Staff
Alyssa Kayser-HirshExecutive Director
Executive Director
Alyssa Kayser-HirshExecutive Director
Executive Director
Alyssa Kayser-Hirsh is an arts administrator and musician based in New York City. She has experience in artistic organizations of all sizes, with a particular focus in project management, content development, and youth programming. In addition to her work with Luna Composition Lab, she currently works in Digital Content & Engagement at Carnegie Hall. She has previously worked as a writer and educator, covering contemporary classical music for I CARE IF YOU LISTEN and teaching private voice lessons. Alyssa performs with Amor Artis. Originally from Amherst, MA, Alyssa is a graduate of Wellesley College, where she received degrees in Music and American Studies. In 2024 she completed her Master’s Degree in American Queer Women’s History at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Missy MazzoliArtistic Director
Artistic Director
Missy MazzoliArtistic Director
Artistic Director
Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times) and “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out NY), Missy Mazzoli has had her music performed by the Kronos Quartet, LA Opera, eighth blackbird, the BBC Symphony, Scottish Opera and many others. In 2018 she became one of the first two women, along with Jeanine Tesori, to receive a main stage commission from the Metropolitan Opera, and was nominated for a Grammy award. She is Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and from 2012-2015 was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia. Upcoming commissions include works for Opera Philadelphia, Chicago Lyric Opera and the Norwegian National Opera. Missy teaches at the Mannes School of Music and her works are published by G. Schirmer.
Ellen ReidArtistic Director
Artistic Director
Ellen ReidArtistic Director
Artistic Director
Ellen Reid is one of the most innovative artists of her generation. A composer and sound artist whose breadth of work spans opera, sound design, film scoring, ensemble and choral writing, she was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her opera, p r i s m. Reid is the first composer to have been commissioned by all of Los Angeles’s four major classical music institutions: Los Angeles Opera at REDCAT, Los Angeles Philharmonic, L.A. Master Chorale and L.A. Chamber Orchestra. Ellen received her BFA from Columbia University and her MA from California Institute of the Arts.
Nicki SekharProgram Manager
Program Manager
Nicki SekharProgram Manager
Program Manager
Nicki Sekhar is a Brooklyn-based composer, arranger, and vocalist, who has worked with ensembles such as Hypercube, The Rhythm Method, and Dither. Growing up, Nicki sang in Uniting Voices Chicago and in 2020, with UVC’s nomination, they were named to the Rising Star Honor Roll for Music by the City of Chicago. In 2020, they wrote, recorded, and produced their first solo album, Cerebrum, which combines electronic and pop styles with contemporary classical techniques. Nicki’s sophomore album, The Juniper Suite was recorded in 2024 and premiered live at The Garage, supported by an award from The Presser Foundation. In addition to Luna Composition Lab, Nicki currently works with Brooklyn Youth Chorus and New Amsterdam Records. They hold a degree in Music from New York University.
Janet CowperthwaiteStrategic Initiatives Consultant
Strategic Initiatives Consultant
Janet CowperthwaiteStrategic Initiatives Consultant
Strategic Initiatives Consultant
San Francisco-based Janet Cowperthwaite was the manager of the Kronos
Quartet and the founding Executive Director of the non-profit Kronos
Performing Arts Association. For 43 years she played a key role in the
success of the Grammy-winning group and its organization. Her
responsibilities included touring, artistic planning, an annual festival,
fundraising, marketing, and more. She oversaw the commissioning of 1,100
new works and the production of 75+ acclaimed recordings. Cowperthwaite
was instrumental in creating many innovative programs including “Kronos
Fifty for the Future,” a free library of 50 new commissioned works. She has
served on various boards of directors and is the recipient of several
awards.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Lee BynumSecretary
Secretary
Lee BynumSecretary
Secretary
Lee Bynum (they/them) has been advocating internationally for more equitable and accessible practices and greater technological adaptation in the arts for more than twenty years. Bynum has held roles at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Minnesota Opera, Columbia University, Indiana University, and Saint Francis University in Hong Kong. Bynum received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Columbia University, and their research on race and culture has been published by the university presses of Oxford, Harvard, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and NYU. A composer and librettist, Bynum’s work has been performed in the US and Asia, and their forthcoming collaboration with Nkeiru Okoye will have a European premiere with Opera North in 2026.
Denise Lynn Merkle
Denise Lynn Merkle
Denise Lynn Merkle, PhD FACS is a Biochemist and Inventor whose scientific life is enhanced by volunteerism in non-profit organizations. Merkle is a founding member, Secretary and Treasurer of the Fort Worth Life Sciences Coalition (FWLSC), an active Executive Committee member of the Dallas-Fort Worth Local Section of the American Chemical Society (ACSDFW), and until 2024 served on the Board of the Fairmount Community Garden, Fort Worth TX. Having supported arts organizations by attendance, volunteer activities, and other contributions, Merkle is thrilled to join the Board of Luna Composition Lab and eagerly looks forward to
Luna Lab’s stellar future.
Katharine Reece
Katharine Reece
Katharine Reece holds more than 10 years of experience in fundraising and storytelling for social justice-oriented nonprofits. Katharine currently serves as Director of Development for Impact on Education, a foundation that supports students and educators in the Boulder Valley School District. Most recently, Katharine served as a fundraising consultant for a firm in New York City, working with various nonprofits to secure transformative grants, build major gifts programs, develop corporate partnerships, and tell compelling stories about their impact and work. She also worked as a journalist for nearly a decade and taught writing at various community colleges. Katharine holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA in English from Wellesley College. She relocated to Colorado from New York in 2018, where she serves on the board of Motus Theater.
James (Jim) R. RosenfieldIn Memoriam
In Memoriam
James (Jim) R. RosenfieldIn Memoriam
In Memoriam
In Memoriam
Jim was a new music advocate. For many years he was President of the MATA Board. MATA commissions and performs works by emerging composers from all over the world. In addition to Luna Composition Lab, Jim served on the board of Contemporaneous, a new music chamber orchestra. Jim commissioned a number of new music works, mostly by female, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming composers.
Nancy SandersPresident & Treasurer
President & Treasurer
Nancy SandersPresident & Treasurer
President & Treasurer
Nancy S. Sanders is the Chair of the Board of Beth Morrison Projects, as well as Chair of the Board of Luna Composition Lab. Additionally, she and her husband, LA Opera board member Barry Sanders, Co- Chair LA Opera’s Contemporary Opera Initiative. Nancy served on the board of The Los Angeles Philharmonic where she was a member of the Executive Committee and Chair of the Learning and Outreach Committee. She also served on the Philharmonic’s Governance, Philanthropy, and Marketing Committees. Nancy is a past President of the Art Museum Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and of the Los Angeles Planned Parenthood Guild. Additionally, she has served on the boards of Communities in Schools, LA’s Best, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, the Curtis School, the Children’s Bureau of Los Angeles, the UCLA Art Council, the NPR Foundation, and the Joffrey Ballet. Nancy and her husband reside in Los Angeles.
Kristine (Kris) Vikmanis
Kristine (Kris) Vikmanis
Serious music is in Kris’ DNA. Her Latvian parents brought their national choral traditions to Canada. Kris stepped away from music studies in her mid-twenties for a career in Finance. Since retiring, Kris has returned to her true passion, supporting young musicians and composers. Active with several charitable boards including the Canadian Opera Company, she supports music organizations in both Canada and the United States that program contemporary repertoire. A particular focus has been the commissioning of new works, from short chamber pieces to fully staged operas. Kris created Learn English Through Song (L.E.T.S.) in 2015 for Syrian refugee women moving to Canada.
Creative COUNCIL
Jules Gimbrone
Jules Gimbrone
Jules Gimbrone is a sonic/visual artist and composer who invests in the ways that an unstable subjectivity engages with social and internalized, cognitive technologies. The work synthesizes physical and sonic material, sensory perception, the physical body, electronics, and objects. As both a visual and sonic artist, Gimbrone works in a third space to produce synesthetic, hybrid content. They developed a rubric that they call Trans-Sensing. Trans-Sensing Modalities are methods that trans people—specifically those who identify as transgender, but also people whose subjectivity is unmoored or unrecognizable to the dominant culture—intuitively cultivate to navigate the world.
Gimbrone’s work has appeared at museums (Walker Art Center, MOMA PS1, The Rubin Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park), galleries (Bortolami, Klaus von Nichtssagend, Park View Gallery, Vox Populi), interdisciplinary spaces (Pioneer Works, Judson Church, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), and music venues (REDCAT, ISSUE Project Room, Spectrum).
Morgan-Paige Melbourne
Morgan-Paige Melbourne
Morgan-Paige Melbourne (she/they) is a Tkarón:to (Toronto, Canada)-based interdisciplinary artist. Many of her works included award-winning short film collaborations Bin Chicken with Toronto Dance Theatre, The Magic Wallet, Mission Sankofa, and “Where Do I Go?” with Tapestry Opera. Some of her commissioned work was shared at Suoni Per Il Popolo, sound art installation “My Ancestor Summons Me” at MOCA Toronto, Debaser Pique, the 21C Music Festival with the world premiere of her improvisational work “A Time to Exist” in Koerner Hall, a Wavelength Summer Thing opening for headliner horrorcore rapper Backxwash and featured on most recent album “His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering”, co-composer with Benjamin Shapiro for Dora Award-winning Sex Dalmatian with Rock Bottom Movement, and an upcoming immersive animated VR and mixed media musical experience with re:Naissance Opera.
Alexander Peña
Alexander Peña
Mexican-American violist/conductor, Alexander Peña (he/him), is a member of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra and serves as Director of Orchestras at ‘Iolani School. Additionally, he is a regular performer/clinician with the Hawaii Chamber Music Festival, University of Hawaii at Mānoa Music Department, Pacific Music Institute / Hawaii Youth Symphony, and Lakes Area Music Festival Orchestra. Peña earned an Arts Leadership Certificate, Robert Oppelt Viola Prize, Bachelor and Master of Music from the Eastman School of Music. Peña also received an Executive Graduate Certificate and the Global Humanitarian Entrepreneur Prize from the Hildegard Behrens Foundation as part of the Global Leaders Music Program.
Ashley Shabankareh
Ashley Shabankareh
Ashley Shabankareh (she/they) is a musician, arts administrator, and music educator, and she serves as the Director of Operations and Programs for Trombone Shorty Foundation. Ashley has worked with numerous arts organizations in their career, including Preservation Hall Foundation, Artist Corps New Orleans, New Orleans Jazz Museum, New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, and Upbeat Academy. Ashley is a trombonist and vocalist and has performed with notable musicians including Aretha Franklin, Allen Toussaint, Jimmy Buffett, and Theresa Andersson, and in her own projects, Marina Orchestra, The Asylum Chorus, and Bra’s Band Brass Band.
Darian Donovan Thomas
Darian Donovan Thomas
Darian Donovan Thomas (he/him) is a Brooklyn based composer, multi-instrumentalist, and interdisciplinary artist. He is interested in combining genres into a singular vocabulary that can express ideas about intersectionality (of medium and identity). Necessarily, his work aims to redact all barriers to entry that have existed at the gates of any genre – this vocabulary of multiplicity will be intersectional, and therefore all-inclusive. He has received a Bachelors in Music Composition from The University of the Incarnate Word, and was a 2018 New Amsterdam Composer Lab Fellow, 2018 SoSI Composer Fellow, and 2019 Bang On A Can Composition Fellow. He is currently an Artistic Associate for New Amsterdam Records, and touring with Moses Sumney, Balùn, and Arooj Aftab.
Creative COUNCIL 2021–2023
Yaz Lancaster
Yaz Lancaster
Yaz Lancaster is a transdisciplinary artist residing in Harlem. Their work as a performer, composer, poet/writer, and organizer is grounded in queer, DIY, and liberatory frameworks. It utilizes fragmentation and collage; relational aesthetics; improvisatory forms; and experimental electroacoustic composition. Recent projects include collaborations with Andrew Noseworthy, Asia Stewart, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Eliza Bagg, gg200bpm, International Contemporary Ensemble, Miss Grit, and Sean Pecknold. Yaz works as the co-manager of people places records, a director of abolitionist music collective Sound Off, and a freelance (music) writer. They love powerlifting, horror, and summers down South. More at yaz-lancaster.com.
Vasu Panicker
Vasu Panicker
Vasu Panicker (he/him) is a musician and turnaround strategist whose worked has impacted the private, public, and non-profit sectors. A native of New York City, he was a beneficiary of training from LaGuardia Arts H.S. As a former contemporary youth music educator, Vasu championed the study of experimental music for thousands of students. More recently, he has executed large-scale financial transformations in government and life sciences as a management consultant, while composing original music for live dance. Vasu lives in Austin, TX with his wife and holds degrees from City University of New York and UC-Berkeley.
Alex Temple
Alex Temple
A sound can evoke a time, a place, or a way of looking at the world. Alex Temple writes music that distorts and combines iconic sounds to create new meanings, often in service of surreal, cryptic or fantastical narratives. In addition to performing her own works for voice and electronics, she has collaborated with performers and ensembles such as Mellissa Hughes, Julia Holter, wild Up, Spektral Quartet and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In 2017 she completed a DMA at Northwestern University, and she is now an Assistant Professor of Composition at Arizona State University.
Shelley Washington
Shelley Washington
Composer Shelley Washington (1991) has emerged as an important and powerful voice of her generation. Her music has been presented by leading ensembles including the Long Beach Opera company, Boston Lyric Opera company, the Kansas City Symphony, and in NPR’s Dolly Parton’s America podcast and Vox Media’s Explained on Netflix. Washington is an active performer and collaborator, co-founding the composer collective Kinds of Kings and performing in the Los Angeles based ensemble, Wild Up and in her Brooklyn-based band, Good Looking Friends. She is on faculty at New York University Steinhardt and completing her PhD at Princeton University. She lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Rodeo.
Andrew Yee
Andrew Yee
GRAMMY Award winning cellist Andrew Yee has been praised by Michael Kennedy of the London Telegraph as “spellbindingly virtuosic”. Trained at the Juilliard School, they are a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet who have released several albums to Critical acclaim including Andrew’s arrangement of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words” which Thewholenote.com praised as “ . . .easily the most satisfying string version of the work that I’ve heard.” They were the quartet-in-residence at the Met Museum in 2014, and have won the Osaka and Coleman international string quartet competitions. Their newest recording of the string quartets of Caroline Shaw won a GRAMMY for best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble performance.As a soloist last season Andrew performed John Taverner’s The Protecting Veil and Strauss Don Quixote. In 2019 they won the first prize at Oklahoma University’s National Arts Incubation Lab for their pitch of a wearable garment that translates sound into vibrations for the hard of hearing. They like to make stop-motion videos of food, draw apples, cook like an Italian Grandma and have developed coffee and cocktail programs for award-winning restaurants (Lilia, Risbobk, Atla) in New York City.
Their solo project “Halfie” draws on their experience as a bi-racial and non-binary person in having access to multiple communities at once, while not feeling at home in any of them. The works commissioned and on the concerts will feature a wide range of composers all for solo cello.
They play on an 1884 Eugenio Degani cello on loan from the Five Partners Foundation.