TAYLOR MAC: BORN TO RUN (TO AND FROM THE HAMPTONS)

Lyrics / Concept / Director / Performer

Taylor Mac is a MacArthur fellow, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, a Tony nominee for Best Play, and the recipient of the International Ibsen Award.  Selected works include:  Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (a musical inspired by John Berendt’s non-fiction novel); Joy and Pandemic (a realism play about an abstract art school); The Hang (a Passion Play/jazz opera about the final hours of Socrates, with lyrics by Mac and music by Matt Ray); The Fre (a queer children’s play set in a ball pit); Gary:  A Sequel to Titus Andronicus (a tragedy determined to become a comedy); A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (a 24-hour performance art concert about community);  Hir (an absurd realism play about changing America); The Walk Across America for Mother Earth (an anarchist adaptation of Three Sisters about activism, with music by Ellen Maddow); The Lily’s Revenge (a Noh inspired flowergory manifold about a flower who wants to be the center of the story, with music by Rachel Garniez); The Young Ladies Of (a paternal mystery); The Be(A)st of Taylor Mac (a ukulele confessional about the war on terror); Red Tide Blooming (a freak-show musical about gentrification); The Last Two People on Earth (a two-man cabaret for seagulls about the joy of singing, created with Mandy Patinkin, Susan Stroman, and Paul Ford). Taylor also had the title role in Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando (Signature Theatre, directed by Will Davis).  Films include Whitman in the Woods (directed by Noah Greenberg, streaming on All Arts) and Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music (a concert doc directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, streaming on Max).

taylormac.org

Photo: Little Fang

Music / Music Director / Arranger

Matt Ray is an Obie Award-winning theater-maker, composer, pianist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and music director. His arrangements have been called “wizardly” (Time Out NY) and “ingenious” (NY Times), and his piano playing referred to as “classic, well-oiled swing” (NY Times) and “to cry for” (Ebony). For his work on Taylor Mac’s show A 24-Decade History of Popular Music he and Mac shared the 2017 Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired By American History. He and Mac’s jazz-based theater piece The Hang opened to rave reviews in January of 2022 and won Matt a 2023 Obie Award for Music Direction and Composition. The show also received four Drama Desk and two Drama League nominations including a Drama Desk nomination for Matt Ray for Best Music. His show Matt Ray Plays Hoagy Carmichael featuring Kat Edmonson premiered at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series in 2018. He has performed worldwide, including as a US Department of State Jazz Ambassador.

Photo: Willa Folmar

Costume Designer

Beloved downtown bon vivant and all-around creative provocateur Machine Dazzle has been dazzling stages via costumes, sets, and performance for decades. Recognized with a 2024 EMMY award for “Outstanding Costume Design” in the HBO documentary “Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History of Popular Music,” Machine’s unconventional wearable art and installations have reached great acclaim. He was, additionally, the co-recipient of the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design, the 2017 Henry Hewes Design award, a 2022 United States Artists Fellow, and a 2024 TDF/Irene Sharaf “Kitty Leech Ascending Artist” award recipient. He delivered a TED Talk at TED Vancouver in 2023. As the 2024 Witt Artist in Residence, Machine participated in the University of Michigan’s Penny Stamps lecture series and opened a solo-installation in 3 parts, Ouroboros, at UMMA. Machine Dazzle has had solo exhibitions at NYC’s Museum of Arts and Design (Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle) and Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre (Machine Dazzle: Art and Intention).  As a stage designer, Machine has collaborated with Julie Atlas Muz, Big Art Group, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, Taylor Mac, Basil Twist, Godfrey Reggio, Jennifer Miller, The Dazzle Dancers, Big Art Group, Mike Albo, Stanley Love, Soomi Kim, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Opera Philadelphia, the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, the Curran Theatre, and Spiegelworld; and has created bespoke looks for fashion icons including designer Diane von Furstenberg and model Cara Delevingne for the 2019 Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala. Other collaborations include Bassline Fabulous with the Catalyst Quartet (Metropolitan Museum of Art); Treasure, a rock and cabaret of original songs + accompanying fashion show; and the 2023 premier of the Rameau comedic opéra-ballet Io (Opera Lafayette, The Kennedy Center).

Photo: Gregory Kramer

Guitar

Viva DeConcini plays guitar like a flaming sword, screaming train, ringing bell, and a scratching chicken. She sings as if Freddy Mercury had been a woman, and she writes songs eclectically. Viva has played all over the world, from holes in the wall to the Monterey Jazz Fest. She has written and produced 4 full-length rock albums, 4 original music videos, a 10-episode podcast, and a poetry video for the Guggenheim's Works and Process. She musically directed works at the Guggenheim Theater and The WP. Her work has charted on CMJ, been featured in No Depression Magazine and she is one of the few females to be profiled in Guitar Player Magazine. She is currently working on an original web series queer feminist spaghetti western operetta with sock puppets. “Crushable” – Art Forum, “Virtuosic guitar shredding” – The New York Times, “A beautiful voice” – KUNM

Photo: Willa Folmar

Drums

Shirazette Tinnin is a 2022 Latin Grammy Nominee for Andean-Funk’s “The Sacred Leaf”, 18th St. Make Jazz Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, author, health coach, music director, drummer, composer, and bandleader. She is a full-time Associate Professor of Percussion at Berklee College of Music. Tinnin is the American Drummer for Dee Dee Bridgewater and freelances with other artists including Deborah Cox, Lea Delaria (OITNB), Endea Owens, Yuri Juárez’s Afro-Peruano, Afrikkanitha, Alan Harris, Alicia Olatuja, Nicole Mitchell, Taylor Mac, Tia Fuller, Mimi Jones, Orange Coffee, Alicia Keys, and Black Girls Rock. She leads her own projects – “Shirazette & Sonic WallPaper Band” and “Moods of Her”. Tinnin was music coordinator for Zawolé Zollar’s Urban Bush Women (2017 – 2023), musical director for Alan Harris’s “Cross That River”, and curator of “Jazz Women'' at Little Island (2021). With a background in drum set, marching, classical, and world percussion, Tinnin’s primary instrument is drum set. She serves on the advisory board of her alma mater Appalachian State University and earned a master’s in music from Northern Illinois University in Jazz Pedagogy under saxophonist Ron Carter. Tinnin released her third album “The Cards That Life Can Deal” in 2021 and has new music – feat. Christian McBride – coming soon. 

Bass

Bassist and multi-instrumentalist Gary Wang has been playing professionally in New York City for over 25 years, performing, touring and recording with a diverse array of artists including Anat Fort, Taylor Mac, Ben Monder, Ed Cherry, Peter Bernstein, Michael Leonhart, Madeleine Peyroux, and T.S. Monk, Matt Ray and Dana Lyn among many others. He has also subbed regularly on the Tony award winning Broadway musical Hadestown. Gary’s side solo project Shapes On Parade has released two albums on Bandcamp. He also is a member of the San Francisco-based band The Invisible Cities, and has also contributed production and overdubbing work to projects by Michael Leonhart, Sam Sadigursky, Goh Nakamura and choreographer Kakuti Lin with the Full Circle Dance Company.