About the American Modern Opera Company
The American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), founded in 2017 by Matthew Aucoin and Zack Winokur, builds and shares a body of collaborative work. As a group of dancers, singers, musicians, writers, directors, composers, choreographers, and producers united by a core set of values, AMOC* artists pool their resources to create new pathways that connect creators and audiences in surprising and visceral ways.
AMOC* continues developing new works, including a multidisciplinary triptych by artistic duo Gerard & Kelly combining music, dance, and film that focuses on Julius Eastman’s life and legacy - in partnership with Los Angeles-based music collective, Wild Up. The first part of this triptych, Gay Guerrilla, premiered at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in partnership with the Opéra national de Paris, & Compagnie, AMOC*, and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, with the support of enoa and the Creative Europe program of the European Union.
Zack Winokur
Zack Winokur is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of AMOC*. Recent highlights from Winokur include: Mammoth, featuring Yo-Yo Ma 400 feet underground inside Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky; Tristan and Isolde at the Santa Fe Opera; Messiaen’s Harawi at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, De Singel, Elbphilharmonie; Only an Octave Apart starring Justin Vivian Bond and Anthony Roth Costanzo at St. Ann’s Warehouse, the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Opera, Wilton’s Music Hall in London, the Spoleto Festival USA and the Gate Theater in Dublin; his “rich, seamless” (The New York Times) production of The Black Clown at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center and the American Repertory Theater; his “darkly captivating” (The New York Times) production of Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine by Tyshawn Sorey and Claudia Rankine, starring Julia Bullock on the grand staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and other productions at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Dutch National Opera and Stanford Live.
Winokur is the first Artistic Director of Little Island, a new public park located in Hudson River Park in New York City. He also served as Artistic Director of NY PopsUp, an initiative to reopen the performing arts across New York State with over 300 free and public performances that featured hundreds of artists in 2021. He co-teaches a transdisciplinary storytelling class at Harvard with Davóne Tines.
Julia Bullock
American classical singer Julia Bullock has headlined opera productions worldwide, including Theodora at Covent Garden and The Indian Queen at the English National Opera, Bolshoi Theatre and Teatro Real. She created leading roles in the premiere productions of Michael van der Aa’s Upload, John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West and Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. She starred in The Rake’s Progress, Doctor Atomic and The Magic Flute, which she performed in concert with the LA Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, and in a production by the late Peter Brook on tour in South America. Bullock has collaborated with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Bayerische Rundfunk, NHK Symphony, Philharmonia and London Symphony Orchestra, and has given extensive recital tours at venues including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw and Elbphilharmonie.
She is a much sought-after collaborator, curator and artist-in-residence by symphony orchestras, festivals, museums and music schools. One of Bullock’s major projects, Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine explores the roles of bigotry, prejudice, misogyny, racism and ultimately finding one’s humanity through the self-empowerment of performance via the lens of Joséphine Baker’s life – conceived with Peter Sellars, Tyshawn Sorey and Claudia Rankine, the work is now finding a home in major operatic spaces. Bullock’s solo album debut, Walking in the Dark, was named among the best of 2022 by the New York Times.
Conor Hanick
Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master.” (New York Times) Hanick has recently performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. His work has been presented by the Gilmore Festival, New York Philharmonic, Elbphilharmonie, De Singel, Caramoor, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and the Park Avenue Armory. He has worked with conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ludovic Morlot, Alan Gilbert and David Robertson.
A fierce advocate for the music of today, Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers ranging from Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho and Steve Reich, to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Samuel Carl Adams and Anthony Cheung. This season, Hanick presents recitals in the U.S. and Europe, including performances with Julia Bullock, Jay Campbell, Joshua Roman, Seth Parker Woods, AMOC* and the Takt Trio. Hanick also makes his San Francisco Performances debut at Herbst Theater, joins Sandbox Percussion at 92NY, returns to the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and, in Ojai as part of the California Festival, performs a new set of piano etudes by Samuel Carl Adams, whose piano Concerto No Such Spring Hanick premiered last year to wide acclaim with the San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Hanick is the director of Solo Piano at the Music Academy of the West and serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School, Mannes College, and the CUNY Graduate Center, and is a Founding Member of AMOC*.
Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber are artists in residence with the Los Angeles Dance Project. Both are alums of Batsheva Dance Company and founding members of the American Modern Opera Company. Smith and Schraiber — partners both inside and outside the studio — have choreographed numerous original dance works for some of the world’s finest companies including the Paris Opera Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Royal Danish Ballet and L.A. Dance Project, to name a few. Or and Bobbi’s most recent work PIT, a full-evening commission for the Paris Opera Ballet premiered to critical acclaim and sold-out houses.
Upcoming commissions include a full-evening of work for Theatre Basel and an off-Broadway play, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea starring Aubrey Plaza and Chris Abbot at the Lucille Lortel Theater in New York City.