James K. Bass, three-time GRAMMY®-nominated singer and conductor, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Music, and Director of Choral Studies at The Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. He is the Associate Conductor and Director of Education for the Miami-based ensemble Seraphic Fire and is the Artistic Director of the Long Beach Camerata Singers.

Bass is an active soloist and ensemble artist. In 2017 he made his Cleveland Orchestra solo debut singing with Franz Welser-Möst and the orchestra in Miami and in Severance Hall, Cleveland. Other engagements as a soloist include the New World Symphony with Michael Tilson-Thomas, The Florida Orchestra, Grand Rapids Symphony, Back Bay Chorale and Orchestra, Firebird Chamber Orchestra, and The Sebastians. He has appeared with numerous professional vocal ensembles including Seraphic Fire, Conspirare, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Apollo Master Chorale, Vox Humanae, True Concord, and Spire. He was the featured baritone soloist on the GRAMMY-nominated recording Pablo Neruda: The Poet Sings with fellow singer Lauren Snouffer, conductor Craig Hella-Johnson, and the GRAMMY-winning ensemble Conpirare. He is one of 13 singers on the GRAMMY®-nominated disc A Seraphic Fire Christmas and appears on CD recordings on the Harmonia Mundi, Naxos, Albany, and Seraphic Fire Media labels.

Bass was selected by the master conductor of the Amsterdam Baroque Soloists, Ton Koopman, to be one of only 20 singers for a presentation of Cantatas by J. S. Bach in Carnegie Hall and was an auditioned member of Robert Shaw’s workshop choir at Carnegie. He has appeared as conductor with the Florida Orchestra during their annual education concerts.

During his tenure as Artistic Director for the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, the official chorus of the Florida Orchestra, he was responsible for five recordings and multiple world premieres. In 2012 he served as chorusmaster and co-editor for the Naxos recording entitled Delius: Sea Drift and Appalachia featuring the Florida Orchestra and conducted by Stefan Sanderling. In 2014 he was the principal preparer for the recording Holiday Pops Live! conducted by the principal pops conductor Jeff Tyzik. During his tenure as a chorusmaster, he has prepared choirs for Sir Colin Davis, Sir David Willcocks, Jahja Ling, Michael Tilson-Thomas, Gerard Schwarz, Giancarlo Guerrero, Michael Francis, Marcelo Lehninger, Stefan Sanderling, Evan Rogister, Danail Rachlev, Joshua Weilerstein, Markus Huber, David Lockington, Xian Zhang, Patrick Quigley, and Neal Stulberg.

His professional career has coincided with the development of Seraphic Fire as one of the premier vocal ensembles in the United States. He has been actively involved as soloist, ensemble artist, editor, producer, and preparer for 14 of the ensemble’s recordings and routinely conducts the ensemble in Miami and on tour. During the summer of 2011, he co-founded the Professional Choral Institute. In its inaugural year of recording, Seraphic Fire and PCI received the GRAMMY® nomination for Best Choral Performance for their recording of Johannes Brahms’ Ein Deuthches Requiem. As the Director of Education for the ensemble, he has been involved with annual events that service more than 2000 students in the Miami-Dade county area each year. In 2017 Seraphic Fire and UCLA launched a new educational initiative entitled the Ensemble Artist Program that aims to identify and train the next generation of high-level ensemble singers.

Bass received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Miami, where he was a doctoral fellow, and is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy.

Dr. Ryan R. Brown has been praised for his evocative conducting, flexible vocalism, and charismatic leadership. Committed to broadening the choral audience through captivating programming and innovative performance practices, Brown cultivates passionate and expressive vocal artistry which empowers performers to connect with their humanity and inspire audiences.

Brown is a Lecturer of Music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He also serves as the Artistic Director of the Laguna Beach Chamber Singers and a Teaching Artist for the Voces8 Foundation. In previous roles, Brown served as Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Lone Star College – University Park, Choral Director at California School of The Arts – San Gabriel Valley, Artistic Director of the Arroyo Singers, Associate Conductor for the National Children’s Chorus, Artistic Director for Diamonds From the Dust, and Choral Director at Wachusett Regional High School.

In addition to his career as a conductor and educator, Brown enjoys a career as a lyric baritone and has performed as a soloist with several major orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. As an ensemble artist, he regularly engages with professional choral ensembles across the country. Ensembles include Houston Chamber Choir, Quartz Ensemble, Vox Ardens, LA Masterchorale, Red Shift, and Concora. As a passionate advocate and scholar of 21st-century oratorio and cantata, Brown recently performed in several newly written works including Daniel Kangg’s Two Streams, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass For The Endangered, and the Grammy Award-winning recording of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua.

Brown holds a BM in Music Education from Westminster Choir College, and two graduate degrees in Choral Conducting (MM & DMA) from UCLA.

Pianist James Lent is Lecturer and Coordinator of Instrumental Collaborative Piano at UCLA in addition to serving as a coach and accompanist for vocal studies. James completed his DMA at the Yale School of Music under teachers Boris Berman, Claude Frank, and Peter Frankl. He made his Alabama Symphony debut to critical acclaim performing Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 on 24 hours’ notice to replace Andre Watts.

He has performed with the Vancouver Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Shanghai Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Utah Symphony and the Florida West Coast Symphony, among others, and as solo recitalist at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, for the National Chopin Foundation in Miami, at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where he premiered a new work written for him by American composer Frederic Rzewski.

Lent has performed with the renowned Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain under the direction of Pierre Boulez in a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, and his performances have been heard on National Public Radio.

His numerous awards include prizes in the New York Concert Artists Guild International Competition, the National Chopin Competition, the Washington International Piano Competition at the Kennedy Center, the Olga Koussevitsky Piano Competition in New York, and the Houston Symphony Ima Hogg National Young Artist Competition.He was a fellowship recipient at the Aspen Music Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Sarasota Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal.

Lent also teaches at AMDA (American Musical and Dramatic Academy) as collaborative pianist, vocal coach, and musical director. He has also served on the summer faculty at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara and the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival.

Soprano
Hailey Samphone
Hannah Verduzco
Krystal Mao
Lilia Salido-Rico
Madison Chamberlain
Mia Ruhman
Milla Moretti
Josie Rose
Habin Kim
Siqi Zhuang

Alto
Carmen Voskuhl
Camryn Deisman
Celina Kintcher
I-Chin Feinblatt
Katya Lynch
Olivia Salazar
Phaedra Panagiotidis
Rachel Hahn
Olivia Lewinski
Sofia Del’Agostino
Sydney Wang
Priscilla Yang
Anneke Talke
Joung-A Monica Yum

Tenor
Christopher Shayota
Cooper Burdick
Kevin Corrigan
Sam Song
Joseph Marcinik
James Scott
Benicio Corona del Flores

Baritone/Bass
Billy Xiong
Diego Dela Cruz
Joshua Valdes
Kevin Cornwell
Kyle Xu
Leland Smith
Naveed Perkins
Troy Robertson
Yoni Fogelman
Michael Torres

Soprano
Lindsay Bettencourt
Victoria Caudle
Isabella Durand
Maria Garcia
Sarah Harris
London Hibbs
Esme Patricia Honan
Sophie Ivancovich
Mika King
Kate Kresser
Natalie Lam
Jiwon Lee
Jessica Li
Yunxiao Li
Victoria Oliphant
Madison Prince
Keira Prouty
Julie Quan
Hyoji Shin
Iris Sloan
Sarah Stadermann
Marina Leal
Laur Trustee
Ashley Mendez
Shannon Wang
Siqi Zhuang

Alto
Nicole Chang
Ashley Chen
Robi Choi
Ruth Choi
Shih Yuan Chou
Xiao Fu
Rui Ann Huang
Jayeon Jung
Reina Kim
Bella Kurani
Kaya Lu
Joan Mabansag
Alianna Mendoza
Virginia Morrow
Eleanor Muhawi
Isabela Murray
Noor Nahkaeli
Alix Ospina
Natalia Rael
Elise Reeder
Olivia Roske
Tatiana Maia
Nora Rhazi
Julia Rubright Mikaela Song
Faith St Amant
Stephanie Tsao
Claire Wang
Emily Wong
Jiauha Wu
Mingyang Xia
Yilin Yuan
Joung-A Monica Yum

Tenor
Mark Gross
Schuyler Henry
Anirudh Iyer
Sean Kawanami
Changsoo Kim
Aaron Kunitz
Austin Liu
Joseph Marcinik
Soohyun Mun
John Odeh
George Piustin
Ryan Schoenburg
James Scott
Aiden Tang
Kevin Tran
Daniel Wang
Austin Wen
Junpeng Weng
Trevor Wong
Okhyun Yang

Baritone/Bass
Ahmed Ali
Nicholas Boschert
William Chang
Leonardo Clarke
Kevin Cornwell
Julien Fraser
JP Hicks
Weikai Li
Jahan Raymond
Troy Robertson
Alexander Tsao
Aidan Vass
Andre Wang
Kasper Yoder