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Additionally, he’s presented work at Joe’s Pub, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, JACK, Prospect Theater Company, the National Alliance of Musical Theater Conference, and 54 Below. He has also been seen performing at the Delacorte in the Public Theater’s Hercules, Twelfth Night and As You Like It . Troy recently received the Vivace Award from the Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation.

Troy’s work lives at the intersection of art, social justice and community practice. In this spirit, he currently serves as the Creative Director of Fire Ensemble Inc. as a home to develop his work and to share the joy of singing in community. The Fire Ensemble is currently in-residence at The Shed and is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Darnell-Moser Charitable Fund.

Recent works include Dreaming (Freedom Sounds) for large ensemble; Visual Rhythms, an art-inspired orchestral piece for Jacksonville Symphony; her piano concerto House of Pianos, which Bryan premiered last season with the LA Phil New Music Group (chamber ensemble version) and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (full orchestra version); and Gathering Song (libretto by Tazewell Thompson), composed for bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green and the New York Philharmonic.

Bryan’s compositions have been performed by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra (Creative Partner, 2020–2023), Jacksonville Symphony (Mary Carr Patton Composer-In-Residence, 2018–2020), London Sinfonietta, LA Phil, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and Chicago Sinfonietta in a wide range of renowned venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and Blue Note Jazz Club.

Recent accolades include the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2018), Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition (2019–2020), United States Artists Fellowship (2020), and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship (2020–2021). She is the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University.

Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Brown currently tours Chrome Valley (highlighted in Publishers Weekly and The New York Times) and is the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner. Mahogany L. Browne holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree awarded by Marymount Manhattan College in 2024, is the inaugural poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center, and lives work on her first adult fiction and fourth YA novel-in-verse in Brooklyn, NY.

Featured on Talib Kweli’s album “Gravitas” on “State of Grace,” Abby was nominated for a 2014 BET Hip Hop Award for Best Impact Song. Abby was also featured on Talib Kweli's album, "Prisoner of Conscious” on “Before He Walked". Abby has also sung backing vocals for artists ranging from Talib Kweli to John Legend.

A Black feminist passionate about using music as a tool for dignity and empathy cultivation, Abby creates music to inspire audiences to engage in action to promote transformative social change. Abby is also a member of the Resistance Revival Chorus, a women’s ensemble born out of the Women’s March in 2017. Abby’s song #SayHerName, inspired by AAPF’s campaign of the same name, is featured on The Resistance Revival’s debut album, “This Joy,” released in 2020 on Righteous Babe Records. Abby’s song #SayHerName was also featured on Ava DuVernay’s hit television series Queen Sugar on the OWN Network. Abby performs with Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, an improvisational ensemble founded by Greg Tate, and recently founded the Freedom Now Sonic Ensemble, an acapella vocal ensemble.

Abby received a Juris Doctorate degree from Georgetown University Law Center, a Master’s degree from The City University of New York-Graduate Center, and a Bachelor’s degree from Williams College. She currently serves on the Board of the National Organization for Women-NYC Chapter and as a Member of the National Organization for Women’s Political Action Committee (PAC). Abby is also a member of the North Star Fund’s Let Us Breathe Community Funding Committee, an activist-led grant making body that supports Black-led grassroots organizing. Abby’s essay “From Baldwin to Beyoncé: Exploring the Responsibility of the Artist in Society--- Re-envisioning the Black Female Sonic Artist as Citizen” appears in African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity (The Griot Project Book Series) published by Rutgers University Press. Most recently, Abby’s insights on art and social change were cited in Kimberlé Crenshaw and AAPF’s new book: #SayHerName: Black Women’s Stories of Police Violence and Public Silence published by Haymarket Books in 2023. Abby Dobson is currently working on “Love in Times of War,” an album slated for release on LadyBraveBirdMusicWorks in 2025. Abby loves her family fiercely and treasures playtime with her niece Zuri.

Nona has curated and performed the iconic celebrations of singer Betty Davis at Symphony Space. Nona is a 2023 Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation and Mellon Foundation, Duke Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and Creative Capital Grant Recipient supporting the Nonaverse and her Dream Machine Experience, a work in progress being presented at Lincoln Center June, 2024.  Nona creates, develops, and presents music-driven storytelling Ai/AR/VR immersive experiences.

Brandon is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Production Grant, the Mertz-Gilmore Foundation Grant and the New York State Council on the Arts grant. Brandon is also a member of the Circle of Advocates for RISE Theater Directory, curated and supported by the Miranda Family Foundation. Brandon holds an MFA in Dance and New Technology from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is a co-founder of Up Until Now Collective, an arts and media company that focuses on developing and producing radically inclusive interdisciplinary work. Brandon was a featured storyteller on the 100th episode of Stories From the Stage on PBS and they were named as one of Gucci's Chime for Change 22 for '22. Their work has been profiled by The New York Times, ABC World News, ABC/Disney, CNN and The PBS NewsHour’s “Brief But Spectacular” series.

In 2013, he was awarded the Emerging Producer Award by the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and the Torch Bearer Award by theatrical legend Woodie King Jr. He is a founding member of the collaborative producing organizations Harlem9, Black Theatre Commons, The Jubilee, Next Generation National Network and The Movement Theatre Company. McCrory sits on the National Advisory Committee for Howlround.com and was a member of the original cohort for ArtEquity. A Washington, DC native, McCrory attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and New York University’s TISCH School of the Arts. To learn more, please visit www.jonathanmccrory.com

Toshi co-composed music for two Peabody Award-winning films. She is a 2015 Art of Change Fellow by the Ford Foundation. A 2018 United States Artist Fellow, and an Andrew W. Melon Creative Futures Fellow Carolina Performing Arts. In 2021, Toshi received the APAP Award for Merit in the Performing Arts and was a 2021 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in Music. Toshi received an honorary doctorate from Emerson College in 2022. In 2011 she founded the Community festival Word*Rock*& Sword. Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon, co-created the opera Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, premiering in 2017 at NYUAD Arts Center. Ongoing projects include Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely on tour, LongWaterSong Marine Mammal Meditations w/ Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Octavia’s Parables Podcast, Songs of the Living, and multiple collaborations and curated events. Toshi created the production company Wise Reagon Arts in 2018 to produce the opera Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. New works include the musical You’re Having Too Much Fun So We’re Gonna Have to Kill You and EcoTones.

Simon is the current Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and frequently writes for the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera. He also holds the position of inaugural Composer Chair of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the first in the institution’s 143-year history.

The 2023-2024 season sees premiere performances with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, The Washington Chorus, and LA Master Chorale. These follow other recent and upcoming commissions from the BBC Proms, Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera (in collaboration with Mo Willems), New York Philharmonic and Bravo! Vail, and Sphinx Organization.

Simon's work spans genres, taking great inspiration from liturgical texts and writers such as Terrance Hayes, Colson Whitehead, Lynn Nottage, Emma Lazarus, Isabel Wilkerson, Ruby Aiyo Gerber, and Courtney Lett, as well as the art of Romare Bearden.

“If Simon has inherited anything from his lineage, it appears to be a desire to build bridges between worlds, and use music to illuminate them.” – The Washington Post

Tipton is a highly sought-after guest conductor, having collaborated with numerous major orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana (Palermo), Dohnanyi Symphony Orchestra (Budapest), Atlanta Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Memphis Symphony, and the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra. One of his notable performances was in the summer of 2011, where he accompanied Sting on tour across fourteen European countries, performing with nineteen different orchestras. He reunited with Sting in November 2021 for a special show with his hometown orchestra, the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra.

In the current season, Tipton is found guest conducting the Austin Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Greater Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra, Lake Charles Symphony, Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, and New Haven Symphony Orchestra when not performing at the Julie Rogers Theater in Beaumont.

His body of work includes: choral/orchestral works premiered by major American orchestras; music for television; the bestselling African American Heritage Hymnal (over 500,000 copies sold worldwide); songwriting credits on two Grammy-nominated projects; arts and educational festivals produced in partnership with èßäAVand Philadelphia’s Mann Center; cultural programming developed with the Smithsonian, U.S. State Department and multiple embassies; video/documentary projects, including the star-studded viral video “I Have A Right To Vote” (over two million global media hits) and “Becoming Douglass Commonwealth” (winner of ten media prizes); and a slate of theatrical productions, including his critically-hailed new musical, GRACE (winner of eleven 2022 Broadway World Washington, DC awards, including best musical and best new musical).

A resident of Washington, DC, Williams, Jr. was named the Kennedy Center’s inaugural Social Practice Resident in 2019. He further serves as Chair of the Center's Community Advisory Board.

Williams, Jr. is a recipient of a 2024 Living Legends Award for Service to Humanity and, in February of this year, he was recognized by his alma mater Oberlin College as one of 21 trailblazing Black alumni. nolanwilliamsjr.com

She is a proud member of Wingspace Theatrical Design and United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829. Core collaborator in All My Relations Collective. She is currently serving as the Director of MFA emphasis Integrated Media in the Department of Theatre and Dance at University of Texas at Austin.

Delighted to have worked with playwrights, nicHi douglass, Marjuan Canady, Jason Michael Webb, Lelund Durond Tompson, Kambi Gathesha, Mfoniso Udofia, Lee Edward Colton II, Liza Jessie Peterson and Aurin Squire to name a few. New Plays with Producing Teams  like Harlem 9, The New Black Fest, Now Africa, and Springboard @ Lincoln Center  Stage Manager for Festivals; NYMF, NAMT Festivals, Going Down To The River Festival.