Brundibar & But The Giraffe at VOICES Boston Children's Choir

Maestro Dan Ryan is a multi-hyphenate musician acclaimed for his musical creativity, relentless inventiveness, and adventurous spirit. A native of Greater Boston, Dan’s work spans many different mediums and genres as a prized conductor, composer, educator, and singer. He currently serves as the Artistic Director of VOICES Boston, Co-Founder of The Gena Branscombe Project, on faculty at Interlochen Arts Camp, and as the newly named conductor of the Colleges of the Fenway Orchestra and Chorus. Dan has conducted hundreds of concerts, operas, and musicals, and was a two-time finalist for the American Prize. With the advent of Covid-19, Dan has cemented himself as an innovative leader passionate about the persistence of healthy and high-quality music performance, training, and collaboration. As the former Co-Artistic Director of MassOpera, he made headlines with his opera truck brainchild, #SocialDistanSing, personally driving live opera from the back of his pickup to over 35 locations during the first year of the pandemic and serving Boston’s homebound, veteran, low-income, and disabled communities. His campaign #MassOperaVotes committed hundreds of singers throughout the nation to both vote in the 2020 election and sing at the polls. And in Fall 2021, Dan conceived, orchestrated, and conducted 18 sold-out performances of a site-specific La Traviata at the Historic New England’s Eustis Estate that was hailed as “intimate and immaculate.” With a deep commitment to supporting the next generation of music makers, Dan has blazed a path in music education and training during Covid. With the premier children’s choir VOICES Boston, Dan created #ZoomBopping to provide both safe performance opportunities and surprise melodies and motivation to classrooms and corporations worldwide; inaugurated VOICES Innovation: online courses teaching students across the country music technology software; and collaborated with White Snake Projects on Alice in the Pandemic, the first CGI animated opera performed remote and live on an online platform which the Wall Street Journal recognized as “a remarkable new environment for operatic experimentation.” Additionally, each summer, Dan serves as a music director and vocal coach at Interlochen Arts Camp. Dan’s compositions and arrangements sit at the crossroads of classical music, rock, and golden age musical theatre. Past commissions include Putnam Chorale Youth Chorus, VOICES Boston, and In Good Company Theatre. Current projects in development include the new musical Lessons from Brimfield (workshop premiere at the Brimfield Antique Market in May 2022); original choral music for Christina, a new play by Alexis Scheer; and restoring and reviving Gena Branscombe’s lost choral-orchestral masterwork Pilgrims of Destiny. Dan holds a MM from The Boston Conservatory and BA from Catawba College. He is fully vaccinated and boosted and lives in Brookline with his wife Alexis and their mini Aussie Sagan. When he is not actively conducting, composing music you can find him in the woods, or staring at the stars, dreaming about it.

Allison was named one of 2015 United States Presidential Scholar's, most influential teachers by the United States Secretary Department of Education. Allison served as the Department Head of Movement, Dance and Devising, where she also taught movement at the Professional Performing Arts School of New York City. She has taught intensive Meisner-technique acting courses for both The School of Cinema and Performing Arts and The National Theatre for the Handicapped and was a Teaching Artist with Urban Arts Partnership for 8 years in New York City. Allison is also a Theater Director and leads her Emotion in Motion workshops, both as a technique for devising multi-media theatre and as a therapeutic process. Allison has directed at numerous theatres in New York City, regionally and internationally, and received mentorship, as an Assistant Director at the Steppenwolf Theatre for several years. She is an on-going Resident Director with New York University’s First Look Theatre Company, a member of the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors' Lab and a 2004 SSDC Traube Fellowship nominee. In her role as National Healing & Wellness Consultant & Practitioner for the Joyful Heart Foundation, Allison co-developed and led programs, workshops and retreats for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse and the healers working on the frontlines of trauma, addressing vicarious trauma. Allison was the Founder of Creative Seeds, a non-profit organization, which was focused on preventative and post-trauma work through creative arts immersion projects and initiatives in both South Africa and the United States. Allison is a certified yoga teacher with specialized training in yoga for trauma. She taught Vinyasa Yoga at Sonic Yoga in New York City, Bhakti Yoga Shala in Los Angeles, BODY of Santa Fe and was the resident yoga teacher for the Santa Fe Opera and currently teaches at Align Brooklyn. Allison completed her Kundalini Yoga Therapy Certification module 1 and also completed her Level 1 Trauma Resiliency Model certification.