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Neil Aronoff (baritone):  Neil Aronoff, a native of Montreal, spent his early years enjoying purely instrumental music as a cellist and euphonium player.  He received a degree in Psychology from Yale University, where he found his voice amidst the Glee Clubs and Russian Chorus, and continued singing for pleasure back in Montreal as he completed his Masters in Psychology at the Université de Montréal.  His growing passion for singing lead him to a career change and the pursuit of a Masters in Vocal Performance at McGill University’s School of Music.  Local companies such as the Canadian Opera Company, Opera York, Opera in Concert, and Toronto Operetta Theatre, and Aradia Ensemble, have engaged Neil.  A versatile performer with a rich, mature voice, he maintains a busy schedule in opera, oratorio, early music, art song, and contemporary music.  He received praise for his fine acting and comedic skills in the role of Leporello from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which he performed under the batons of Boris Brott, Agnes Grossmann, and Alexis Hauser, and returns to the Toronto Summer Music Festival to perform in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos (Harlekin/Ein Musiklehrer).  He recently collaborated with the Toronto Continuo Collective for performances of Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi (Testo), and a sang in a critically-acclaimed showcase of contemporary music by composer Njo Kong Kie at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.

Liza Balkan (director): Liza Balkan (director): Liza  has just returned  from assistant directing Trojan Women and All's Well That Ends Well  at the Stratford Festival.  She is a  Dora Award  winning  actor, director, writer, dancer ,singer and teacher.   She is a member of the Tapestry New Works studio and has directed Opera Briefs 06/07 for the company.  Liza received a Dora Award for her performance in Tapestry New Opera’s Still The Night.  The Cross Canada Tour of the show also garnered  her nominations for Calgary’s Betty Mitchell Award.  Her other directing credits include: Half an Hour/Directors’ Project - Shaw Festival; Skylight and Trying/Persephone Theatre;  The premiere of Jason Sherman’s adaptation of Gorky’s Enemies and The Good Woman of Setzuan/Ryerson Theatre School; The Pajama Game/Bathurst Street Theatre;  Pavlov's Brother/Toronto Fringe and most recently, Bunnicula for Theatre Athena.  She has worked as Assistant Director on productions at NAC, Soulpepper and Shaw Festival. Recent acting  credits include: The Stronger Variations/ Harbourfront/Theatre Rusticle; Golda's Balcony/Winnipeg Jewish Theatre; It's All True/Great Canadian Theatre Company; A Winter's Tale/National Arts Centre; Sylvia/Belfry Theatre. She is  also a resident at the Theatre Centre,  developing her own project Out the Window.

Neema Bickersteth, originally from Edmonton Alberta, started singing at a very young age while participating in the local music festivals and singing at church. As her love for singing grew, she began an opera degree at the University of British Columbia, where she received both a Bachelor and Master of Music. During Neema's degrees, she had the opportunity to perform many operatic roles in both Canada and Europe. Some of these roles include Pamina from Die Zauberflöte by Mozart, Lauretta from Gianni Schicchi by Puccini, and the title role of The Merry Widow by Léhar. Although classical voice is where Neema is most comfortable, she enjoys singing in different genres and collaborating with various artists. This facility has allowed her many opportunities including the great honour of performing for the XIVth Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi, and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Through urbanvessel and The Theatre Centre, Neema performed in the innovative art piece, Stitch, music by Juliet Palmer and text by Anna Chatterton. She has also performed in Elijah's Kite a short opera for children by James Rolfe and Camyar Chai presented by Tapestry New Opera and PREVNet throughout Ontario.

Leanna Brodie (librettist): Leanna Brodie is an actor, writer, and translator whose plays include For Home and Country, The Vic, and Schoolhouse (all published by Talonbooks Ltd.), as well as the CBC radio dramas Invisible City and Seeds of Our Destruction. She was the first Canadian invited to the ACT/Hedgebrook Women Playwrights’ Festival in Seattle; has twice been Playwright-in-Residence at the 4th Line Theatre; and has translated Philippe Soldevila’s Conte de la lune. Currently, Leanna is translating Larry Tremblay’s Panda Panda for LKTYP; writing libretti for works by composers Craig Galbraith, David Ogborn, and Anthony Young; and – as Playwright-in-Residence at the Blyth Festival – working on a new play about rural youth.

Dave Carley (librettist): Dave Carley’s plays have had over three hundred productions across Canada, the US and a dozen countries around the world. They include The Edible Woman, Midnight Madness, and Writing With Our Feet. This past year, Ottawa’s Great Canadian Theatre Company had a hit with Dave’s alarmingly prescient new play, The Last Liberal. CBC TV has just aired Dave’s homage to Al Purdy, Yours, Al (written with Bill Spahic) starring Gordon Pinsent. Later this summer Dave goes to the Shaw Festival, where he will be playwright-in-residence and complete a new drama about Danish playwright and martyr Kaj Munk.  Dave’s website is www.davecarley.com.

Lisa Codrington (librettist): Lisa Codrington is an actor and writer based in Toronto. Currently she is Co-director of Youth Initiatives at Nightwood Theatre, Associate Artist at Theatre Direct Canada and a Playwright in Residence at The Canadian Stage Company. Nightwood Theatre in association with Obsidian Theatre Company produced the world premiere of her play Cast Iron which went on to play at Frank Collymore Hall in Barbados, WI.  Alison Sealy Smith was nominated for a Dora Award for her performance and the play was nominated for a Governor General’s Award for Drama.  Lisa has also written for radio and young audiences. Her short radio drama Skylar aired on CBC Radio and her monologue Vegas, which was commissioned for Theatre Direct Canada’s production The Demonstration was recently published in Acting Out.  Currently Lisa’s collaborating on The Colony for Tapestry's Opera To Go and working on a new play called Refined.

Krista Dalby (librettist): Krista Dalby is a librettist, award-winning playwright, and Assistant Artistic Director of Toronto’s Clay & Paper Theatre. Recent highlights include two short operas that were presented at Tapestry New Opera Works’ Opera Briefs, and her play Almost that won best script at the world’s largest short play festival in Sydney, Australia. Krista’s script The Other Woman won first place in the Toronto Fringe’s 24-hour playwriting contest, and her cycle of short plays about terrorism, Love in The Time of Terror, won 3rd place in the Toronto Fringe’s New Play Contest. She co-wrote and produced Clay & Paper Theatre’s We Need Help!, a play about the end of oil, which premiered in July 2007.

Keith Klassen (tenor): Canadian tenor Keith Klassen is an honours graduate of the Opera Division at the University of Toronto. Since graduating he has been engaged across Canada, as well as in Scotland, Germany, the United States, and the Czech Republic. The Star Phoenix described him as having, "...a big ringing voice and great stage presence", Classical 96.3 called him, "...an intense performer, a superb singer/actor." and Opera Canada raved that his Rodolfo was "...dramatically convincing, sung with passionate sincerity ensuring the audience's love." NOW magazine went so far as to rate Keith as one of Toronto's top ten theatre artists of '06, the only singer to make the list. In the past season alone, critics and audiences alike have enthusiastically received Keith's performances of Rodolfo (La Boheme), Samson (Samson et Dalilah), Uriel (Haydn's Creation), Tamino (Magic Flute), Robert (Hin und Zuruck) and Bunthorne (Patience). He has also been busy breaking ground in new opera, singing the roles of Adam (Gotcha!), Jimmy (Knotty Together), Isaac (Tyendinaga), Marcus (Shattered Glass), The Scholar (Airline Icarus) and the tenor leads in Tapestry New Opera's 'Opera To Go', 'Opera Lib Lab' and 'Opera Briefs'. Highlights of previous seasons have included the roles of Don Jose (Carmen), Des Grieux (Manon), Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos), Albert (Albert Herring), Jenik (Prodana Nevesta), Laurie (Little Women), Rafael Ruiz (El Gato Montes), Rinnuccio (Gianni Schicchi), Ruggero (La Rondine) and Ivan Lykov (The Tsar's Bride). Upcoming engagements include the roles of Alfredo in Maritime Concert Opera's La Traviata and Spoletta in Opera Ontario's Tosca.

Jessica Lloyd (mezzo): Mezzo soprano Jessica Lloyd hails from the town of Simcoe in southwestern Ontario. With a Bachelor of Music from the University of Toronto, a Master of Music from Rice University in Houston, TX and post-graduate study at the University of Texas at Austin, Ms. Lloyd has extensive experience on the opera and concert stage. From Elgar's Sea Pictures, to the role of Magda Sorel in Menotti's The Consul, to recitals dedicated to the music of Spain and Latin America, Jessica has been afforded opportunities to work with such ensembles as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Nathaniel Dett Chorale, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, The Orpheus Choir of Toronto, the Rice University Symphony Orchestra and the North York Symphony Orchestra. She has been fortunate to work under the baton of Bramwell Tovey, Wayne Strongman, Stephen Ralls, Noel Edison, and Brainerd Blyden-Taylor, among others. Currently Jessica lives in Toronto where she performs regularly and is a member of the studio company of Tapestry New Opera Works. With Tapestry she has had the opportunity to premier many new works of Canadian composers and writers and is involved in a tour of a children's opera called Elijah's Kite by James Rolfe that deals with the issue of bullying. Other projects with Tapestry include the role of "Jessica" in a full length, multi-media opera currently under development entitled Netsuke composed by Rose Bolton with libretto by Jill Battson.  Exploring all facets of her voice, Jessica also does studio work for film. In November of 2005 a collaboration with Kaeja d’Dance and composer Edgardo Moreno entitled Asylum of Spoons was the feature presentation on opening night of Toronto’s Moving Pictures Film Festival. In 1999, along with soprano Measha Brüggergosman, composer John Weinzweig and director Matthew Hornburg, Jessica was featured in a classical music video that continues to air on the Canadian television networks of Bravo! and wtn. In her non-classical pursuits, Jessica was formerly the female singer with the Billy Ledbetter Orchestra, a big band from Houston, TX. She was also a founding member of a pop, R&B, motown, country, bluegrass and folk music a cappella trio, wayward sister, featured on a CD compilation, “Winter By the Lake” produced by Joe Wolf (Earth, Wind and Fire; Lionel Richie). In Toronto, Jessica performs frequently with Louis Simão and FAIA, a band with its roots in Lusophone music.

David Ogborn (composer, guitar/electronics performer): Freely traversing borders and genres, David Ogborn is a composer, guitarist and performer of electronic sound and video.  At the centre of his work is the combination of traditional performance arts with electronic elements — whether these be recordings of diverse outdoor environments around the world, improvisations on a laptop or altered guitar, video projections influenced by live musical gestures, or massive synthesized sounds on immersive arrays of loudspeakers.  His sound installation Dream House was featured at the Canadian Music Centre's Chalmers House during Toronto's inaugural Nuit Blanche and his live electronic music for Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis was a special event at the Esprit Orchestra's 2007 New Wave festival.  In November 2007 the Transatlantic Transient tour saw Ogborn perform on guitar and electronics in Amsterdam, Belfast, Berlin, and several Canadian cities.  He is an Associate of the Canadian Music Centre, a founding member of the angelusnovus.net group, and serves on the board of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) .  David's website is davidogborn.net.