Gabrielle Herbst is a composer, vocalist and educator. She’s received commissions from Roulette and the Jerome Foundation, the Nouveau Classical Project, Duo Noir, Experiments in Opera, Fresh Squeezed Opera, The Knights, and contributed to the opera Magdalene as part the Prototype Festival 2020 in NYC. She’s been composer-in-residence at the Watermill Center, Exploring the Metropolis, Inc., Atlantic Center for the Arts, Avaloch Farms, Roulette and Pioneer Works. She has had her compositions presented at venues including National Sawdust, The Stone, Issue Project Room, HERE Arts Center, the National Guitar Society, MATA, and Lincoln Center Atrium. Under the moniker GABI she released her debut album Sympathy on Software Recording Co. in 2015. Tour highlights included David Byrne’s Meltdown Festival, London, Pop Kultur Festival, Berlin, Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, The Great Escape, Brighton, UK, Marfa Myths Festival, TX, The Wick presented by Pitchfork, and a series at Roulette with Missy Mazzoli curated by Meredith Monk. She released her second GABI album, Empty Me, on Double Double Whammy in 2018 and toured the US opening for the band Mutual Benefit. She is a current fellow with the American Opera Project’s Composers & the Voice program. She graduated from Bard College where she studied composition with Joan Tower, and the Yale School of Music where she studied with Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, and David Lang.

Composer and cinematographer J.E. Hernández (b.1993) is a Mexican-born, Houston-based composer focusing on elevating personal and cultural narrative through his work. J.E.’s music has been featured by distinguished ensembles and organizations such as the Kennedy Center for the Arts, Houston Grand Opera, American Opera Project, Performing Arts Houston, Apollo Chamber Players, Foundation for Modern Music, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, American Composers Forum, the Brazil National Orchestra, and in a wide variety of films, both in the United States and abroad.
He holds a degree from the University of Houston. Past teachers include Marcus Maroney and Gregory Spears. J.E.’s work focuses on both traditional and multi-disciplinary mediums, and he has collaborated with directors, choreographers, and playwrights. His process cultivates creativity through stewarding tangible life experiences through an intensive, multinarrative process that is mathematical, philosophical, and historical; these include environmental displacement, anthropologic self-assessments, and non-artistic life narratives. Recent and upcoming projects include helah, a chamber work focusing on the transformative aspect of generational historicity and trauma, commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera; Voces Fantasmas, a multi-disciplinary work dedicated to people in immigrant facilities, excerpts of which were featured by the Kennedy Center for the Arts; Desert Shelter, commissioned by Performing Arts Houston, a work for string sextet and dance which deals with the bodily decay that migrants experience when crossing the Sonoran desert, premiering at the Wortham Theater in 2023; a McKnight Visiting Composer Residency with American Composers Forum; and a fellowship with American Opera Project’s Composers & the Voice program, where he will workshop a wide variety of operatic works with world class singers, culminating in a premiere.