About Us

Recipient of the Musical America Award for Best Artist of the Year and Agent of Change and a Kennedy Center Next50 Honoree, Beth Morrison is hailed as a “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) and “a powerhouse leading the industry to new heights” (WQXR), Beth Morrison is an opera and theatre producer, President and Creative Producer of Beth Morrison Projects, and Founding co-Director of the PROTOTYPE Festival.

Beth created Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) in 2006 to identify and support the work of emerging and established living composers, and to create a new kind of opera (“Beth Morrison is her own genre”-Opera News). BMP is celebrated as having been an industry disruptor and is now a tastemaker at the forefront of musical and theatrical innovation by commissioning, developing, producing and touring the groundbreaking new works of a diverse group of living composers and their collaborators, which take the form of opera-theatre, music-theatre, and vocal-theatre.

BMP encourages risk-taking and the result is provocative works that represent a dynamic and lasting legacy for a new American canon. Opera News has noted: “More than any other figure in the opera industry, Beth Morrison has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century." In 2013 Beth co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival with HERE, which has become “essential to the evolution of American opera.” (New Yorker). Beth served a founding tenure as Producer for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, as well as Producer for New York City Opera's VOX: Contemporary American Opera Lab. She first honed her management skills as the Administrative Director for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She is currently an advisory board member of National Sawdust and Brooklyn Youth Chorus, as well as a board member of Opera America, the international competition, Music Theatre Now and Voices 21C, a social justice choir. Morrison is frequently asked to give lectures at conservatories across the country, including Yale, Mannes School of Music, NYU, Manhattan School of Music, Arizona State University, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and more. Morrison is also in demand as a speaker both nationally and internationally and has delivered key note speeches for Classical:Next and Opera Europa among others. Morrison holds a Bachelor of Music from Boston University, a Master of Music from Arizona State University, and an MFA from Yale School of Drama.

Eric Simpson joins BMP after two years as Director of Development for Opera Lafayette, where he helped lay the foundation for a thirtieth-anniversary campaign to see the company through its first ever artistic leadership transition. He previously served as Chief Development Officer at the Paideia Institute for Humanistic Study, a nonprofit devoted to promoting the study of the classical humanities and making them more accessible to a wider audience. From 2012 to 2020 he was active as an arts journalist, both as an editor and as a writer, with more than 400 published reviews and articles about the classical music scene in New York and beyond.

Eric holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BA in Classics from Yale College. Still a practicing violinist, he was a finalist in WQXR's 2016 "Moonlighters" competition for amateur musicians. A sometime actor, Eric is a graduate of HB Studio's CORE conservatory program. He is an avid listener of comic song, particularly the works of Tom Lehrer and Noël Coward

Julia Mendes first worked with Beth Morrison Projects as the Associate Producer for the 2023 PROTOTYPE Festival. She has worked as a producer and administrator for a range of other organizations in the fields of music, theater, and film, including Mabou Mines, Sundance Institute, Second Stage Theater, and NJPAC, and is a proud graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. She is thrilled to be part of the BMP team, helping bring innovative new music into the world.

Liz is thrilled to be joining the Beth Morrison Projects team as the General Manager. Prior to joining BMP, Liz was the General Manager at Ensemble Studio Theatre, supporting the development of provocative and authentic new plays. She has also worked as an arts administrator at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn and Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge Massachusetts. Liz is dedicated in supporting artists throughout the collaborative process. She holds a BA in Theatrical Design from The University of Nebraska- Kearney.

Roderick Murray (in the beforetimes he was a lighting designer) The majority of his work has been with dance and music , both experimental and traditional, and experimental operas. His designs and installations have been seen world-wide in the works of Kimberly Bartosik, Ralph Lemon, Benjamin Millepied, Dusan Tynek, Wally Cardona, Kathy Westwater, NYCBallet, Ballet di Roma, ABT, Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Lyon Opèra Ballet, Luca Veggetti, Troy Schumacher, and other amazing companies and artists since 1989. He also performed outside for 9 years in the streets of New York with Circus Amok. He helped form OpenCultureWORKS to support artists working outside.

Noel is a nonprofit fundraiser and classically trained percussionist who is thrilled to be joining the BMP team. With degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Miami, they look forward to blending their passion for contemporary chamber music with fundraising to support BMP’s vision for cutting-edge opera and vocal theater. Previously, they held positions at the Aspen Music Festival and School and the Adrienne Arsht Center.

Jasmine Galante is a New York based multi-hyphenate producer, arts administrator, composer, vocalist, and playwright. Passionate about supporting bold new works and artist-led processes, she’s worked on new music-theater productions with organizations including Beth Morrison Projects, Heartbeat Opera, On Site Opera, and Spoleto Festival USA. She approaches the creative process as a form of community building, centering empathy and curiosity to bridge diverse perspectives toward a common artistic goal. Galante recently served as the creative producer for the premiere of Del Sol Quartet’s Facing the Moon: Songs of the Diaspora and is thrilled to return to PROTOTYPE this year as an associate producer.

Equally at home as a creative, she is a composing member of the 2024–2026 Experiments in Opera Writers’ Room, a Choral Scholar at Trinity Church NYC, and performs with Cantori New York. Galante is a proud alumna of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, OAcademy Music Conservatory, and Beth Morrison Projects’ Producer Academy.

Originally from Caracas, Venezuela and the US South, Cori is a Brooklyn-based producer and manager with a passion for live music and new multidisciplinary works. Recent work includes National Sawdust (Associate Producer), Taylor Mac & Matt Ray’s Bark of Millions (Associate Company Manager, Pomegranate Arts; Sydney Opera House/Berliner Festspiele/Brooklyn Academy of Music/CalArts), and stage management for NYC Pride, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!, The Public Theater, and Music Hall of Williamsburg. Para mi familia, siempre.

Gabrielle Niederhoffer is a producer, theater choreographer, and dancer from New York City. She was the Festival Manager for the inaugural Works & Process Underground Uptown Dance Festival at the Guggenheim Museum and for Battery Dance Festival, New York City’s longest-running free public dance festival. Gabrielle served as the Company Manager for SW!NG OUT through Joyce Theater Productions and for the West Coast tour of Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends. At Yale, Gabrielle founded and co-curated DanceHaven: A Celebration of Vernacular Dance at the Yale Schwarzman Center.

Her recent choreographing credits include Next to Normal (Yale David Geffen School of Drama), Cabaret (Yale Drama), and Gypsy (Yale Drama Coalition), among others. As a dancer, Gabrielle has performed at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Symphony Space, among other venues. She is an alumna of the School at Jacob’s Pillow Tap Professional Advancement Program.

Gabrielle graduated cum laude from Yale University with a BA in American Studies. She is currently pursuing her Master's Degree in Nonprofit Management at Columbia University.

Alexis is a Boston-based multi-hyphenate producer, arts administrator, opera singer, and music educator focused on creating accessible pathways to opera and theatrical arts through mounting cutting-edge narratives on the performance stage and creating meaningful and welcoming theatrical experiences. Her produced works have been praised for their “technical marvel” and “commitment to pushing the boundaries of traditional opera…[in] mind-blowing” performances.

She has been featured as a guest lecturer and panelist and has authored over ten DEIA-centered and trauma-informed curriculum modules for Castle of Our Skins and D-Composed. She has worked closely with several institutions on their DEIA practices and community engagement programming.

Alexis also maintains an active performance career as a 2023/2024 Jane & Steven Akin Emerging Artist with Boston Lyric Opera and performs in roles ranging from baroque operas to world premiere performances. Interested in learning more about Alexis’ performance work? Click Here

Cynthia is a NYC based actor and filmmaker from California's Imperial Valley. She has worked as a voiceover artist, in TV commercials and on stage and screen. Cynthia is the founder of Semillita Productions, a creative arts media company focusing on telling stories from the Latinx diaspora. Previous to working in the arts, Cynthia was in the non-profit sector where she provided financial technical assistance to immigrant small businesses owners. She is very excited to use her financial background to assist BMP, it's projects and artists.