Noah Magnus

2023 Commissioned Artist

Noah Magnus is a Brooklyn-bred composer, lyricist, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and conductor. He earned his undergraduate degree in composition from The Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College in 2021. Noah is now an award-winning composer, taking on many commissions, projects, and collaborations, from chamber opera to Jazz big band concertos to experimental solo music. He is currently attending Butler University in Indianapolis, studying with Dr. Michael Schelle. He has previously studied with Dr. Dalit Warshaw, Polina Nazaykinskaya, and Dr. Douglas Cohen.

Erika Ji

2023 Commissioned Artist

Erika is a cross-genre composer-storyteller whose work has been featured Off-Broadway and around the world at Lincoln Center, the Public Theater, and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.

Current & recent projects include Yoko's Husband's Killer's Japanese Wife, Gloria (5th Avenue Theatre Commission 2021, Civilians R&D Group 2022, NAMT Grant 2023, Orchard Project 2023, O'Neill NMTC 2023, NAMT Festival 2023), VISARE (New Voices Winner 2021, Vivace Award Nomination 2021), Starsong (Rattlestick 2021, Sound Bites 2023), [untitled hat project] (NYFA Grant 2021), and music direction for new works like Virgin's ship-wide immersive experience Scarlet Night.

As a conductor, pianist, and vocalist, Erika has performed on national TV for CBS Sunday Morning, on Broadway with Kimberly Akimbo, at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, with KHORIKOS at National Sawdust and (le) poisson rouge in New York, and for house concerts across the country.

She was a 2022 Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriter and an MFA fellow at NYU Tisch. The proud daughter of Chinese immigrants, Erika grew up in Palo Alto, studied computer science and philosophy at Stanford University, organized the Viennese Ball in San Francisco, and built products at Dropbox before deciding to follow the music.

Elle Gurevich

2023 FUTURE VOICES Commissioned Artist

Elle has been a musician for as long as she can remember, singing and staging musical numbers on playdates as a toddler, even before starting piano and dance lessons at 5. Now 14, she has composed a piano sonata, a song cycle, a fantasie for four hands, and most recently a series of three etudes dedicated to her piano teacher, Irina Nuzova, and premiered at the MAYA Foundation Music Festival in Montreaux, Switzerland.
Lost (And Found) In New York is Elle’s first foray into musical theater. It is inspired both by her love of wandering around New York City and her own search for her identity.
Elle has appeared on stage and on screen. She won accolades and rave reviews for her solo role in Marnie at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Her screen credits include a guest star appearance in HBO's High Maintenance (Season 3) and in CW's Supergirl (Season 4), a supporting role in Marvel’s Wandavision, and the lead role in Metronome (In Time), a short film that premiered in 2019 at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Elle is also an accomplished pianist and performer. Most recently, she won the Grand Prize at the Young Pianist Competition of New Jersey and has previously performed solo in Merkin Hall and Weill Hall (Carnegie Hall) in New York. Elle is a student at the Special Music High School. She studies composition with Richard Danielpour and Konstantin Sukhovetski, and piano with Irina Nuzova.

Ariana Bell

2022 Commissioned Artist

Ariana Bell, aka Ari Bellyboo, is a contemporary R&B musician that utilizes her background in classical music to bridge the gap between traditional and modern styles of music.  She is also the owner and founder of an organization called Broadway Bellyboo, a community for BIPOC and marginalized creatives to actively share their art and network with one another as they strive towards creative freedom.  Bell holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, where she studied classical piano.  With piano being her primary instrument, she is constantly experimenting with ways to incorporate her classical roots into her current artistic creations to ensure that she reaches her audience and expresses herself to the best of her ability. Bell lives in Brooklyn.

Andrew Porter

2022 Commissioned Artist

Born on July 2, 1997, Brooklyn based composer and saxophonist Andrew Porter is focused on finding new ways of storytelling and emotional expression through music and collaboration. A graduate from the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, his compositional influences stem from his own background in Jazz, the beauty and lyricism of The Great American SongBook, as well as his love for Romantic Era and Impressionist composers, and these influences often make themselves present throughout his music. His credits as composer and sound designer include Blood Wedding (2017), A Cat, A Man, A Laundromat (2018), The Moors (2020), the devised play @muse_me (2021), and most recently The Glass Menagerie at the historic Glove Theatre (2021).

Gianfranco Settecasi

Associate Artist

Gianfranco Settecasi is a NYC-based writer and performer. Born and raised in Tampa, Florida, Settecasi has seen world premieres of his acclaimed plays up and down the east coast.

Settecasi enjoyed a celebrated multiyear residency at Silver Meteor Gallery in Tampa, where he produced several original works, including Giggy, Sweet Nothings, and Future Tense, for which he was called “The Best Reason to Believe in the Next Generation of Theater Artists” by Creative Loafing Tampa, and given a Best of the Bay Award in 2012. 

Settecasi is perhaps best known for his performances as Uncle Giff, a character he introduced and developed during his time at NYU, and a much beloved role he has inhabited many times throughout his career. The most notable of these appearances was in Settecasi's first original production in New York: the world premiere of his musical farce, Uncle Giff’s Christmas Special, which played a successful limited engagement at The Gene Frankel Theatre in 2014.

Settecasi has worked more recently with New Music Theatre Project (formerly Live Source), on the world premieres of Suddenly in 2018 (called “admirable and refreshing!” by The New Yorker), and PARX in 2021. He is the book writer and co-lyricist on WAR!, the NMTP commission he is writing with Chris Dieman.

Settecasi resides in Brooklyn.

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