Guest Speakers
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Tod Machover
Tod (b. 1953 in New York) has been called "America's most wired composer" by the Los Angeles Times. He is widely recognized as one of the most significant and innovative composers of his generation, and is also celebrated for inventing new technology for music, including Hyperinstruments which he launched in 1986. Machover studied with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at The Juilliard School and was the first Director of Musical Research at Pierre Boulez's IRCAM in Paris. He has been Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, USA) since it was founded in 1985, and is Director of the Lab's Hyperinstruments and Opera of the Future Groups. Since 2006, Machover has also been Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
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Simone Ovsey
Class Producer
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Sherrie Johnson
Artistic Director, Outside The Box
Sherrie Johnson has developed an international reputation as an innovative and accomplished curator, artistic director and producer of critically acclaimed and award-winning, theatre, dance, film and performing arts festivals. Sherrie comes to Outside The Box, after six years with the renowned PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, in Vancouver, Canada. She was Senior Curator at PuSh for the last four years. She has more than 20 years of experience presenting, commissioning, producing, co-producing, and touring live performance, including working as a producer for Thomas + Guinevere’s “The Encampment,” a public art installation that had its premiere in June 2012 at Luminato's Festival of Arts + Creativity. Sherrie previously was the Pitch Producer for the Under the Radar Symposium as part of New York’s Under the Radar showcase and was Pitch Curator of Caravan, New English Performance that is presented as part of the Brighton Festival in England. Sherrie was the Touring Liaison and Curator of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Canada in 2006 and 2007. She was the Producer of Canadian content for the International Network for Contemporary Arts (IETM) in 2007, a membership organization headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. She was the Canadian Producer of Celebrate Scotland; the Co-Founder, Producer, Co-Artistic Director of the Six Stages Festival in Toronto, Canada; and a Production Assistant for the du Maurier Arts World Stage Festival. She received a bachelor of science degree in criminology and theatre and a master of science degree in communications from Indiana State University and studied at the University of Toronto’s Rotman Executive Program. Sherrie was a recipient of the John Hobday Award for outstanding achievement in the field of arts management from the Canada Council for the Arts in the first year the award was given. A Chicago native, Sherrie and her family reside in downtown Boston. -
Garth Ross
Vice President, Community Engagement, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The Kennedy Center’s "Performing Arts for Everyone" initiative is designed to expand access to the performing arts for Washington residents and visitors to the nation's capital. The centerpiece of the initiative is the Millennium Stage, which provides a performance open to the public and free of charge 365 days a year. Since the inception of the Millennium Stage in 1997, Garth has produced over five thousand performances, featured artists from all fifty U.S. states and over fifty countries, and developed the program from obscurity into a model of arts accessibility that has served over three million patrons at the center and many more online via nightly webcasts. In his current position, he produces audience development and engagement programming including the Millennium Stage series, the annual Prelude and Open House festivals, as well as other one-time festivals such as 2008’s Arts Across America, 2010’s Joyful Sounds: Gospel Across America, andWhat’s Going On Now and Look Both Ways: Street Arts Across America in 2012. Garth is an acclaimed musician and has performed professionally with the Washington National Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, with award winning vocal groups including the Vineyard Sound and Metronomes, as well as on his own as a singer-songwriter. He has served as a board member of the Washington Area Music Association and the North American Folk Music & Dance Alliance, and currently serves on the board of Destination DC and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Arts Committee. Garth received his undergraduate degree cum laude in English Literature and Music from Connecticut College, where he was also a Sykes Scholar. Garth is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. -
Sep Kamvar
Sep Kamvar is the LG Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, and the Director of the Social Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on social computing and information management.
Prior to MIT, Sep was the head of personalization at Google and a consulting professor of Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University. Prior to that, he was founder and CEO of Kaltix, a personalized search company that was acquired by Google in 2003.
Sep is the author of two books and over 40 technical publications and patents in the fields of search and social computing. He is on the technical advisory boards of several companies, including Clever Sense and Etsy. His artwork has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Musem in London, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens.
Sep received his Ph.D. in Scientific Computing and Computational Mathematics from Stanford University and his A.B. in Chemistry from Princeton University. -
Joseph V. Melillo
SJoseph V. Melillo, executive producer since 1999, is responsible for the artistic direction of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). During his tenure, BAM has enjoyed increases in both programming and audience attendance in its BAM Harvey Theater, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, and BAMcafé. Prior to his current position, Melillo served as BAM's producing director, following a six-year tenure as founding director of the Next Wave Festival.
Over the years, Melillo has fostered the work of emerging and established artists and forged dynamic artistic partnerships. He has furthered the global reach of BAM's mission through projects like The Bridge Project—a three-year series of international theater engagements featuring a trans-Atlantic company of actors directed by Sam Mendes and produced by BAM, The Old Vic, and Neal Street—and most recently DanceMotion USA (sm), a cultural diplomacy program in partnership with the US Department of State that shares the rich dance culture of the United States with international audiences through performance and cultural exchange. BAM recently expanded its campus with the addition of the BAM Fisher, featuring an intimate and flexible new performance space, and adding a third stage for BAM's world-renowned Next Wave Festival.
Joseph Melillo was named a Chevalier (1999) and an Officier (2004) de L'ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. Also in 2004, he was awarded an honorary OBE for his outstanding commitment to British performing arts in America. In 2007, Melillo was appointed Knight of the Royal Order of the Polar Star, in recognition of his role in solidifying ties between the performing arts communities of Sweden and the United States, and in 2012 he was named cultural ambassador for Taiwan in recognition of his efforts to bring the arts of Taiwan to the US.
Melillo has served on the faculty of the Brooklyn College Graduate Program in Arts Management and on the boards of directors for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and En Garde Arts. He was a panelist for the National Endowment of the Arts Dance Program and the New York State Council on the Arts, and served as Multidisciplinary Panel Chair of the Pew Fellowships in the Arts' 2003 and 2007 Awards. Melillo is a lecturer at colleges and universities nationally and internationally. He currently serves as a member of the International Arts Advisory Committee for the Wexner Prize (Wexner Center for the Arts). Melillo earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and theater at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut and a Masters of Fine Arts in speech and drama at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He is currently celebrating his 27th year at BAM. -
Diane Paulus
Diane Paulus is the Artistic Director at the A.R.T. At the A.R.T. her recent work includes The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, a new production adapted by Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and OBIE-winning composer Diedre Murray, Prometheus Bound, a new musical inspired by Aeschylus's ancient Greek tragedy, written by Tony and Grammy Award-winner Steven Sater (Spring Awakening) with music composed by Grammy Award-winning System of a Down lead singer Serj Tankian; Death and The Powers: The Robots’ Opera a new opera by Tod Machover, in collaboration with MIT Media Lab and Chicago Opera Theater; The Donkey Show a disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which ran for six years Off-Broadway and toured internationally; Best of Both Worlds, and Johnny Baseball. Her other recent theater credits include The Public Theater's Tony-Award winning revival of HAIR on Broadway, and London’s West End. Other recent work includes Kiss Me, Kate (Glimmerglass Opera) and Lost Highway (ENO co-production with the Young Vic.) As an opera director, her credits include The Magic Flute (Canadian Opera Company), Il mondo della luna at the Hayden Planetarium in New York; Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, Turn Of The Screw, Cosi fan tutte, and the Monteverdi trilogy Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Orfeo at the Chicago Opera Theater. Diane is a Professor of the Practice of Theater in Harvard University’s English Department and was recently named one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Boston by Boston Magazine and is a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from Boston Conservatory.
