PRAISE FOR OUR TEAM
CREATIVE TEAM
CREATIVE TEAM
DANIELLE BIRRITTELLA
Danielle Birrittella is a California-based performer, creator, and composer of new operatic work whose projects have been lauded as “a breath of pure creative power” (Opera Wire). Danielle’s extensive background in opera and experimental theatre yield an artist with an instinct for pushing the boundaries of contemporary classical music.
As a creator of new works, Danielle bridges new music, devised performance, and film with a particular focus on collaborative engagement with poets, dancers, and visual artists. Her dual roles as creator and performer of her operatic projects deliver a unique level of authenticity and intimacy to her pieces. In addition, her work as a practicing depth psychotherapist heavily influences her creative endeavors. By weaving layers of symbolism, archetypal motifs, and emotional insight, she explores the psyche’s capacity for healing and transformation.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Opera Wire, The Financial Times, and on NPR. She is the creator of Sonnets To Orpheus, an immersive song cycle set to Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry, and co-creator of Magdalene, a chamber opera set to Marie Howe’s poetry scored by fourteen female composers.
Danielle’s “high, crystalline soprano” has been said to be “mesmerizing… as hypnotic to watch as she is to hear” (The Wall Street Journal, Parterre). As a performer she is “exposed, intelligent, earnest… powerful and persuasive” and has a “radiant, nearly angelic presence” (The New York Times, The Financial Times).
She holds degrees from California Institute of the Arts (MFA), Pacifica Graduate Institute (MA), and New York University (BA), and is a member of SAG/AFTRA and ASCAP. In addition to her artistic work, Danielle maintains a clinical depth psychotherapy private practice, The Intuitive Voice.
ANNIKA SOCOLOFSKY
Annika Socolofsky (composer) is a composer and avant folk vocalist who explores corners and colors of the voice frequently deemed to be “untrained” and not “classical.” Described as “unbearably moving” (Gramophone) and “just the right balance between edgy precision and freewheeling exuberance” (The Guardian), her music erupts from the embodied power of the human voice and is communicated through mediums ranging from orchestral and operatic works to unaccompanied folk ballads and unapologetically joyous Dolly Parton covers.
Annika writes extensively for her own voice, including composing a growing repertoire of “feminist rager-lullabies” titled Don’t say a word, which serves to confront centuries of damaging lessons taught to young children by retelling old lullaby texts for a new, queer era. Annika has taken Don’t say a word on the road, performing with ensembles including Eighth Blackbird, New European Ensemble, Albany Symphony, Knoxville Symphony, Latitude 49, and Contemporaneous. Her follow-up feminist rager-lullaby song cycle in collaboration with ~Nois, titled I Tell You Me, was recognized by the Chicago Tribune as “grotesquely gorgeous… among the most captivating compositions heard the whole festival [Ear Taxi 2021]” and was included in their “Chicago’s Top 10 for classical music, opera and jazz that defined 2021.” Recordings of her music are available on New Amsterdam, Bright Shiny Things, Naxos, and Innova record labels. Her research focuses on contemporary vocal music, using the music of Dolly Parton to create a pedagogical approach to composition that is inclusive of a wide range of vocal qualities, genres, and colors. She is Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Colorado Boulder, and is the recipient of the 2021 Gaudeamus Award. She holds her PhD in Composition from Princeton University.
CLARESSINKA ANDERSON
Claressinka Anderson (librettist) is a Los Angeles-based poet and writer. She is the winner of the 2022 Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize, and her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boulevard, Pleiades, Bear Review, bedfellows, Chiron Review, Autre Magazine, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla), and elsewhere, as well as in the anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books, 2020). Anderson has worked as an art dealer, advisor and curator, and was the founder of the gallery and art salon Marine Projects (2009-2017).
Through her ongoing collaborations with artists, her work engages the interstitial spaces of contemporary art, literature, and music. Anderson holds an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College. Born and raised in London, she lives in Los Angeles and dreams about rain.
XUAN
Xuan is a new media artist, filmmaker, and pianist working at the intersection of music, visual art, and technology. A trained classical pianist with a passion for ‘visual music’, she actively develops innovative, cross-disciplinary projects that broaden the immersive scope of new music and performance. Driven by themes such as femininity, power, alienation and multicultural identity, her work encompasses abstract scenography, experimental film, interactive installations, and public art.
Her work has been seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago), the Smithsonian Museum of Art (Washington D.C.), the Baryshnikov Art Center (NY), Constellation (Chicago), SFJAZZ (San Francisco), Le Poisson Rouge (NY), Design Biennale 2019 (Zürich), the RESCUE Residency in Santo Stefano di Magra (Italy), Sound Forms 2021 (Hong Kong), ibug Festival für Urban Kunst (Saxony, DE), Ad Astra Music Festival 2020 (Virtual/KS), the Mizzou International Composers Festival 2021 (MO), CAP UCLA’s Tune In Festival 2021 (Virtual/CA), the MATA Festival x Found Sound Nation 2023 (NY), and the Ojai Music Festival 2024 (CA).
Xuan is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and has studied Media Spaces at the BTK University of Art and Design in Berlin, DE.
STEPHANIE ZALETEL
Stephanie Zaletel (choreographer) is a dance artist, movement facilitator, dream-tender, caregiver, environmentalist, plant-based eater and cook, and mental health advocate currently residing in Los Angeles. Stephanie’s early career was threaded together with prolific creative practices inspired by her quest to access and create dance experiences in trauma-aware, consciously feminist-led spaces, and in 2015 she founded szalt to deepen this learning and expression. As a freelance artist, Stephanie performs and creates works for musicians, short films, dance, opera, and theater companies nationally and internationally.
In addition to their work with szalt, Stephanie has created works for musical artists, films, dance, opera, and theater companies nationally and internationally including collaborations with clipping., C. Prinz, Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, Beth Morrison Projects, and Lars Jan’s Early Morning Opera. In 2022 Stephanie was a guest artist at California Institute of the Arts and Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University as well as an Artist in Residence at Loghaven in Knoxville, TN.
Stephanie holds a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from the California Institute of the Arts and a CE Certificate in Somatic Psychotherapy and Practices from Antioch University..
Mila Henry
Mila Henry is a music director and pianist who maintains an active and versatile career leading works that defy genre, from rock musicals to folk operas to reimagined classics. She has worked with Lileana Blain-Cruz, Heather Christian, Bill T. Jones, George Lewis, Missy Mazzoli, Wayne Shorter, and esperanza spalding.
Hailed “a stalwart contributor to the contemporary opera scene” (Opera Ithaca), Mila frequently collaborates with Beth Morrison Projects and PROTOTYPE. She was Conductor for Magdalene; Music Director/Pianist for Eat the Document; Pianist for Thumbprint; and Répétiteur for Pulitzer Prize-winners Angel’s Bone and p r i s m. With BMP and VisionIntoArt, she was Conductor for The Old Man and the Sea and Répétiteur for Sensorium Ex. Other collaborations include Conductor for Letters That You Will Not Get (American Opera Projects); Music Director for The Hunt (Miller Theatre); Pianist for We Shall Not Be Moved (Opera Philadelphia, The Apollo, Dutch National Opera); and Répétiteur for Iphigenia (Octopus Theatricals).
Mila’s musical theater work includes Vocal Director for The World is Round (Ripe Time, Obie-winner); Music Director for Early Decision (McCarter Theatre); and Assistant Music Director for The Night Falls (BalletCollective). She has led workshops with Circle in the Square, Pittsburgh CLO, HERE, and Page 73; performed at Joe’s Pub and 54 Below; and supported thesis projects at BerkleeNYC, Columbia University, and NYU Tisch.
Mila is an active Maestra member, serving as Co-Program Head for First Takes, and participating in their mentorship program. She has participated on grant panels for New Music USA and OPERA America, and is a member of Brooklyn Art Song Society’s New Music Advisory Board.
Mila is based in New York and plays multiple tiny instruments with the alt-country band The Opera Cowgirls. Manhattan School of Music (M.M.); Elizabethtown College (B.A). milahenry.com