BIOS

Eleanor Reissa is a Tony nominated director (Those Were the Days) a Broadway, film, and television actress (Indecent, Minyan, and HBO’s The Plot Against America) an award-winning playwright and a singer in major venues in New York and internationally. Her memoir, THE LETTERS PROJECT: A Daughter’s Journey, was published this past January and has been critically acclaimed: “Among the great number of personal takes on the Holocaust, Eleanor Reissa’s book really stands out for its intelligence and courage.” David Margolick. “This journey of discovery is riveting.” Joseph Berger.  She is currently the host of Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive Podcast – Those Who Were There: Voices of the Holocaust. 

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Cilla Owens’ cd ‘Tis What It Is as noted by Jazz Times: “An impressive debut as a leader from a well-kept NYC secret. Owens is a superbly gifted musician. Her sound, shaded and enriched by her extensive, intersecting experiences within the jazz, soul and spiritual spheres, is as smooth as Nancy Wilson, as authoritative as Sarah Vaughan and as deeply informed as Carmen McRae, yet remains distinctly her own.”  In addition to performing at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and internationally, Cilla is the director of the Jazz Vocal Workshop at CUNY Hunter College and the Adelphi University Jazz Ensemble. For over a decade she was a member of The Great Day Chorale, dedicated to the preservation of the Negro Spiritual, founded by the late musicologist Louvinia Pointer. Cilla was the first Katowitz-Radin Artist in Residence for the Brooklyn Public Library in 2015, where she presented Lebendig in Brooklyn, a tribute to Yiddish Theater beyond Second Avenue.  She was a featured vocalist with Jacques D’Amboise’s National Dance Institute.  Her credits include Lionel Hampton, Harold Ousley, Bross Townsend, Jon Hendricks, and Michael Hill.  Cilla Owens has a Master of Performance from Hunter College.

Paul Shapiro, saxophonist and composer, has been a mainstay of New York’s creative music scene since the 1980’s. His recordings for John Zorn’s Tzadik label, starting with Midnight Minyan in 2003, proved to be transformative, as he reimagined traditional synagogue melodies through a jazz lens. Soon after he formed the Ribs & Brisket Revue planting its musical heels where the Borscht Belt intersected 52nd Street. Shapiro was commissioned to score the 1925 Jewish silent film “His People” which has been performed alongside the film internationally. His recording credits include Lou Reed, Queen Latifah, Frankie Knuckles, Ofra Haza, David Byrne, Jay-Z, The Microscopic Septet, Brooklyn Funk Essentials, his own band Foreign Legion and many others.