An Ocean of Rain

Anna Dennis – Kyoto
 
Anna studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Noelle Barker. She has previously appeared at the Almeida Theatre playing the title roles in The Girl of Sand (2003) and Ariadne (2002). Other opera work includes Monteverdi’s Orfeo (English National Opera/Chatelet), Ballo delle Ingrate (Birmingham Opera Company), Handel’s Sirde (Oper der Zeit, Austria), Edward Rushton’s The Shops (Bregenz Festspiel, Linbury ROH), Jonathan Dove’s Enchanted Pig (Young Vic), and Britten’s Death in Venice (English National Opera). Her concert work includes Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (Psappha, City of London Festival), Britten's War Requiem (Philharmonie, Berlin), Mozart Mass in C Minor and Beethoven Mass in C (Clarion Music Society, New York), and a series of 20^th Century programmes with the Britten Sinfonia (Aldeburgh Festival/BBC Proms/Krakow). 
  
Camille Hesketh – New York

Camille completed her Master studies at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. Since then she has been actively involved in commissioning and disseminating voice and electronics repertoire within the project Wiregriot, performing throughout The Netherlands, Belgium, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and the U.S, including the CCRMA concert series at Stanford University. She also performs baroque, classical and romantic work, including the premiere of 120 Songs for the Marquis de Sade by Peter Hannan with the Modern Baroque Opera Company, Vancouver. She has collaborated with Talking Pictures Vancouver and STEIM Amsterdam on the New Media Pocket Opera in the Forum Neues Musiktheater of Stuttgart Opera, as well as many installations in The Netherlands. She is a member of the VocaalLAB Nederland, through which she has performed with the Nieuw Ensemble and Slagwerkgroep Den Haag. She has worked under conductors Daniel Reuss, Pierre Boulez, Marc Destrubé and André Richards.  

Katalin Károlyi – Cairo
 
Katalin has sung under the direction of conductors such as Yehudi Menuhin, William Christie, and Reinbert de Leeuw. She has performed at many festivals including Aix-en-Provence, Ravinia Chicago, BBC Proms and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She has also appeared with leading opera companies worldwide including the Opéra National de Paris, Teatro alla Scala, Teatro Colon, and in concert at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore and Barbican Halls, London and the Cité de la Musique, Paris.
She has performed with Almeida Opera in La Infinito Nero and in the world premiere of John Woolrich’s The Sea and its Shore; other recent engagements include Aventures, Nouvelle Aventures (Lincoln Center New York); Folksongs with Psappha and London Sinfonietta (City of London Festival/Manchester); Tehillim (RIAS Kammerchor, Berlin); Windsor Jambs (Ensemble Intercontemporain); Les Noces (Kultur Ruhr Festival, Germany). She performed György Ligeti’s Sippal, Dobbal, Nadihegedüvel, a piece composed especially for her, with the Amadinda Percussion Group, Asko Ensemble, and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
 
Hyacinth Nichols - Delhi
 
Hyacinth trained at Guildhall School of Music and National Opera Studio. Her performances include L'enfant et les sortileges, The Electrification of the Soviet Union, La Traviata, New Year, Carmen and Albert Herring for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Madama Butterfly, Orfeo, Samson and Dalila and The Magic Flute for Dublin Grand Opera; Aida for Opera Northern Ireland and Raymond Gubbay at the Royal Albert Hall; Dido & Aeneas as Syria’s very first opera (presented by the British Council and the Syrian Ministry of Culture); the world première of The Music Programme with Polish National Opera; Porgy and Bessin the Atlantic Pavilion, Lisbon, and at the BBC Proms; and Marriage of Figaro and A Midsummer Nights Dream for English Touring Opera. Most recently, she sang the role of Anna in Tobias and the Angel for the re-opening of the Young Vic and at the Oundle Festival. She has also performed with numerous internationally acclaimed orchestras and in a range of oratoria.
 
Claire Prempeh – Kiev
 
Claire trained at RADA and has since appeared in Drooping Palms, The Arsonists, and Rhinoceros at the Royal Court, As You Like It at Watford Palace Theatre, Generations at the Young Vic, and Orestes for Shared Experience performed at the Tricycle Theatre.

Yannis Kyriakides – Composer 

Yannis studied under Louis Andriessen at the Hague Conservatory, since when he has established himself as an international composer and electronic musician, collaborating regularly with ensembles such as ASKO, Maarten Altena Ensemble and Icebreaker as well as theatre and dance groups such as Hollandia and Leine and Roebana. His own group Circadian perform regularly in festivals around Europe and he is active in the live electronic music scene as an improviser, specializing in live processing. In September 2000 he won the Gaudeamus composition prize for his large scale work a conSPIracy cantata and in September 2006 Wordless was awarded an 'Honorary Mention' at Prix Ars Electronica.
 
Daniel Danis – Libretto 

Daniel’s work has achieved international acclaim with his first play, Celle-là (That Woman) being awarded the 1993 Governor General’s Award and named best new play by the Syndicat Professionnel de la Critique Dramatique et Musicale (Paris). Cendres de cailloux (Stone and Ashes) won first prize at the Festival International de Maubeuge (France) and was named best new play at the 1994 Soirée des Masques (Montreal). Its English version, by Linda Gaboriau, won the 1996 Governor General’s Award for literary translation. Le Chant du Dire-Dire (Thunderstruck or The Song of the Say-Sayer) was named the 2000 best new play by the Syndicat Professionnel de la Critique Dramatique et Musicale (Paris). Le Langue-à-Langue des chiens de roches (In the Eyes of Stone Dogs) was awarded the 2002 Governor General’s Award, and his last play E, roman-dit won the Grand Prix littéraire dramatique 2006 (France).
 
Cathie Boyd – Director

 Cathie studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and as the founder of Cryptic in 1994 she has produced and directed all their productions to date. Her work includes numerous international collaborations and has been presented at festivals in Europe and throughout the Americas. Her opera credits include Faust, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Simon Holt’s Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?, Sciarrino’s Infinito Nero, and Kurtág’s Scenes from a Novel. In 2000 she produced an international festival, Beckett Time. She directed the openings of the Royal Museum of Scotland, Glasgow’s Imax Cinema and Science Centre and the Glasgow City Halls with the BBC SSO. Last year she created live interactive visuals for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s performances of Stravinsky’s The Firebird in Baltimore and Washington, with future performances in Germany and Poland in 2008. In 2001 Cathie was made a Fellow of NESTA (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts) to develop the visual staging of music through new technologies. She has also been awarded Outstanding Young Person Award Junior Chambers of Commerce 2003, European Woman of Achievement for the Arts 1999, and an Edinburgh Festival Fringe First for her production Parallel Lines in 1996.   

Ensemble MAE 

Since 1980 the Dutch MAE, formerly known as the Maarten Altena Ensemble, has developed itself from an improvisation collective into an ensemble that explores new musical and multidisciplinary territories.  Straddling a broad spectrum of experimental traditions, the ensemble of nine musicians has built up a repertoire of over 150 works written for its particular instrumentation by composers such as Robert Ashley, Richard Ayres, Allison Cameron and Steve Martland.  18 LP's & CD's have been published and performed worldwide.  Under the new artistic leadership of Yannis Kyriakides and Roland Spekle, the focus has shifted to a deeper exploration of the possibilities of expanding the sound world of an acoustic ensemble through live electronics and a desire to experiment with the way music is experienced through new performance contexts and the use of digital media.
  
John Otto – Set & Costume Design 

John trained in London on the Motley Design Course. His work for opera includes Carmen for the Nationale Reisopera, Holland; I due Foscari, La Traviata, Fidelio and Peter Grimes all directed by Monique Wagemaker; Wet Snow by Jan van de Putte, Der Freischutz directed by Marcel Seym, Handel’s Alcina for Vancouver, Idomeneo for Firenze, Belle Helene for Wurzburg, Ariodante for the Wexford Festival, Ireland, and Die Konigen von Saba by Goldmark for the Dortmund Opera. His most recent design for dance includes Sweet Spell of Oblivion for Royal Ballet Flanders, and Das Verschwundene and Bruckner for Dresden Ballet.
  
Zerlina Hughes - Lighting 

Zerlina graduated from Goldsmith's College in 1991 and also has an MA in Architectural Lighting. She has worked in theatre, opera, architectural lighting, television and film where she was assistant director to Mike Leigh. Theatre lighting designs include the National Theatre, the West End, Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, Lausanne, Citizens Theatre Glasgow, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Nottingham Playhouse, Cheek by Jowl, and Actors Touring Company. Opera productions include Norrlands Operan in Sweden, Aix-en-Provence Festival, Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Reisopera in the Netherlands, Scottish Opera, Almeida Opera, London Sinfonietta, Opera Northern Ireland, Covent Garden Festival, Cardboard Citizens and Grange Park Opera. 

Ben Duke – Choreographer

Ben is the co-founder of ‘Lost Dog’ who were awarded the Bonnie Bird new choreographers’ award in 2005. Their work has been performed by the Phoenix Dance Theatre, From Here to Maturity, Edge, and Transitions Dance Company, as well as at the Edinburgh Fringe where it was nominated for a Total Theatre award. In 2006 Lost Dog were invited to be choreographers in residence at the MADE in Umea Festival, Sweden, their work was shortlisted for the Oxford Samuel Beckett award and they were invited to perform at the Sadler’s Wells Gala evening. Their most recent work, Hungry Ghosts will be touring nationally in autumn 2008.
Ben has also worked with the Oily Cart children’s theatre company, Maresa von Stockert’s Tilted Co., Punchdrunk, and the Gate Theatre; he has collaborated with Carrie Cracknell, artistic director of the Gate Theatre, on the critically acclaimed production of The Sexual Neuroses of our Parents, and in 2008 he will be working on Scottish Opera’s production of Falstaff.

Julia Bardsley – Video Artist 

Julia has worked as a filmmaker, visual artist, performer & director. From 1991-4 she was joint Artistic Director of the Leicester Haymarket & Young Vic Theatres. Her installations include Punishment & Ice-cream, The Error Display, Field, Avalanche Thoughts and the 12/stages Projects. Julia's films have been screened at the Edinburgh & Madrid Film Festivals, WWVF Amsterdam, Image Geneva, VAD Girona, 2^nd Media Art Festival Armenia, and ActArt5 London; she also art directed Rolf Hind’s 2006/7 Solo Spotlights series for the SPNM; and has created three solo projects incorporating photography, video, object and performance. She was video, set & costume designer for Simon Holt’s Who Put Bella In The Wych Elm for Almeida/Aldeburgh Opera.