Lacy Rose
Lacy Rose is a classically trained vocalist, composer and lyric poet based in New York. She has performed with such eclectic artists as Cocorosie, Baby Dee, Dave Malloy, and Carol Lipnik. She has collaborated regularly with choreographer Coco Karol and composers Sxip Shirey, Isaac Hayward and Alaina Ferris. She made her Mostly Mozart Festival debut in the Schubertiade Remix at Lincoln Center alongside members of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Lacy performed with Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley for their New Year’s Eve Phantasmagoria at the Brooklyn Bazaar. Rose has also performed with her Starling Quartet at venues such as the McKittrick Hotel (home of “Sleep No More”), National Sawdust, the TANK, Owl Music Parlor, HERE Arts Center, the Triad Theater, and Pangea.
As a composer of modern day art songs, Lacy regales her audience with tales of magic, myth, tragedy and love. MARIA, her six- part song cycle, explores the inner life and personhood of Gustav Klimt's muses, Maria “Mizzi” Zimmermann and Maria “Ria” Munk. Rose composed the score for a theatrical adaptation of Dylan Thomas' screenplay, THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS, which had its workshop premiere at Ensemble Studio Theater. She adapted Clarice Lispector’s THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H. into an opera with director Dara Malina. The first workshop production took place at Mabou Mines for their Resident Artist Program under the mentorship of JoAnne Akalaitis. “More and More” and “Sure as the Stars,” Rose’s surrealistic standards for the lost technicolor films of the 1940s, were recorded and produced by John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile).
A recipient of the NYFA Women’s Fund grant, Rose's song cycle LISPECTOR was co-produced by arranger Isaac Hayward and engineered by three-time Grammy Award® winner John Kilgore.
Isaac Hayward
Isaac Hayward is an Australian award-winning music director, conductor and arranger who has worked on a wide range of projects internationally.
His music directing includes Opera Australia, New Zealand, National Theatre London, Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre, Holy City Lyric Arts & Opera, and Broadway. Isaac has also appeared with orchestras including Auckland Philharmonia, Christchurch Symphony, Perth Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, and Orchestra Victoria, and he has worked as an arranger with Sydney Symphony, Adelaide Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., ABC TV, and Sadler’s Wells.
He is the recipient of a Helpmann Award, a Sydney Theatre Award, a Mike Walsh Major Fellowship, the Rob Guest Endowment Musician Award, and was a finalist in the 2024 Mendelssohn International Conducting Competition. In his spare time, he serves as the artistic director and conductor of Hell’s Kitchen Laboratory Orchestra, an orchestra in New York City in which professional musicians play their secondary instruments.
The Starling Quartet
The Starling Quartet, featuring Masha Polishchuk and Kate Goddard (violins), Nickolas Kaynor (viola), and Valeriya Sholokhova (cello), is the enchanting string ensemble for LISPECTOR as well as for Lacy Rose’s live performances.
New York based violinist Masha Polishchuk has recently performed with the American Ballet Theater, American Symphony Orchestra, with TONY-nominated stars such as Tony Yazbeck and Steven Skybell, and on stages such as Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, The Barns at Wolf Trap, and National Sawdust. Internationally, she has appeared in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, and Switzerland. A champion of new music, she has recently recorded and performed works by Cristobal MarYan, Max Richter, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and regularly performs classical chamber music and Klezmer in New York in the MusicTalks concert series.
Kate Goddard is a New York-based multi-instrumentalist. She co-founded Xanthoria Quartet, is a violist in New York Classical Quartet, and plays period violin in Cramer Quartet. Her recent chamber music performances include venues such as The Morgan Library, Composers Now Festival at National Sawdust, and the University of Michigan’s Stearns Collection. She has also played with American Classical Orchestra, Providence Baroque Orchestra, Early Music New York, and Yale Schola Cantorum, and with artists such as Sigur Rós, Billy Martin, Evanescence, Ellie Goulding, Michael Bublé, Andrea Boccelli, Michael Bolton, and Roger Daltrey.
Nickolas Kaynor is the principal violist of the Battle Creek Symphony, section violist of the Binghamton Philharmonic, and regularly performs with ensembles such as the New Bedford Symphony, the Cape Symphony, the Plymouth Philharmonic, the Portland Symphony, and the New Haven Symphony. As a soloist, he has performed the Bartók Viola Concerto with the Chapman Orchestra and his project Chapman Duo was a winner of the Wildflower International Recording Competition, the Frances Walton Competition, and were semi-finalists for the American Prize in Chamber Music Performance.
Valeriya Sholokhova is a Ukrainian-born accomplished solo cellist and chamber musician based in New York City. Last season, she performed at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center Stage, and on Saturday Night Live. A graduate of the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music, she has served as the principal cellist for Spoleto Festival USA, Orchestra of the Americas, Music Academy of the West, The New Orchestra of Washington, The Refugee Orchestra Project. As a soloist, she has appeared in the Liezen International Competition, the Antonio Janigro Competition, and premiered Peteris Vasks' Cello Concerto No. 2. She is a founding member of Trio Fadolin, which has received Chamber Music America's Ensemble Forward Grant.