Ben Bernstein is an acting teacher for singers, a stage director, an opera composer and a performance psychologist. Trained by Viola Spolin, he was Gian Carlo Menotti’s assistant at the American Opera Center in New York. Ben has staged premiere productions of new operas and has coached singers throughout the U.S. and abroad. He has conducted master classes and directed at the Sundance Institute, the San Francisco Opera, the Juilliard School, the American Opera Center, and has been a presenter at conferences worldwide. He speaks nationally on the subject of stress and performance. As a composer, he received commissioning grants for his one act opera, The Man in the Mirror, which had a successful premiere at the American Handel Festival in Seattle. His award-winning settings for The Song of Songs have been performed around the U.S. His three books, Crush Your Test Anxiety, A Teen’s Guide to Success, and Stressed Out! for Parents have received international attention. His ongoing blog, “Be Your Best,” on the Psychology Today website regularly receives thousands of hits.

Mark Morash is currently serving as Head of Music and Chorus Master for Calgary Opera in Calgary, Canada. Prior to that, he was Director of Musical Studies for the Opera Center of San Francisco Opera for over two decades. There, he conducted for the Merola Opera Program, the Adler Fellow Showcase and Western Opera Theater. He also led performances of A Streetcar Named Desire, La Serva Padrona and Trouble in Tahiti for Opera Santa Barbara, Rigoletto for Opera Colorado, and Don Giovanni and The Turn of the Screw for the Lincoln Theater in Yountville, CA. As a collaborative pianist, Morash’s performances have taken him throughout Canada, the USA, as well as to Japan and Russia. Artists with whom Morash has appeared include Leah Crocetto, Melody Moore, Elza van den Heever, Quinn Kelsey and Michael Schade. He has accompanied numerous emerging singers in San Francisco Opera’s esteemed Schwabacher Debut recitals, and has done master coach residencies for Pacific Opera Victoria, Hawaii Opera, and for the Kia Ora and Malvina Major Foundations in New Zealand.

Sheri Greenawald served as the Director of the San Francisco Opera Center from 2002-2020, inspiring and coaching singers in the Merola and Adler Fellows Programs, who have gone on to highly successful careers on opera stages worldwide. As a singer, Sheri was an active and acclaimed performer in concerts and operas, portraying principal roles in the world premiers of several operas, including works by composers Leonard Bernstein, Daniel Catán, Carlisle Floyd, Thomas Pasatieri, and Stephen Paulus. She has performed leading roles in opera companies in the US and abroad including the Metropolitan Opera Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Bavarian State Opera, La Fenice, and the Netherlands State Opera, working with directors Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Nicholas Hytner, David Alden, Graham Vick, Goran Jarvefelt Christopher Alden and Gian-Carlo Menotti. She was particularly active as a performer with the Santa Fe Opera, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and the San Francisco Opera Company, and was a former member of the faculty at The Boston Conservatory.

Wayne Barker is an accomplished pianist, accompanist and coach. Winner of the Drama Desk Award and a Tony Award nominee for best original score (for Peter and the Star Catcher), Wayne toured with Dame Edna Everage, appearing on stage as “Master of the Dame’s Music,” in her Broadway triumph Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance, and performing with her at the 2006 Commonwealth Games (Melbourne) and the 75th Royal Command Variety Performance (Edinburgh), as well as Edna’s Australian, UK, and US Farewell Tours. Wayne composed and arranged the score of Sister’s Follies at Abrons Arts Center for acclaimed director (and 2015 MacArthur Fellow) Basil Twist, and has also contributed dozens of original arrangements to symphony pops programs, including those presented by the New York Pops, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra and the Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco and St. Louis symphonies, among many others. As actor, he co-starred with Karen Murphy in Souvenir and most recently appeared in the record-breaking world premiere of A Confederacy of Dunces at the Huntington Theatre Company.

Darryl Cooper is currently the Music Director and Vocal Coach for Opera Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He most recently conducted Orpheus in the Underworld and Dido and Aeneas for UNLV Opera Theatre. Previously, he was the Assistant Music Director of the Opera Program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he worked for over twenty years as a pianist, coach, and conductor. Darryl is also on the faculty of the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, and has previously been a member of the opera and coaching faculties of the Boston Conservatory, Boston University Theater Institute, Crittenden Opera Studio, Chautauqua Opera, Bay Area Summer Opera Theater Institute, and an Artist-in-Residence at Brandeis University Mr. Cooper has prepared numerous professional and workshop opera productions in the Bay Area, New England, and Italy. In addition as well as Jerome Robbin’s West Side Story Ballet for the San Francisco Ballet. He is an active recital partner, and has been heard on WGBH Radio, Boston.