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Member since: July 19, 2011

A Little About Me

Wesley Chinn, General Manager and Artistic Director
Crystal Manich and Avi Stein, Artistic Directors

Avi Stein (Music Director) is the music director at St. Matthew & St. Timothy Episcopal Church in New York and coach for baroque vocal repertoire at the Institute of Sacred Music of Yale University and for the Juilliard School. Avi is currently finishing his doctoral studies in organ and harpsichord at Indiana University and holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Southern California, and was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship for study in Toulouse.  He has performed throughout the United States, in Europe, Canada, and Central America, and the New York Times described him as “a brilliant organ soloist” in his Carnegie Hall debut. Avi was previously the assistant organist and choirmaster at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Buffalo, New York. He has also conducted a variety of ensembles including a recent series called the 4x4 festival, during which he directed many of New York’s finest baroque musicians in four programs of 17th century music from four different countries over the span of four days.

Stage director Crystal Manich is thrilled to stage Giasone for Opera Omnia three years after the success of The Coronation of Poppea in 2008, which marked her directorial debut.  Crystal recently directed a new production of Handel’s Rinaldo for Pittsburgh Opera in keeping with her interest of staging 17th and 18th century drama. She also directed La Bohème for the Pittsburgh Opera main stage and will return in September to direct La traviata.  Passionate about the survival of opera, Crystal will direct the inaugural production for the newly formed Lyric Opera of Baltimore, La traviata, in November after the company’s almost two-year absence from the opera world.  She will also direct L’elisir d’amore for Utah Opera in 2012, where she was praised in 2010 for “the fabulous look of this updated staging” for La Bohème. She was also recognized for her “supreme taste, deep knowledge of the work and conceptual clarity” along with “impacting visual pictures” for her production of Madama Butterfly for Buenos Aires Lírica in Argentina. Crystal has also toured with Cirque du Soleil in Brazil. Degrees: BFA in Drama and Master of Arts Management from Carnegie Mellon University.  

Producer Wesley Chinn has been involved with early music since taking up baroque violin in high school, and has been an arts administrator of one sort or another for nearly as long. As founder of the Harvard Early Music Society, he produced several early baroque operas in English translation. He also worked at the Boston Early Music Festival in a variety of capacities, including serving as Stage Manager for Ercole Amante in 2001. Wesley moved to New York to be Operations Manager and Artistic Coordinator of The New York Collegium, spent seven years at Carnegie Hall in the Marketing/Creative Services and Artistic Programming departments, was Artistic Administrator of The Little Orchestra Society, and currently devotes his non-Opera Omnia time to a life as a freelance musician, editor, and consultant for projects ranging from concert production to medical imaging software.