SPEAKERS
OFER BEN-AMOTS - Composer
Award-winning composer Ofer Ben-Amots’ compositions are performed worldwide. Recognized for emotional and highly personal expression, Ben-Amots weaves folk elements with contemporary textures, creating dynamic tension that permeates and defines his musical language.
NATHANIEL DEUTSCH - Prof. of Jewish Studies
Deutsch is a professor of history and the Director of The Humanities Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and author of The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement which chronicles S.-An-sky's groundbreaking ethnographic expedition, as well as the forthcoming A Fortress in Brooklyn: Hasidic Williamsburg from White Flight to Gentrification (with Michael Casper).
LOIS RUDNICK - Prof. of American Studies
Lois Rudnick is Professor Emerita of American Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston. She has published and lectured extensively about the artist and writer communities of New Mexico, the complex and contested issues of Anglo patronage, and American Modernism. She is currently writing a biography of Taos Pueblo artist Eva Mirabal and her family.
GABRIELLA SAFRAN - Prof. in Jewish Studies, Slavic Languages & Lit.
Gabriella Safran teaches and writes on Russian and Yiddish literature, folklore, and folkloristics at Stanford University. Her most recent monograph, Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk's Creator, S. An-sky (Harvard, 2010), is a biography of thIs early-twentieth-century Russian-Yiddish writer, ethnographer, and revolutionary. She is currently working on two monographs, including one on the international pre-history of the Jewish joke.
CONCERT ARTISTS
DEBRA AYERS - Pianist
Co-Founder and Director of Montage Music Society, commissioning and performing music inspired by visual art. Featured in numerous recordings and documentaries. “Technically and emotionally, the performance is perfect”; “players of taste and insight.”
WALTER HAMAN - Cello
Mr. Haman has performed throughout North America and Europe. In 2003 he became a member of the Utah Symphony Orchestra and in 2008 was appointed Principal Cellist of the Grant Park Orchestra in Chicago. Haman has played with the Chicago Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, and has been a guest cellist for Pink Martini.
KLIMENT KRYLOVSKIY - Clarinet
Praised for his “easy facility, a vibrant tone” by the New York Concert Review, and proclaimed as “an artist whose profound musicality is only matched by his sparkling technique” (Nice-Matin, France), American clarinetist Kliment Krylovskiy has been enjoying an international concert career as member of the esteemed Zodiac Trio.
GAIL SPRINGER - Director
Gail Springer has been director of over fifty theatrical productions and workshop performances at the Greer Garson Theatre in Santa Fe. Gail founded and directed the BFA Music Theatre program at the College of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. She currently has a voice studio and is a soloist with Serenata of Santa Fe.
