The M6

Sasha Bogdanowitsch is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist & composer whose work ranges from writing for chamber ensembles to multi-track tapes with live performance to music for unique ensembles, such as gamelan and early music groups, to live and recorded music for theater, dance and film. Sasha has a Master of Arts from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied composition and world musics, integrating the two into multi-movement, interdisciplinary performances. For the voice, Sasha often uses a language of sounds and has developed a way of singing that incorporates his studies in world, early & contemporary new musics. He has composed music for numerous theater, dance & films, such as On Becoming, a new vocal theater work; the TV scores of Burkittsville 7 and Shadow of the Blair Witch; Grimm, a multimedia dance theater work; and Hidden Circle, an interdisciplinary work for voice, prepared tape, movement & projections. Sasha has worked with many artists, such as SaReel Project, Sabrina Lastman, composer Lou Harrison, American Festival of Microtonal Music, Hesperus, choreographers Faith Pilger & Otis Cook, and Meredith Monk on her Grammy-nominated CD impermanence, for ECM Records.

Sidney Chen, bass, has been featured throughout the San Francisco Bay Area as a soloist with the San Francisco Concerto Orchestra, San Francisco Choral Society, Berkeley Lyric Opera Orchestra, Soli Deo Gloria and many others. He performed a set of unaccompanied vocal solos and duets by Meredith Monk at Garden of Memory 2008 at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, California. He regularly appears with Volti, the acclaimed a cappella ensemble devoted exclusively to contemporary music, performing at the Other Minds Festival in 2007. In 2006 he performed at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall as part of the Meredith Monk Young Artists Concert. He has sung with a wide variety of vocal ensembles, ranging from the San Francisco Symphony Chorus to chamber choirs such as the San Francisco Choral Artists, from vocal improvisation groups to doo-wop quartets. He has recorded vocals for the Kronos Quartet. He has appeared on NPR as the writer of The Standing Room, a popular blog about classical music. He is a graduate of Harvard University.

Emily Eagen is an active performer of early music, contemporary music, and traditional American music, as well as an avid experimenter in musical genres of all kinds. Emily studied voice at Macalester College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2001 to study at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. Emily’s solo highlights include Tehillim (Reich) with the Residentie Orkest of the Hague, Tao (Andriessen) with the Amsterdam Concertgebow, solo works with the Baroque ensemble L’Arpeggiata, and new works by living composers at festivals in the United States, the Netherlands and Bosnia. Emily currently performs with the DC-based Hesperus ensemble, singing Sephardic and Renaissance music to accompany the 1920s horror film The Golem. Emily is a soloist with the Mediterranean Medieval ensemble Sendebar, and was the 2008 recipient of the Barbara Thornton Memorial Scholarship for medieval music from Early Music America. An active teacher as well as performer, Emily is a regular faculty member at The Augusta Heritage Center (WV), The Amherst Early Music Festival (CT), and a teaching artist for Carnegie Hall. Also a two-time International Whistling Champion, Emily combines singing and whistling in the performance of new compositions, and sings, whistles, and plays the ukulele with the NYC old time/early blues band The Whistlin’ Wolves.

Holly Nadal is active as both a soloist and chamber musician, frequently performing the music of the past five centuries as well as her own adaptations of medieval chant with live electronics and looping. Recent performances include appearances with the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York and Lost Dog New Musik Ensemble. She has recorded music for film written by Dominic Frasca, and premiered new works by composers Patrick Barnes, David Nadal, and B. Allen Schulz. In 2004 she and Rebecca Stanton founded Ursula, a duo that performs new works for voice, and traditional as well as new arrangements of music before 1400. Ursula has appeared at the Monkey and the Knitting Factory in New York City, and also as a featured artist with the Astoria Music Society. Holly studied voice with Dr. Patrick Woliver and Patrick Barnes and earned her degree in English Literature with a minor in Theater from Ohio State University. She also has had a keen interest in Meredith Monk’s music for years, most recently transcribing and performing her works.

Toby Newman is a versatile artist who actively performs new music, opera and classical concert repertoire. She starred in Meredith Monk’s feature-length film Book of Days and has repeatedly performed Monk’s work as part of her Vocal Ensemble. At Monk’s invitation, she joined the Weill Music Institute’s Professional Training Workshop at Carnegie Hall in 2006. Toby works regularly with composer Robert Een, and was featured in the world premiere of his opera The Escape Artist at the REDCAT theater at Disney Hall in Los Angeles in 2008. Prior to that, she performed a national tour of /Asunder, a collaborative piece by Een and choreographer Yin Mei. Toby maintains a busy operatic and concert career, which has included featured solo appearances with Connecticut Opera, Anchorage Opera, Natchez Festival of Music, and the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra, among many others.

Peter Sciscioli is a performer and choreographer whose work encompasses contemporary dance, music (voice and violin) and theater. He has performed in such Meredith Monk productions as Songs of Ascension at BAM, Ascension Variations at the Guggenheim, Meredith Monk Music @ The Whitney, her Young Artists Concert at Zankel Hall, and in Quarry at the Spoleto USA Festival. Peter has also performed in Mary Zimmerman / Philip Glass’s Galileo Galilei at the Goodman Theater, BAM and the Barbican, and has worked with composers John Supko (with The Flux Quartet), Steve Gorn, and Tigger Benford and Joan La Barbara as a member of Jane Comfort and Company. His ongoing fascination with the voice extends into his work as a choreographer, recently creating a piece set to Monk’s Epic, accompanied live by members of The M6. Peter has also composed several original pieces for violin and voice for inclusion in his interdisciplinary works. For more information, visit www.petersciscioli.com.