Jarrod Lee (Hello, Star Librettist) hails from Alabama, and presently resides in Maryland. Lee’s collaborations include: Hello, Star with composer Carla Lucero, The Delta King’s Blues with composer Damien Geter, What is Love? An AI Story, which was awarded Crowd Favorite and Runner-up with the ATL 96hr Opera Festival/Competition, Kandake, a community opera called Spirit Moves and an art song cycle called Journey to You with composer Timothy Amukele, Oshun, Two Corners, and the choral song Beyond What I See with composer B.E. Boykin, Voices of Zion, the art song See your Equal, which placed third in the composition category of the George Shirley Vocal Competition, with composer Ronald “Trey” Walton. Works in development include: Promised Land with composer Glenn McClure and Split-Second/LIFE with composer Jasmine Barnes. Lee has received commissions from the Alliance for New Music Theater, the Atlanta Opera, IN Series, Finger Lakes Opera, Opera Parallèle, The Peabody Institute, Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Washington National Opera. In addition to original stories, Jarrod translated a deconstruction of Die Zauberflӧte called Black Flute. Jarrod draws from his performance experiences when creating stories. In concert with writing and performing, Lee works in Performing Arts Administration and Consulting as the Director of New Voices for Maryland Opera and as the Projects Director for the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA). Lee’s work is influenced by his experience of being Black, Gay, and American, adding to the canon of stories written by Black Americans for the operatic stage and beyond.

Carla Lucero (Hello, Star Composer) Originally from Los Angeles, Bay Area Composer and Librettist, Carla Lucero, studied composition at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Her operas, WUORNOS (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts – 2001 San Francisco); Juana (with Co-Librettist, AliciaGaspar de Alba, Opera UCLA – 2019 Los Angeles and dell’ Arte Opera Ensemble – 2023 New York); Las tres mujeres de Jerusalén (The Three Women of Jerusalem) (LA Opera – 2022, 2023 Los Angeles); The Everywhere of Her (with Librettist, Velina Hasu Houston, The Ebell of Los Angeles – 2023, 2024), Touch (with Co-Librettist, Marianna Mott Newirth, Opera Birmingham – 2024); ¡Chicanísima! (Quinteto Latino – 2024 San Francisco; Escenia Ensamble –(tour – 2025, 2026 Mérida, Valladolid and Morelia, México); and Hello, Star (with Librettist, Jarrod Lee, Opera Parallèle and Peabody Conservatory – 2025 San Francisco and 2026 Baltimore); as well as three in development, Tower of Babel (LA Opera 2026), TEA (with Librettist, Velina Hasu Houston, Hawai’i Opera Theatre – 2027 Honolulu) and Muriel & Anita (Mercury Theater – 2027 Petaluma, CA), challenge gender, racial, cultural, LGBTQ+ and disability stereotypes. Lucero and her work have been awarded four OPERA America grants for the commissioning and presentation of her operas, as well as support for various other projects from Creative Work Fund, Horizons Foundation, Meet the Composer, InterMusic SF, New York Community Trust, Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, California Arts Council, American Chamber Music Society and other distinguished institutions and foundations. Her music is performed frequently throughout the US and internationally, (México, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Italy, Germany, Canada), and was honored with the distinction of becoming the 2020 Inaugural Composer of the Leni Alexander Festival in Santiago, Chile. She regularly creates music and/or text for song cycles, art songs, dance productions and film. Selected works can be found on Navona Records, including solo piano arrangements from WUORNOS, interpreted by Anna Kislitsyna; a soprano aria from Juana, “Sin vos”, interpreted by Michelle Allie Drever and chamber ensemble including traditional Aztec instruments and instruments of antiquity; and an upcoming song cycle, Love in Times of War, commissioned and interpreted by soprano, Katherine Jolly.

L. Peter Callender (Hello, Star Director) is an American theatre director and actor, best known as Artistic Director of the African‑American Shakespeare Company since 2009. Born in Trinidad and raised in England and New York, he honed his craft at Juilliard, London’s Webber Douglas Academy, and Japan’s Tadashi Suzuki Company of Toga. Over four decades, he’s performed on Broadway, Off‑Broadway, and at major regional theaters—including Cal Shakes and American Conservatory Theater—and earned multiple accolades such as Theatre Tampa Bay Awards and Bay Area Critics Circle honors. As a director, he’s helmed classical and contemporary works across the U.S., including August Wilson’s Jitney and Shakespeare’s Richard II, and debuted his original play, Strange Courtesies, in 2020. A respected educator, Callender has taught Shakespeare and directing at Stanford, Emory, and the San Francisco School of the Arts.

Nicole Paiement (Opera Parallèle, Founder and General & Artistic Director) has gained an international reputation as a conductor of contemporary music and opera. Her numerous recordings include many world premiere works. Also Principal Guest Conductor at The Dallas Opera, Director of the New Music Ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and an active guest conductor, she has conducted companies across the US, including Washington National Opera, Seattle Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Atlanta Opera. In 2022, she debuted with the English National Opera conducting Jake Heggie’s It’s a Wonderful Life, returning in 2023 to conduct Talbot’s Everest with the BBC Symphony at the Barbican Center. In 2024, she debuted with the Vienna Volksoper, conducting both a symphonic concert and John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary.

Brian Staufenbiel (Opera Parallèle, Creative Director) has directed and created the conceptual designs for the company’s productions since its founding in 2010. Specializing in multimedia, immersive, and interdisciplinary productions, Staufenbiel works across a range of disciplines, collaborating with film and media designers, choreographers and dancers, circus artists, and designer fabricators. His progressive approach to stagecraft has garnered critical acclaim for many of OP’s productions, including Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking; Philip Glass’s Orphée, Les Enfants Terribles, and La Belle et la Bête; Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar; Alban Berg’s Wozzeck; Terence Blanchard’s Champion; and Jonathan Dove’s Flight.

Rebecca Petra Naomi Seeman is the Artistic Executive Director of Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus and a member of the music faculty of the Performing Arts and Social Justice Department at the University of San Francisco. She has previously held positions at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Santa Cruz and is sought after as a guest conductor and clinician for choral competitions and festivals.

A Bay Area native, Rebecca specializes in the music of Sweden and the intersection between the performing arts and social justice. An advocate of new music, she has commissioned and premiered works by composers such as Trevor Weston, Karin Rehnqvist, Michael Bussewitz-Quarm, and Zanaida Robles, with upcoming commissions by Carla Lucero and Gabriela Lena Frank. Previous opera credits include serving as the conductor of Opium: Diary of Cure, an opera about Jean Cocteau by her brother Aaron Seeman. She is thrilled to be working with Opera Parallèle on this beautiful new work, Hello, Star.

Rebecca holds a BA in Vocal Performance and an MA in Performance Practice and Conducting from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a DMA in Choral Conducting and Pedagogy from the University of Iowa. Her conducting teachers include Nicole Paiement, Eric Ericson, William Hatcher, and Timothy Stalter. She holds an MNA from the University of San Francisco’s Masters of Nonprofit Administration program, with a focus in ADEI in the Performing Arts. Additional credentials include certificates in Estill Voice Training.