Alfre Woodard, Master of Ceremonies

Is a critically acclaimed, award-winning actor and committed activist for human rights and social justice. The organizing founder of Artists for a New South Africa, she recently directed the audiobook version of Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales. Actively involved in progressive politics, Woodard stumped as a presidential campaign surrogate for Barack Obama and worked with Michelle Obama's efforts on youth outreach. A Boston University College of Fine Arts graduate, Academy Award nominee, and four-time Emmy Award winner, Woodard's film credits include American Violet, The Family That Preys, Take the Lead, Something New, The Forgotten, Love and Basketball, and Down in the Delta. With 15 Emmy nominations, recent TV credits include Three Rivers, My Own Worst Enemy, and Desperate Housewives.

American Brass Quintet

Founded in 1960, the American Brass Quintet is the longest performing brass quintet on planet earth. The “high priests of brass” (Newsweek) have recorded over 50 albums and premiered well over 100 works. Dubbed the “Rolls Royce of Brass Quintets” by the Baltimore Sun, ABQ has been Ensemble-in-Residence of the Aspen Music Festival since 1970 and The Juilliard School since 1987. The ABQ have defined serious brass chamber music in America for five decades.
Photo by Peter Schaaf

Boston University Symphony Orchestra

Assumes an integral role in the education of the instrumentalists in the BU School of Music, whether they aspire to professions as chamber musicians, orchestral musicians, teachers, or to musical lives that combine all three.  The orchestra repertoire reaches wide and deep, from vital standard repertoire, to compelling if less familiar compositions, and to music from this and past centuries.  Each year, the orchestra presents six concerts in Boston, including an annual performance in Symphony Hall.  The BU Symphony Orchestra will appear in the Kennedy Center as part of the InCite Arts Festival, a moveable feast designed to showcase the dynamic artistic strengths and synergy of the BU College of Fine Arts’ schools of Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts.
Photo by  Michael Lutch

David Hoose, conductor

Is Professor of Music and Director of Orchestral Activities in the School of Music in the College of Fine Arts at Boston University.  He also serves as Music Director of Boston’s critically-acclaimed professional ensembles Collage New Music and Cantata Singers and Ensemble.  In 2005, Professor Hoose was the recipient of the Alice M. Ditson Conductors Award, given in recognition of exceptional commitment to the performance of American music, succeeding past award recipients Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, among others. Among the orchestras Professor Hoose has conducted are the Chicago Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and the Saint Louis Symphony, as well as the orchestras of the New England Conservatory, the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and the Eastman School of Music at Rochester Universitys.
Photo by  Michael Lutch

Nolan Gasser, composer

Is a critically acclaimed composer, pianist, and musicologist. His original works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, La Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, etc. Among recent triumphs, his World Concerto for Cello and Orchestra received its premiere in 2009, and his symphonic oratorio, American Festivals, was performed at IMG Artists’ 2008 Festival del sole. Upcoming projects include an overture commissioned by the Santa Rosa Symphony. Dr. Gasser is the Artistic Director of Classical Archives and the chief musical architect of the Music Genome Project (Pandora Internet radio). He received his Ph.D. in Musicology from Stanford University, and lives with his wife and two children in Petaluma, CA.

Carey Harrison, narrator

Was born in London to actor parents Sir Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer. He is Professor of English at the City University of New York, and is a prize-winning novelist and dramatist whose comedy about Freud and Jung, Scenes From A Misunderstanding, played off-Broadway this year. He has written 16 novels and over 100 plays for radio and television, including 17 hours of Masterpiece Theatre. Harrison frequently appears in his own plays; he has been heard on the BBC, playing Isaac Newton in his play Newton In Love; and opposite Sir John Gielgud in A View Of St Paul’s, written by Harrison specially for Gielgud, then aged 90, about the architect Sir Christopher Wren at the age of 90.

Pierre R. Schwob, co-writer

Was born in Los Angeles and raised in Geneva, Switzerland. He has lived in New York, Hong Kong, and now in Palo Alto, California. He has taught computer science and licensed his intellectual properties in radio data and internet technologies. He has written books on chess, calculators, and history. He is working on an on-line contextual encyclopedia and continues to run Classical Archives, the largest classical music site on the web which he founded in 1994. He is vice-chairman of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees and spends quite a bit of time at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford/SLAC. An asteroid has been graciously named after him. He is an ardent supporter of the heroic work done by the scientists who are developing and testing theories by analyzing data at a time which may be characterized as the golden age of cosmology.

Lawrence M. Krauss, co-writer

Is Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Departments, Associate Director of the Beyond Center, Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative and Director of the new Origins Initiative at Arizona State University.  Krauss received his PhD from MIT and then joined the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He joined Arizona State after appointments at Yale and Case Western Reserve Universities.  A Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is an international leader in cosmology and astrophysics.  The author of seven popular books, Krauss is also a radio and television commentator and essayist for major newspapers. Krauss crosses the chasm between science and popular culture and he has been particularly active in issues of science and society.
Photo by Jessica Lifland

Rich Melnick, video producer

As one of NASA’s senior producers, Rich Melnick has a reputation for taking challenging subject matter and turning it into the stuff of wonder. The winner of multiple national awards for exciting productions about a variety of science and technology stories, Melnick’s craft often serves as the final step between NASA research and public understanding about that research. Commissioned pieces he’s produced have played at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Congressional committees, executive staff levels of government, and a list of national television outlets too numerous to mention. Presenting science and technological subjects with a smart synthesis of artistic craft and verve, Rich Melnick’s work often solves a vital step for audiences to understand and become enthused about hard stories they might not otherwise encounter.