Naxos. Mr. Barros has performed in all the major concert halls of New York City and Brazil, and in major productions by ERC in New York City and abroad. Mr. Barros is the Vice-President of the Brazilian Music Foundation in New York, and a Steinway Artist.
Paul Blankenship (Production Stage Manager) Off-Broadway: Fiercely Independent, Maestro, Because I Could Not Stop: An Encounter with Emily Dickinson; Hereafter Musical; If This Hat Could Talk; A Doll’s Life, Elizabeth and Essex; Colette Collage; The Fantasticks; Café Society. Regional: The School For Husbands (Westport Country Playhouse); The Bungler (Long Wharf Theatre); Wonderful Tennessee (McCarter Theatre); Mirette (Goodspeed Opera House); Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story (Walnut Street Theatre); My Fair Lady (Cleveland Opera); The Grapes of Wrath (Cleveland Play House); Play It By Heart (The Human Race Theatre Co.); Steel Pier (Actors’ Playhouse); Jacques Brel (Florida Studio Theatre); Romeo and Juliet (Alley Theatre); Othello, All’s Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare Festival of Dallas); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It (Houston Shakespeare Festival). Tours: The Fantasticks (National & Japanese Tours), Jesus Christ Superstar (European Tour), Camelot (World Tour w/Richard Harris), Senator Joe (National Tour); The Glass Menagerie (National Tour). MFA in Acting from Southern Methodist University.
Beverly Emmons (Lighting Designer) Broadway: Stick Fly, Annie Get Your Gun, Jekyll & Hyde, The Heiress, Passion, Amadeus and The Elephant Man. Off B’way: Joseph Chaikin, Robert Wilson. Regionals: the Guthrie, Arena Stage, The Alley in Houston, Children's Theatre of Minneapolis. Dance: Martha Graham, Trisha Brown, Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham. Awards: one Tony award, seven Tony nominations, a 1976 Lumen, a 1980 Obie, Theatre Wing awards. Created TheLightingArchive.org. Career is documented at the performingartslegacy.org
Jimmy Greenfield (technical coordinator) is a sculptor and the owner and director of Soapbox Gallery.
Neil Hellegers (Gary Gold, Humphrey Burton, Elevator operator, Tim Page, Leonard Bernstein, Security Guard, Alex Trebek) is an actor and award-winning audiobook narrator who lives in Brooklyn, NYC. An ardent Stratfordian, Neil has performed and taught Shakespeare internationally and digitally, and has been seen playing bearded professionals on many screens (House of Cards; Law & Order:SVU; Madam Secretary; Blindspot; Gotham, et al). He has narrated over 350 titles for numerous publishers, producers and independent authors alike, with a focus on genre and literary fiction. Neil has a BA in Theater Arts from UPenn in Philadelphia, a MFA in Acting from Trinity Rep, and is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and PANA.
Vanessa James (Production Designer) is an international designer of sets and costumes for theatre and opera and an art director for film and TV. Her New York stage credits include William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, Arthur Penn’s production of Chambers, Kenneth Koch’s Red Robbins, and Donald Sanders’ 33 Scenes on the Possibility of Human Happiness andThomas Cole; A Waking Dream for the Joseph Papp Public Theatre. She is the resident designer for the Ensemble for the Romantic Century for whom she has designed the recent productions of Akhmatova and Jules Verne at BAM/Fisher and Van Gough’s Ear, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Tchaikovsky: None but the Lonely Heart, Because I Could Not Stop: An encounter with Emily Dickinson at The Signature Theatre and Maestro and Hans Christian Andersen at The Duke Theater. She has been nominated for three Emmy awards for art direction. Examples of her work are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute library and the New York Museum of the Moving Image. She is a professor at Mount Holyoke College and is the author of two books of popular reference The Genealogy of Greek Mythology, and Shakespeare’s Genealogies.
Ji-Yong Kim, (pianist) has, for more than two decades, captivated audiences with a wide range of performances from appearing as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and more, playing recitals and chamber music around the world, recording the Goldberg Variations on the Warner Classics label to experimental performances at Art Basel: Miami or performing in the busy streets of Seoul to bring classical music closer to its people, to a highly unconventional Android commercial that premiered during the 2016 Grammy Awards in which his ‘monotune’ performance of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on dual pianos was so compelling that People Magazine declared him “the real star of the Grammys.” This is the second time that Ji has been a featured pianist in an ERC production. In 2018, Ji was the pianist for Tchaikovsky: None but the Lonely Heart in a long run at The Pershing Square Signature Theater in New York City. The production and Ji received rave reviews, including from Theatermania, which declared that “Chamber Music has never been so sexy.” Needless to say, Ji is a strong advocate of taking the “unusual” path, but at the core, he is unwavering in his life-long mission to immaculately present his continuous cultivation of sounds and musical ideas.
Kerry Malloy (Glenn Gould) is a graduate of New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. He recently appeared as Leon guest starring on Law and Order and will be returning & recurring as Paul Santino in NETFLIX's hit show Manifestthis Spring. Other film and TV credits include House of Cards, Daredevil, BULL, Quantico, and The Wolf of Wall Street. Theater work includes plays with New York Theatre Workshop, BAM, The Goodman and The Williamstown Theatre Festival. He has performed in films directed by Academy Award Winner Martin Scorsese and Academy Award nominee Stephen Frears.
James Melo (ERC musicologist, playwright) is a Senior-Supervising Editor at the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) at the Graduate Center (CUNY), and the New York correspondent for the music magazine Sinfónica in Uruguay. He has written program notes for major concert halls in the United States and Brazil, as well as for CDs on several labels. He was the program notes writer for the National Philharmonic in Strathmore, Maryland, and for the Montreal Chamber Music Festival. He is the author of the liner notes for the complete recordings of the works of Heitor Villa-Lobos and of Camargo Guarnieri on Naxos. He is on the faculty of the Diller-Quaile School of Music in New York City and is active as a translator in Brazil and the US. His most recent publication, an essay on Friedrich Nietzsche and the aesthetics of the Romantic song, was published this year by Cambridge Scholars.
Caity Quinn (ERC Development and Business Manager; playwright) has been a member of the staff at ERC since 2008. She has been instrumental in winning numerous ERC grants, including over ten years of funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and NYC’s Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA); The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for ‘July 5th’, and Maestro, about the life of celebrated conductor Arturo Toscanini. Ms. Quinn works closely with Eve Wolf and Don Sanders to implement and fulfill ERC’s mission. Ms. Quinn is also a playwright and drama teacher. She has collaborated with film director Robert Eggers (The Northman) on numerous theatre projects, including a Commedia dell’Arte version of Faust. Recent projects include teaching theatre K-8 at a tiny island school in Maine, directing Rabbit Hole and Six Characters in Search of an Author at Purdue, appearing at Theatre Passe Muraille in the bilingual French-English production of The Sound of Cracking Boneswith Pleiades Theatre in Toronto. Her play “Within and Without: The Flood” won the award Le Prix Initiative Jeunesse ALPHA Assurances in 2017. She has been nominated twice for the Brickenden Award for Best Youth Play/Musical in Ontario.
Donald T. Sanders, Director, (Director of Theatrical Production Ensemble for the Romantic Century/ERC) Notable ERC productions: Van Gogh's Ear with Carter Hudson; Seduction, Smoke and Music with Sinead Cusack and Jeremy Irons; Because I Could Not Stop, An Encounter with Emily Dickinson with Angelica Page; for ERC Audio Drama Division: Tchaikovsky, None But The Lonely Heartwith Vanessa Redgrave and Stephen Fry; Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon with Thibault de Montalembert. B.A. University of Pennsylvania (President, Penn Players,Thouron Scholar); C.I.D University of Bristol England; MFA Yale School of Drama. Career debut, the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, 1968, The American Pig, An Anti-Imperialist Vaudeville; Founder and Executive Artistic Director MIFA, the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts/MIFA. Awards: NEA, NYSCA, NYCDCA, MCC, National Philanthropic Trust, NYTimes Critic's Picks, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres France.
Renée Silverman (script consultant) is a seasoned filmmaker with over twenty-five years’ experience as a producer, director, writer and archival researcher. She is the US producer on the feature documentaries, Wim Wenders: Desperado, winner of the Rose D’Or, Cannes with Francis Ford Coppola, Patti Smith and Werner Herzog and It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Story in wide distribution in Europe. A New York based stringer for ARD and ZDF public tv, she produced hundreds of stories covering culture, politics, and breaking news. Renée’s is the co-director of the award-winning documentaries, Refugee Kids: One Small School Takes on the World and Sosúa: Make a Better World for PBS. Her archival producing credits include the Oscar nominated documentary RBG and United Skates on HBO. A script consultant with filmmakers and playwrights, she founded a documentary story structure workshop for the Gotham (formerly the IFP) and will teach screenwriting at SVA starting January 2023.
Eve Wolf (Playwright; Founder and Executive Director of ERC; pianist) During the past twenty-two seasons, Wolf has written scripts and been music designer for more than twenty-five of ERC’s theatrical concerts, including ERC’s new Radio Drama Division, and has performed as pianist in most of the ensemble’s forty-plus original productions. Highlights: Audio: Anna Akhmatova, - starring Vanessa Redgrave (2021); Jules Verne: From the Earth to the Moon – starring Thibeault de Montalembert (2022); Tchaikovsky: None but the Lonely Heart - starring Stephen Fry and Vanessa Redgrave. (2022); Notable Plays: Maestro (The Duke at 42nd Street), Van Gogh’s Ear (Signature Theater), 2017 - a New York Times Critic’s Pick; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Signature Theater), 2018; The Dreyfus Affair (BAM), 2017; Anna Akhmatova: The Heart Is Not Made of Stone (BAM) 2016 - a New York Times Critic’s Pick; Jules Verne: From the Earth to the Moon (BAM), 2015, a New York Times Critic’s Pick. This year, three new works of Ms. Wolf are being read at Soapbox Gallery - Beethoven vs Beethon; Gouldberg; and Andy Warhol: A Divine Comedy. Ms. Wolf has served on the faculty of the Curtis Institute and been a professional mentor at The Juilliard School, and is currently on the faculty of Columbia University-Teachers College.
Sue Zizza (Audio Producer) is a transmedia storyteller. She is a producer, director, writer, sound designer, and owner of SueMedia Productions, a full service audio production company producing sound for all media: Audiobooks, Podcasts, TV, Film,VR. etc. Sue has produced award winning audio fiction for the web, public radio, and audiobooks for more than 3 decades. Her work has been featured at the 2022 Tribeca Festival as well as honored over the years by The Audies (9 nominations, two wins); The Gabriel’s; The International Festival of New York; The National Federation of Community Broadcasters; and the Communicator Awards. In 2021 she was named The Corwin Award winner for lifetime achievement in producing audio fiction. Sue’s sound clients have included: Cleo TV, PBS, Audible, Blackstone, MacMillan Publishers, and USA Networks -Sci-Fi Channel.
