Ravinia 2019, Issue 4, Week 7

KEVIN NEWBURY, director A theater, opera, film, and event director based in New York, Kevin Newbury has headed up over 70 original productions. His work has been presented by many opera companies, festivals, theaters, and orchestras, including the Park Avenue Armory, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, BAM, Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Minnesota Opera, Mon- treal Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Seattle Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, the Prototype Festival, Bard Summerscape, the Vir- ginia Arts Festival, Wexford Festival, San Fran- cisco Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra. Newbury is especially committed to developing and directing new works, with over two dozen world-premiere operas and plays to his credit. Recent highlights include Fellow Travelers for Cincinnati Opera (named one of the best clas- sical events of 2016 by the New York Times ), The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs for Santa Fe Opera, O Columbia for Houston Grand Opera, and Doubt for Minnesota Opera and Bel Canto for Lyric Opera of Chicago, both of which were broad- cast on PBS’s Great Performances . Opera Phil- adelphia’s Oscar was nominated as Best World Premiere by the International Opera Awards in 2014 under his direction, a distinction repeated in 2016 and 2018 with Bel Canto and Steve Jobs . Newbury’s production of Virginia for the Wex- ford Festival in 2010 won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best New Opera Production, and his co-production of Bellini’s Norma for the Cana- dian Opera Company won three Dora Awards. He recently directed a new production of Ber- nstein’s Candide for the Philadelphia Orchestra and will direct the premiere of Gregory Spears’s Castor & Patience at Cincinnati Opera next year. Newbury has made three short films: Monsura Is Waiting and Stag were screened at 40 film festi- vals, each winning several awards, and Epiphany V was released in 2017. Kevin Newbury made his Ravinia debut last year directing the present production of Mass , named one of the 10 best classical performances of 2018 by the Chicago Tribune . LESLIE STIFELMAN, music supervisor Leslie Stifelman is an internationally recognized music director, conductor, and pianist, as well as a leading figure in arts education and theat- rical entertainment. Dedicated to transforming the creative lives of performers and students of all ages, her projects and collaborations have received Tony, Grammy, and Peabody Awards. Stifelman’s career highlights include serving for 21 years on Broadway as music director and con- ductor of Chicago: The Musical , the longest run- ning American musical of all time, shepherding to the stage performances by Usher, Brandy, Jennifer Nettles, Bebe Neuwirth, and Brooke Shields. Additionally, she was executive pro- ducer of the televised, Peabody Award–winning HBO series The Music in Me . As a symphonic conductor and music supervisor, Stifelman was deeply involved with “Bernstein at 100” celebra- tions last season, including staged productions of West Side Story and Candide with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Bernstein’s Mass with Marin Alsop and the Chi- cago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia and the Baltimore Symphony at Carnegie Hall, Young People’s Concerts for the New York Philhar- monic, and symphonic programs with the Pitts- burgh, Milwaukee, and Seattle Symphony Or- chestras, among other ensembles. She has also collaborated with such artists as Nadja Saler- no-Sonnenberg, Dawn Upshaw, and the Lon- don Symphony Orchestra as a concert pianist; recorded on many major labels, including An- gel, Nonesuch, BMG, and EMI; and supervised music for films directed by Martin Scorcese and Rita Wilson. As an educator, Stifelman has designed and contributed to some of the most powerful initiatives of the last decade, online and in the classroom, through her work with Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. Thou- sands of students worldwide have been touched by her programs. She is currently on the artist faculty and the director of the Musical Theater Performance Lab for the College of the Perform- ing Arts at the New School, a collaborative ini- tiative with Mannes School of Music, the New School for Drama, and the New School for Jazz. MELISSA MAHON, choreographer Melissa Mahon is a pro- lific dancer, choreogra- pher, and director who spent 20 years perform- ing on Broadway with credits in five shows: Chicago: The Musical , The Producers , 42nd Street , Cats , and The Sound of Music . She recently com- pleted choreographing a production of Bern- stein’s Candide for the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, starring Academy Award–nominated actor and director Bradley Cooper. Mahon has also choreographed and directed for the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia, Lincoln Center, City Center’s Encores! series, NBC’s Today Show , and The Late Show with Ste- phen Colbert . She now combines her theatrical eye and marketing expertise as the managing director of MAS Event + Design, a worldwide experiential agency for clients such as Google, YouTube, Lincoln, Spotify, and Unilever. VICTORIA “VITA” TZYKUN, scenic designer Victoria “Vita” Tzykun holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her film and TV credits include art direction for Lady Gaga’s ABC Thanksgiv- ing Special and production design for several award-winning films. Her recent stage design projects include set design for the world pre- miere of Mason Bates’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs at Santa Fe Opera, set and costume design for Gounod’s Faust at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and costume design for Weinberg’s The Passen- ger at the Bolshoi Theatre. Tzykun is a founding member of GLMMR—an interdisciplinary art collective that fuses the worlds of audio-visual technology, and live performance. Her work was showcased in a solo exhibition at the Na- tional Opera America Center in New York and has been featured in exhibitions at the Habima National Theater in Tel-Aviv and the World Stage Design Exhibition in Toronto. In 2016, the International Opera Awards nominated her for Best Design. JULY 15 – JULY 21, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 101