Our inspiring faculty are specialists in writing, performing, and researching contemporary music for the voice.
You will work directly with experienced performers, conductors, and composers of adventurous new music who are out there doing it.
Our compassion-focused, artist-centered mentorship seeks to inspire curiosity as you explore new and exciting ideas to elevate your creative practice.
You will work directly with experienced performers, conductors, and composers of adventurous new music who are out there doing it.
Our compassion-focused, artist-centered mentorship seeks to inspire curiosity as you explore new and exciting ideas to elevate your creative practice.
“The NEO festival is unlike just about any other festival experience out there. David, Laurel, and Fahad are an amazing team, well-credentialed and full of valuable experience, and they have crafted a fantastic program for singers and composers. What really sets NEO apart is the focus on community, exploring the connective tissue that binds us all together and transforms ordinary music making into life-changing moments.” ~Michael Conley, 2022 Vocal Fellow
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David Harris, Ensemble DirectorDavid Harris (D.M.A.) specializes in new music, American music, and the intricacies of communication in singing, writing, and conducting. Through his "compassion-focused, artist-centered" rehearsal process, David opens vocalists into discovery spaces that prioritize each individual's experience. His filtered listening initiative elevates sensory/listening awareness as a central tool for engaging the voice. He has premiered hundreds of pieces for vocal and instrumental ensembles and theatrical works. A composer/performer, David explores elements in many styles including illuminating harmonics in vocal music, textural layering, structured improvisation, and contrasting resonant strategies. He is an active performer and composer in L.A., is director of the professional ensemble Laude with whom he recorded more than 300 tracks during quarantine including the premiere album and performance of Patrick Cassidy’s The Mass in its organ/choir setting. He is also the Ensemble Director for the NEO Voice Festival, an annual festival that guides composers and vocalists to discover the vast potential of the human voice through the lens of science, compassion, and creation. Each year NEO creates of a new full-length oratorio. He has also been a part of many of LA’s new music productions including in the cast of “Sweetland” with The Industry, music directing “Stimmung” with Long Beach Opera, leading Laude in John Sheppard’s “Media Vita” for Monday Evening Concerts, and having his “Ring of Bone” presented at the Hear Now Festival. David has played a key role in advancing the C4 Choral Collective model, helping to develop collectives in NY, Boston, and LA. He is the Director of Music at the FCCLA where he directs professional, avocational, and children’s choirs. Through his work at FCCLA he has created several music/justice initiative crossovers, helping to raise tens of thousands of dollars for local charities by bringing music communities together, and has led new initiatives to present classical choral masterworks with choirs and The Great Organs including Mozart’s “Requiem”, Vaughan Williams’ “Dona Nobis Pacem”, Haydn’s “Creation," Faure’s “Requiem”, Eleanor Daley's "Requiem," selected music by Italian women composers, and premieres like David Saldaña’s “Canciones de Nochebuena” and Patrick Cassidy’s “The Mass,” narrated by Martin Sheen. As a champion of new and underrepresented choral music, he leads the choirs at First Church in the premiere of dozens of new pieces each year. David is the co-founder of VoiceScienceWorks, an organization helping vocalists learn to translate difficult voice science into immediately applicable tools. David performs in many styles and varied extended vocal techniques. This has led to regular opportunities to sing and teach others around the world. His choral works are published with See-A-Dot Music Publishing, Inc. David has articles in several publications including The Choral Journal, Voice and Speech Review, "The Vocal Athlete" and "The Voice Teacher's Cookbook." drdavidharrismusic.org
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Laurel Irene, Voice Director Laurel Irene (M.M.) Los Angeles-based "astounding...downright superhuman" (LA Times) vocal artist and voice researcher, specializes in bringing new compositional works to life with vocal repertoire ranging from Monteverdi to Mozart to the wacky, wild, and extreme sounds of the 21st century. With incredible vocal range, agile flexibility, and "resigned, compassionate, forbearing, affectionate, sympathetic, absolving" (LA Times) emotional connection that stretches from playful to unhinged in the span of a page, she draws on her expertise in vocal research to heighten unique timbres, textures, and vocal expressions. In 2019 she performed the role of Countess Almaviva in REDCAT's 12 hour endurance art piece, earning Mark Swed's acclaim as "one of the most astonishing performances, vocally and interpretively, I have ever encountered". Other features include Long Beach Opera (Kate Soper's Voices from the Killing Jar and The Romance of the Rose, world premiere), Musica Angelica (Purcell's The Fairy Queen), The Kennedy Center (Baljinder Sekhon premiere), LA Phil New Music Group (John Cage's Europeras 1 & 2), The Getty Museum (Steve Reich's Drumming), The Industry (Du Yun and Raven Chacon's Sweetland), Monday Evening Concerts (John Sheppard's Media Vita, Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians), and The First Congregational Church, L.A. (Vivaldi's Gloria, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, Fauré's Requiem, Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem). As a winner of the Beverly Hills National Auditions, she also regularly performs with chamber and vocal music ensembles across Los Angeles.
As an avid voice educator and co-founder of the educational organization, VoiceScienceWorks (www.voicescienceworks.org) and the N.E.O. Voice Festival (www.neovoicefestival.org), she gives voice workshops at conferences and collegiate settings across the United States and Europe including the Pan-American Vocology Association, American Choral Directors Association, Acoustical Society of America, Harvard University, York University, College of the Holy Cross, California Institute for the Arts, University of California Los Angeles, and Cornish College of the Arts. www.laurelirene.com |
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Fahad Siadat, Composition DirectorFahad Siadat (D.M.A.) creates interdisciplinary pieces exploring the intersection of creative and spiritual practices that “border on being a spiritual journey” (LA Dance Chronicle). His work is described by the press as “evoking wonder, desire, and terror” (Off Broadway), “hypnotic” (Backstage) and having “a sophisticated harmonic vocabulary” (San Diego Story).
Fahad is the director of the Resonance Collective, a multifaceted organization which explores and expands our definition of sacred music. He is also the director and singing member of LA’s premiere new music vocal ensemble HEX, an award-winning sextet described by the LA Times as “a luminous ensemble of singers”. Fahad maintains a robust performing and recording schedule and has performed as soloist with such groups as LA’s groundbreaking opera company The Industry, and the Grammy Award-Winning ensemble PARTCH, as well as on recordings for artists such as Toby Twining, Daniel Lentz, and WildUp. Fahad is regularly commissioned to compose for concert music ensembles, dance companies, and theater troupes including: Theater Dybbuk, Rosanna Gamson Dance, Monmouth University, Jacksonville Dance Theater, the California EAR Unit, and the TOCCATA Orchestra. His music has been performed in Europe, China, and across the United States. To hear his work visit www.fahadsiadat.com. |
Abraham Ross, Organ SpecialistAbraham Ross, (D.Mus.), enjoys an active career as a concert organist, harpsichordist, and director, presenting imaginative programs informed by the most recent research into performance practice, technology, and musicological context. His recently completed doctoral research studied improvisation practices of early modern Italy and won research grants from FRQSC (Québec, CA) and McGill University. Abraham’s performances include music ranging over 600 years of written repertory, live improvisation, and new experimental sound creations, including recent collaborations with Resonance Collective (Los Angeles), the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra. Next year, he will launch Ives Retrospective, 1874-2024, a research-creation project examining the work and formative experiences of Charles Ives at the organ. A series of four concerts will present each of Ives’s 5 surviving organ works alongside the modern premieres of 9 reconstructions, bringing his lost music originally written for the instrument to life for the first time in a century.
Abraham holds historical research and modern performance science in equally high esteem, presenting varied, topical programs based on his findings and research. These performances reflect an artistic interest of widening our socio-cultural perspective in western classical music and regularly feature works of historically underrepresented composers. Collaborations with living composers enable Abraham to give several national- or world-premieres each year. Abraham’s formative musical studies took place in his hometown of Bangor, Maine on an 1860 organ by American firm E. & G. G. Hook, an experience that inspired him to take up musicological studies and organ performance as a career. He now serves on the board of St. John’s Organ Society, an organization dedicated to the preservation of that instrument. |
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Partners & Sponsors
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VoiceScienceWorksVoiceScienceWorks is a revolutionary educational organization committed to taking contemporary research on the voice and translating it into directly applicable information so that all voice users can immediately apply it in practice. Through our free and accessible website, learning resources, and workshops, information becomes accessible and friendly to all voice users who wish to deepen their understanding and empower their learning process. Co-founders and authors Laurel Irene and David Harris have presented at universities and institutions across the United States and Europe including Harvard, Curry, USC, CalArts, Duke, OSU, CU Boulder, BIMM Dublin, and many more, bringing playful, interactive, and transformative sessions to vocalists across professions and genres. Brilliant minds have been working through the complex bio-mechanics, physics, acoustics and neurology of phonation for decades, helping us to better understand what actually happens when we speak and sing.
VoiceScienceWorks provides access to that complex information through straight-forward explanations and methods. Each person’s unique voice holds deep elements of their identity. VoiceScienceWorks strives to help everyone unlock the hidden potential of their voice in whichever ways they choose to use it, thereby strengthening their artistry, identity, and individuality. Through cutting edge programs like the online “Voice Science Crash Course” and the 2-week intensive “Listen Up” individualized voice packages, VoiceScienceWorks reaches people around the world, providing profound opportunities for individual growth and exploration. |
The Resonance CollectiveThe Resonance Collective is a community of creative thinkers, creators, and seekers who look to the arts as a vehicle of transformative and transcendental experiences. We ascribe to no set of dogmas or beliefs, but strongly suspect we are joined by an inexplicable interconnectedness that is revealed to us through creativity. You are invited to explore with us as we aim to intertwine our artistic and spiritual practice while considering the question, "what is sacred music?"
As the producing organization of the NEO Voice Festival, the Resonance Collective aims to inspire and nurture the collective spirit of Los Angeles and beyond by expanding our understanding of the arts as a sacred and mystical experience, through the creation and performance of innovative and adventurous music. We further this mission through three methods: Education, creation, and curation. We educate creative musicians during the annual NEO Voice Festival, a week long celebration of the human voice with a focus on redefining the oratorio as a modern sacred storytelling form, holistic contemporary vocal performance, and compositional techniques. We create interdisciplinary, theatrical narratives based on spiritual transformation as part of our Original Works program. We curate exceptional music from traditions around the world through the Golden Thread concert series; each event extends on the ritual of the traditional concert experience and offers a different perspective on the possibilities of sacred music. When you attend a Resonance Collective event you are not just an audience member but an active participant, and we welcome your involvement as a member of this artistic community. |
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First Congregational Church of LAFirst Congregational Church of Los Angeles is a progressive, positive, and open church with a strong arts and music culture. We welcome and celebrate those of different faith traditions, cultural backgrounds, and sexual orientations. The Sunday morning worship service at First Church is a richly textured experience. Our service is traditional in structure, but we bring together the arts – music, literature, poetry, painting – as well as science and religious texts – to create a joyful experience of community. Each Sunday we engage the heart and mind, believing that faith and reason are essential to the spiritual journey. First Church is a vital, diverse and multi-generational community of faith. People of all ages – children, families of all configurations, young professionals, seniors, and everyone in between, come together in an authentic experience of Christian community. As an urban church in the heart of the city, we celebrate compassion, diversity and inclusivity, respecting people wherever they may be on the journey.
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See-A-Dot Music PublishingSee-A-Dot Music Publishing, Inc. was founded by composer and conductor Fahad Siadat in 2013 with the intent of curating and publishing innovative choral music. Through these curation efforts, See-A-Dot aspires to realize an inclusive, exciting future for choral music. Created by choral conductors for choral conductors, the catalog is highly curated and focuses on music for adult choirs, especially colleges and universities, though there are gems for community choirs, professionals, and strong high school ensembles.
See-A-Dot Music Publishing also aims to help new, up and coming composers gain the exposure they need to get the recognition they deserve. Our belief is that there are too many wonderful pieces that will never see life after a first performance, and we think that’s a tragedy. Our goal is to help get this music and these composers out into the world for the enjoyment of all. |
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