Helga Davis: My Favorite Things

Helga Davis is performance artist and “a powerful vocalist with an almost operatic range and all the bruised sensuality of Jeanne Lee” (Wire Magazine).

Richard Barreto AKA “BIG DJ Rich” is a native of the Bronx, N.Y. Growing up in New York City and attending the exciting shows of legendary hip hop and house artists such as Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Larry Levan during the 70s and 80s inspired him to become a professional DJ and entertainer. After successfully working in the New York area for 15 years, he relocated to Washington, DC where he continues to be an in demand performer for clubs, weddings and corporate events. Since 1995 he has worked a very demanding schedule as a resident DJ on The Spirit of Washington and Odyssey Cruises, often performing seven days a week. This experience has allowed him to become extremely comfortable performing for every type of crowd and function imaginable. He has a great speaking voice, mixing ability and an encyclopedic knowledge of music in a wide variety of styles.”

Tomás is known for his “… mellifluous, pure tone (New York Classical Review)…,” and his stylistic flexibility. He has worked and recorded with many jazz artists including Anthony Braxton and Ben Monder, has performed with pop/folk musicians Damien Rice, Arcade Fire, Mick Jagger, various groups in the Brooklyn indie scene, and regularly sings in a cappella group Duwende, as well as premiering countless new operas and concert works by up-and-coming classical composers. Tomás first met Helga on the world tour of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s opera Einstein On The Beach, and has had the great pleasure to work with her in many settings since then. Most recently, they workshopped and performed Toshi Reagon’s forthcoming opera Parable Of The Sower, based on the novel by Octavia E. Butler.

A New York native, she has performed solo and background on the Today Show, Live with Regis and Kelly, and Live with Kelly and Michael. She’s done voice-overs for NBC Universal. She has also performed lead and background vocals with amazing artists such as Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Toshi Reagon, Melba Moore, Lou Reed, Macy Gray, and Angelique Kidjo, Nona Hendricks, Billy Bragg, Norm Lewis and Ben E. King.

She’s toured with by Bernice Johnson-Reagon and Toshi Reagon’s musical adaptations of Gustave Flaubert’s ‘The Temptation of St. Anthony and ‘Zinnias’ in partnership with world renown Robert Wilson. She is currently ‘Mrs. Simms’ in their musical adaptation of Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”.

She frequently performs with Toshi Reagon’s group “Big Lovely” and she alongside her husband Aron Marchak currently have a music ministry called “Marchak!”.

Marcelle Davies-Lashley a Brooklyn native and baby of seven children born to West African
parents from Liberia and Sierra Leone respectively is a psalmist extraordinaire. She began
singing lead in the church choir at the age of 5 and never stopped, performing as a musical
theater artist throughout her childhood. The sultry sound of the warm musical instrument of her
voice will melt your heart and feed your soul. Marcelle has travelled to five of seven continents
soothing and exciting the world in melody and song with a stage presence and sincerity that is
mesmerizing and second to none.

Marcelle toured Paris and Turkey with Craig Harris and the Nation of Imagination. Marcelle played the role of the Queen of Sheba in the national and international tour of Robert Wilson’s opera The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Gustave Flaubert with the amazing libretto written by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon. Marcelle with her band have set the stage on fire at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Café, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Joe’s Pub in New York City, and Freight and Salvage in California.

Marcelle is featured as a percussionist with the hypnotizing skills of her tambourine on Toshi Reagon’s Have You Heard and on Carl Hancock Rux’s Cornbread, Cognac and Collard Green Revolution as a featured vocalist. She has rendered her musical gift to the background vocals of Case, BeBe and Cece Winans Greatest Hits and Liz Wright to name a few. Marcelle released her first solo project of many to come titled “Easy to Love” in 2014 available on CD Baby. The transformative spirit, which is Marcelle, can take you away into the land of music most loving and beautiful.

Marcelle had the honor of being the mistress of ceremony and support vocalist for the Jazz Foundation of America’s Gala Performance at the historically acclaimed Apollo Theater in the spring of 2012. Marcelle was the featured vocalist for WNYC’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration “Where Do We Go From Here” at the Apollo Theater. Marcelle has worked as a musician coloring and making everyone else sound good lending background vocals with Angelique Kidjo, Bono and Macy Gray. South Africa, London, Italy, Germany, Australia, France, Portugal, New York City and the universe is better for the likes of the music from the depth and gospel jazz soul fusion of Marcelle Davies-Lashley.

Everything Carla Cook sings swings. There’s a reason for that: Cook has been influenced by the jazz vocal masters, but equally influenced by instrumentalists, like Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery and The Crusaders. The Detroit native also finds inspiration in Motown, European Classical, Gospel, R & B, pop and country.

As a result, Cook has an improvisational style that’s steeped in the swing tradition yet eclectic, and brimming with fresh interpretations.

Her remarkable voice has earned Cook a Grammy nomination for her debut album, It’s All About Love, and widespread critical acclaim for her two subsequent recordings, Dem Bones (“an intoxicating album that is as adventurous as it is accessible”) and Simply Natural (“she remains delightfully free of artifice or affectation”), which solidified her reputation as a songwriter as well as a singer.

KATIE DORN is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she earned a high school diploma and B.F.A. in Contemporary Dance. In 2006 she completed her M.F.A. from the Hollins University/American Dance Festival M.F.A. program. That same year, she received the Martha Hill Young Professional Award as an outstanding young performer. Since moving to NYC Katie has worked with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Gus Solomons Jr., Carlos Soto, and Robert Wilson & Philip Glass on the revival of the opera, “Einstein on the Beach.” She performed James Lee Byars’s “The Mile Long Paper Walk”- a solo that was re staged by Lucinda Childs for the Marron Atrium at the MoMA in NYC in August 2014. Katie has been dancing for Lucinda Childs since 2009 and has set Ms. Childs’ work on students at the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and on the Lyon Opera Ballet. She is currently creating and co-producing “Dance Journal NYC,” a podcast, with Jesse Anders, which will debut later this year.

Derrick Belcham is a Canadian filmmaker based out of Brooklyn, NY whose internationally-recognized work in documentary and music video has lead him to work with such artists as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, Paul Simon and hundreds of others in music, dance, theater and architecture. He has created works and lectured at such institutions as MoMA PS1, MoCA, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum Of American Art, Musee D’Art Contemporain, The Philip Johnson Glass House, Brooklyn Academy of Music and The Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati. His work regularly appears in publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Pitchfork, NPR and Rolling Stone as well as being screened at short, dance and experimental festivals and retrospectives around the world.
Mutiny is Breiner’s first collaboration with video and light artist Derrick Belcham since Bing & Ruth’s involvement in Belcham’s Debut at the Knockdown Center in 2014.

S. Katy Tucker is a video and projection designer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work in theater and opera has been seen around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera; the Sydney Opera House, Dutch National Opera, San Francisco Opera, LA Opera, Carnegie Hall; the New York City Ballet; the Kennedy Center; BAM, The Park Avenue Armory, LA Phil, among others. She has collaborated with composers and musicians like Paul McCartney, John Zorn, Jeffrey Ziegler, Amanda Gookin, Helga Davis and Paola Prestini. Her artwork has been seen at The Corcoran Museum, Artists’ Space, Brookfield Place, and The Kitchen.

Recent productions: Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Prince Igor at The Dutch National Opera and Metropolitan Opera, Francesca Zambello’s production of The Ring Cycle at the Kennedy Center, Ouroboros Trilogy, a fully immersive multimedia production at the Majestic with Michael Counts and Beth Morrison Projects, Tristan and Isolde and The Flying Dutchman with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Hunds Hjärta at Uppsala Stadsteater and a season of multi media collaborations with the Saint Louis Symphony and conductor David Robertson.

Upcoming projects: The Odyssey with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Flying Dutchman with the Saint Louis Symphony, The Ring Cycle at SFO, Tosca with Wolf Trap Opera and The Flying Dutchman at Atlanta Opera.

Hillary Bonhomme is originally from Lafayette, Louisiana. She attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and earned a B.A. in Music Business. During her studies, Hillary explored the wonderfully wide world of music as a voice student while taking courses in artistic entrepreneurship. These interests led Hillary to New York City as an intern at Americans for the Arts and WQXR/WNYC. Since then, she has made a home at WQXR/WNYC and Creative Capital, where she makes content for both organizations as an Assistant Producer and Communications Assistant, respectively. Hillary was a performer in Lincoln Center’s 2016 Mostly Mozart Festival as a part of the World Premiere of David Lang’s “public domain”. Hillary is thrilled to participate in Helga’s exploration with National Sawdust and is very grateful for the opportunity to share the stage with such a colorful collection of talent!

Taiwanese pianist Monica Meng-Chieh Lu is the recipient of the “National Young Performing Artist Award” from Taiwan. An active soloist, she recently performed with Mannes Sound Festival at the National Bohemian Hall in Manhattan and has appeared on stage at the Strathmore in Baltimore. Lu was one of sixteen pianists to be selected to attend the Philadelphia
Young Pianists Academy at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2015. Her U.S. solo debut in the summer of 2011 was broadcasted by Brevard Classical Radio in North Carolina. Lu started her professional career after winning first prize in the 2008 National Taiwan Chamber Music Competition with her piano trio at the age of 16. She is currently pursuing her Master of Music at Mannes School of Music, The New School with Pavlina Dokovska under The Dean’s List Scholarship. Future performances included artist-in-residence at The Hollows in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from June to August in 2017. She will be collaborating with artists from various disciplinary to curate musical experiences in interactive theatrical setting.

Vocalist and composer Tariq Al-Sabir has been described as a “boundless talent” by Baltimore’s City Hall and the Baltimore Examiner dubbed him “a rising musical mastermind”​. A performer and writer of many styles including classical, gospel, jazz, pop and musical theater, his early passion for music was supported by the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University with a full scholarship for composition lessons that started while he was in middle school and maintained through his high schooling at the Baltimore School for the Arts. In 2006, Tariq was featured as a lead vocalist on the season 4 theme song for HBO’s “The Wire”​.

Now an esteemed alumnus of Peabody, Tariq is frequently engaged as a performer and composer in the Washington, DC, Baltimore, and NYC areas. His experience ranges from jingle writing, film scoring, and music production, to premiering a role in the world premier of the Smithsonian Commissioned opera “Qadar”and premiering the role of George Stinney Sr. in Frances Pollock’s Social Justice Opera, “Stinney”. His abilities remain unrestricted while he displays expertise at each performance. Tariq was recently featured as a performer and speaker at TEDxMidatlantic, focusing on his experiences and projects with music, justice, and music education for children of color.

Tariq’s awards include the 2006 Centerstage Young Playwrights Award for his musical, “Another Man’s Treasure”​, 2008 NIYC Gospelfest Awards, 2009 BSO “Oh Say Can you Sing”​ prize, 2011 NFAA YoungArts Finalist prize in both Classical and Popular voice and he is a 2015 recipient of the George Castelle Memorial Award in Voice. He has been featured as soloist with Hilary Hahn’s Tsunami Relief Concert,  the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, D.C. Jazz Festival, Anacostia Jazz Festival, and the Kennedy Center’s Conservatory Project. He has worked with artists such as Billy Ocean, Toshi Reagon, Meshell Ndegeocello, Andy Williams, Gladys Knight, Hilary Hahn, Sandi Patti, Rance Allen, and Maurette Brown Clark.

Hillary Bonhomme is originally from Lafayette, Louisiana. She attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and earned a B.A. in Music Business. During her studies, Hillary explored the wonderfully wide world of music as a voice student while taking courses in artistic entrepreneurship. These interests led Hillary to New York City as an intern at Americans for the Arts and WQXR/WNYC. Since then, she has made a home at WQXR/WNYC and Creative Capital, where she makes content for both organizations as an Assistant Producer and Communications Assistant, respectively. Hillary was a performer in Lincoln Center’s 2016 Mostly Mozart Festival as a part of the World Premiere of David Lang’s “public domain”. Hillary is thrilled to participate in Helga’s exploration with National Sawdust and is very grateful for the opportunity to share the stage with such a colorful collection of talent!

Juecheng is a Cantonese countertenor. He has studied classical singing for over a decade in Europe. Arriving in New York one year ago, he takes on a path to showcase baroque music with contemporary elements. His voice evokes the colourful strength and sensitivity of the early music repertoire.

His operatic roles include: Handel – Orlando (Orlando, New York, 2017), Bertarido (Rodelinda, New York, 2016), Ruggiero (Alcina, New York, 2015), Rinaldo (Rinaldo, Lucca, 2015), Radamisto (Radamisto, Amsterdam, 2013), Arsamene (Serse, London, 2012), Cavalli – Apollo (Gli Amori di Apollo e diDafne, Venice, 2015)

Within his current residency at The Hollows in Williamsburg, Juecheng challenges the boundaries of style and form. ‘I want to reveal to you the Baroque music in my imagination and to share with you my own angle of the world through music. I want you to be in the experience that I encounter joy in music.’