to forget and begin again by Carol Szymanski

Carol Szymanski’s language-based art spans many media, from sculpture and photography to video and performance, and often includes musical elements with poetic texts. She has become particularly known for a series of sculptures in the form of invented musical instruments, particularly brass horns, using an alphabetic font she designed. Recent exhibitions and performances including these instruments have been with Sam Jones and the Talea Ensemble at the 100th birthday celebration for Pierre Boulez, Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew, Brooklyn, 2025; at Torn Page, New York, 2025; at Industry City as part of The Brooklyn Rail Singing in Unison exhibition series, 2022; in the Artists Studio series curated by Jason Moran, with Jaime Branch, Veterans Hall, Park Avenue Armory, 2021; The Phonemophonic Alphabet Brass Band, Winter Garden, New York, New Sounds Live series curated by John Schaefer, with Ben Neill and Pauline Oliveros, 2017; with Wadada Leo Smith and Betsy McClelland, The Drawing Center, New York, 1993; and with Dewey Redman at Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, 1993. These works have received press attention in publications including Art Press, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Time Out, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. Szymanski has been a recipient of numerous awards including the Rome Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

Fay Victor is a sound artist/bandleader who uses performance, improvisation and composition to examine representations of modern life and blackness. Victor has released thirteen critically acclaimed albums as a leader, has performed with luminaries such as Gary Bartz, Archie Schepp, George Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Randy Weston, Misha Mengelberg, Roswell Rudd and Moor Mother. Victor is a member of the esteemed new music ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemblem and co-directs their educational wing, Ensemble Evolution. Victor has an esteemed reputation as an educator on the faculty of the College of Performing Arts at the New School and at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY. In Spring 2025, Victor was a visiting professor at Harvard University in the Department of Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry. Moreover, Victor is the Board Chair for the Jazz Leaders Fellowship, an initiative of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music to fund black women/non-binary jazz leaders of the present and future.

Arda Cabaoğlu Virtanen is an artist, musician, music scholar, and educator residing between New York City and Helsinki. A pioneer in the genre of long-durational musical performance art, his work Forced Misophonia: BLAST BLOW PULSE, performed eight hours a day for 4.5 weeks as part of AKIS/FLUX curated by the Marina Abramović Institute in Hudson, NY, is considered one of the longest musical performances ever realized by a musical instrumentalist. As broad as his cultural background, he holds a Doctorate from the Eastman School of Music and also studied at the Malmö Academy of Music in Sweden. Cabaoğlu Virtanen’s mentors include Håkan Hardenberger, James Thompson, Bo Nilsson, Olle Sjöberg, and Erden Bilgen. An award-winning performer, he has appeared in numerous world premieres. Dr. Cabaoglu Virtanen has been a Contemporary Art Music Project artist since 2022 and he regularly performs with his trumpets in settings ranging from historical to contemporary across cities worldwide.

Di Sherlock began as an actor and has worked extensively in theatre, multi-media performance, and television in the UK. She now mainly writes and directs. As writer-director her work includes Alexander The Great—Between Dreams and Imagination for The British Library, The World’s Wife and Miss Havisham’s Expectations (Edinburgh Festival and London West End), several works for the BBC Philharmonic, including the Services No Longer Required broadcast as part of the BBC’s World War 1 commemorations, Mary's Hand, a chamber opera about ‘Bloody’ Queen Mary (UK tour) and an all female Odyssey (Birmingham University). Her libretto Five Beacons of Light, a large-scale choral work for professional and young voices in response to our damaged oceans, premieres in the UK in 2026. She is currently working on The Snow Queen—a Cyber Fairytale, a music theater adaptation of the Hans Anderson fairytale, which interrogates our AI future. Di has worked with Carol Szymanski as drama director on He Said She Thought.

Canning Robb is a New York based actor, producer, and filmmaker. Her work has been featured in film festivals across the country, including Greenpoint Film Festival and New Faces New Voices, as well as in Insider. Two of her projects are currently making their way through the festival circuit (Farther Along and The Key). In addition, Canning is an accomplished voiceover artist and singer, whose work can be heard on radio, film, and TV, as well as on the navigation app Waze.

Anya Bernstein is an actor and writer from New York City. She is a graduate of William Esper Studio, and has performed at Pageant, the Brooklyn Rail, and with the New York City Players/Incoming Theater Division.

Luan Rogers is an actor and filmmaker from Dublin, Ireland. Most recently he starred in Mint Condition, a short film which he co-wrote and produced. He is currently pursuing a master’s in documentary journalism at CUNY.