Erling Wold
Erling Wold recently premiered his opera Certitude and Joy in San Francisco, and Uksus, about the life and times of Daniil Charms, will be presented in Austria later this year. In 2011, the Sofia Philharmonic premiered the suite from Certitude and Joy, and the San Francisco International Arts Festival remounted his adaptation of William Burroughs’s Queer. Other recent commissions include Missa Beati Notkeri Balbuli Sancti Galli Monachi for chorus and orchestra, by the Abbey of St. Gallen; and the electronic opera Mordake, for tenor John Duykers, both on CD. Wold is an eclectic composer whose teachers include Gerard Grisey and Andrew Imbrie, but who has also been called "the Eric Satie of Berkeley surrealist/minimalist electro-artrock" by The Village Voice. He has published a variety of technical and artistic articles and holds many patents, as well as a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley.

Erling Henry Wold
Erling Wold recently premiered his opera Certitude and Joy in San Francisco, and Uksus, about the life and times of Daniil Charms, will be presented in Austria later this year. In 2011, the Sofia Philharmonic premiered the suite from Certitude and Joy, and the San Francisco International Arts Festival remounted his adaptation of William Burroughs’s Queer. Other recent commissions include Missa Beati Notkeri Balbuli Sancti Galli Monachi for chorus and orchestra, by the Abbey of St. Gallen; and the electronic opera Mordake, for tenor John Duykers, both on CD. Wold is an eclectic composer whose teachers include Gerard Grisey and Andrew Imbrie, but who has also been called "the Eric Satie of Berkeley surrealist/minimalist electro-artrock" by The Village Voice. He has published a variety of technical and artistic articles and holds many patents, as well as a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley.

Jennifer Check

William Hobbs
Born in Austin, TX, William Hobbs received his bachelor’s degree in piano performance summa cum laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and an M.M. in piano performance, research and literature from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. Hobbs works at many of the world’s major opera houses as conductor and coach, including the Opéra National de Paris, the Salzburg Festival, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Seattle Opera, Washington Opera and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. He has assisted conductors Claudio Abbado, Sir Charles Mackerras, Jirí Belohlávek, Sir Andrew Davis, James Conlon, Robert Spano, Richard Bonynge, Donald Runnicles, Jiri Kout, Marco Armiliato and many others. Hobbs joined the piano and voice faculty at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, in 2010, and was appointed assistant professor in 2011. He is the founder and artistic director of Opera Slavica, which is devoted to presenting full productions of masterworks from Russian, Czech and Polish composers, providing singers with no background in these languages with the knowledge and training to sing, read and translate them, and offering professional guidance for reaching industry standards.