BLAIR JOHNSON is an actor, singer, songwriter, and producer with over 25 years of experience. He has appeared in many stage and musical theater roles since 1996, including in NYC productions of Hair (30th Anniversary, as Berger), Tommy (as Hawker), and The Secret Garden (as Albert Lennox), as well as in multiple Philadelphia-area productions in the Walnut Street Theater, Media Theater, Plays & Players Theater, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and Music Mountain Theater in New Jersey. 

Blair’s recent credits include the role of Watson in Sherlock Holmes, Bill in Mamma Mia! and Herr Zeller in The Sound of Music. He is also a film and television actor (e.g. in Miramax’s Kate and Leopold) and a voiceover artist. As a singer, Blair was the tenor lead for the Best of Broadway and Sondheim Spectacular musical reviews.

  A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, Blair first moved to New York City in the 1990s to work in the music and radio industries. In addition to recording and copyrighting spots for clients and radio stations, he was also a member of a rock band. 

Blair received his stage training at Queens College, NY and studied voice with Don Lawrence and John Peters.

Blair currently lives in the Philadelphia area with his daughter Senta, herself a talented performer and singer. https://blairwjohnson.com/

JARED MICHAEL DELANEY is an actor and stage/screen writer based in Philadelphia. He has appeared on stages Off-Broadway and regionally across the U.S. His theater roles include Macbeth (Macbeth), Edmund (King Lear), Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing), Mark Antony (Julius Caesar), Jerry (Betrayal), and Jim (The Glass Menagerie). TV credits include Mare of Easttown, Dispatches from Elsewhere and various commercials. Film credits include Kinderwald, Universal Signs and the upcoming Hayride to Hell.

His full-length plays have been produced at Perseverance Theatre, New Jersey Repertory Company, Inis Nua Theatre Co, the Yes! Festival, Edinburgh Festival and Theatre Conspiracy. His play, Voyager One, was named a “Top Ten Production of the Year in New Jersey” in 2019.

His short plays have been been part of the QuarenStream, 1MPF & Going Viral online festivals and others produced by Athena Theatre, NJ Rep, MadLab Theatre, Aberrant Theatre, Pegasus Theatre, Raze the Space and the Philadelphia LiveArts Festival. His work has been further presented at the Valdez Theatre Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, in readings across the country and developed in writers’ groups Athena Writes and The Foundry. His pilots and screenplays have placed in such competitions as Big Break, Launch Pad and the Atlanta Film Festival. He is the co-host of a weekly podcast about the musician Prince, titled When Doves Podcast, available on all platforms. M.A., Villanova University; M.F.A., Queens University of Charlotte. Member: Dramatists’ Guild, AEA, New Play Exchange. www.jaredmichaeldelaney.com

ELLA REMMINGS is a Philadelphia-based author, playwright, director, and founder of Music from Our Garden. She has published essays and opinion pieces on topics ranging from medicine and technology to music and folk beliefs. In addition to War of the Romantics, which premiered in Philadelphia in 2019 with a series of sold-out performances and is making a New York City debut in May 2023, Ella authored a stage play, Gadius, and several collections of stories. 

In 2020, Ella founded Music from Our Garden, a series of live concerts in a private garden setting, with all profits donated to professional musicians and music organizations whose livelihoods were impacted by the pandemic. Since its inception, Music from Our Garden has hosted over 10 events with major artists, such as violin virtuoso Alexander Markov, Elizabeth Pitcairn with her famous 1720 Mendelssohn Stradivarius (the “Red Violin”), multiple Philadelphia Orchestra musicians, Michal Schmidt, and the Curtis Institute of Music.

In 2018, Ella initiated a collaboration between the Warsaw Conservatory and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which culminated in a first-ever performance of a Curtis ensemble in Warsaw. The collaboration continues to this day.

In her former life, Ella was a healthcare executive, working on novel treatments in the areas of respiratory medicine, neuroscience, and oncology. She was also a translator and editor-in-chief of multilingual publications. She currently serves on the IRB (research ethics) board of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and on the board of ARTolerance, whose mission is to advance the role of the arts in conflict transformation, coexistence and peace. www.ellaremmings.com

KATARZYNA MARZEC-SALWINSKI is a concert pianist based in Philadelphia. She has performed as a soloist, with orchestras, and various chamber ensembles in Europe, United States, Middle East, and Japan. Equally versed in the solo and chamber repertoire, Ms. Salwinski has appeared in many concerts and concert series, including several performances at Carnegie Hall, live recordings for radio and television, Mostly Music at NEIU in Chicago and Concerts at One in New York, performing under the batons of Jerzy Kosek, Luis Biava (of Philadelphia Orchestra), and David Schrader.

Ms. Salwinski was a co-founder and Artistic Director of Fine Art Music Company (FAMC), a chamber music ensemble that for ten years presented thematic programs in intimate salon settings, featuring accomplished musicians from the Philadelphia area. In recent years, FAMC launched an innovative concert series that blends classical music with theater—to high acclaim. Katarzyna enjoys collaborating with other musicians and singers, as well as with important musical institutions, such as the National Institute of Frederic Chopin in Warsaw, where she was a contributing writer and translator. One of her translation projects - an extended biography of Chopin by Polish musicologist T.A. Zieliński - will be published later this year.

Ms. Salwinski earned her doctorate from Temple University (under Harvey Wedeen) and a master’s degree from Chicago College of Performing Arts (under Pawel Checinski). She has coached chamber music with Lambert Orkis and participated in master classes with John Browning, Menahem Pressler, Russell Sherman, and John O'Connor. Ms. Salwinski currently serves as an Affiliate Artist at Haverford College.

Ethiopian-Hungarian violinist SAMUEL NEBYU has performed as a soloist worldwide, including at Musikverein in Vienna, Berlin Philharmonie Concert Hall, KKL in Lucerne, Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Verizon Hall and Perelman Theater in Philadelphia, as well as in Brussels, Salzburg, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Buenos Aires, Lima and Bogotá.

His first CD, Music by Composers of African Descent, was released on the BCM+D label and was named Album of the Week by WRTI radio in Philadelphia and WQXR in New York. In 2019, he was the featured soloist at the Kimmel Center Verizon Hall in Philadelphia, performing the Singing Rooms Violin Concerto with Choir and Orchestra by Jennifer Higdon, and also gave a recital with Lambert Orkis in Rock Hall, Philadelphia.

Samuel received a commendation from the city of Los Angeles after his performance at the Walt Disney Hall in 2019. The same year, Samuel joined Anne-Sophie Mutter’s Virtuosi on her sixth tour with the exclusive soloist ensemble in South America. In 2021, Samuel performed a recital with Charles Abramovic on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Philadelphia virtually for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In the fall season of 2021, he joined Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Mutter Virtuosi on a month-long European tour, giving 19 performances in major concert halls. He also performed a debut recital at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland with pianist Charles Abramovic, presenting a recital of composers of color, included a premiere that was written for Samuel Grey Fireworks by composer Tyson Davis. https://www.samuelnebyu.com/

Israeli musician MICHAL SCHMIDT has been a cellist and pianist throughout her career. She studied at the University of Tel Aviv, the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Curtis Institute of Music, University of the Arts and Temple University in Philadelphia, gaining a Doctoral degree in 2002.

Michal is an active orchestral player, chamber musician and recitalist. In 2007, she created the Tribute series, dedicated mostly to contemporary music. Her 2021 disc SOLA features many of the works from the series. Tribute also includes performances dedicated to past and present composers’ special anniversaries: Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann and contemporary composer Andrea Clearfield.

Michal has been teaching for many years at colleges and universities in the tri-state area: Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, St. Joseph’s, Dickinson, West Chester, Rowan, and the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the Transcontinental Ensemble based at the University of Delaware and, together with the group, she has been part of a multi-year concert and recording project of Jennifer Barker’s and Ofer Ben Amots’s music.

Michal is currently completing the third disc of Bach’s music for solo cello and solo piano. Her recordings (Bach Double; Bach Double 2.0; Bach Double 3.0; Beethoven: Two Sonatas, Two Instruments, One Performer; SOLA; From Twilight to Tarantella) can be found online on multiple platforms. www.michalschmidt.com/