Ken Burns has been making documentary films for over forty years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks: America’s Best Idea; Prohibition; The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; The Vietnam War; Country Music; and, most recently, The U.S. and the Holocaust. Future film projects include The American Buffalo, Leonardo da Vinci, The American Revolution, Emancipation to Exodus, and LBJ & the Great Society, among others. Ken’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including sixteen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. In September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In November of 2022, Ken was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe Award, Critics’ Choice Award, and Emmy Award–winning actress Patricia Clarkson can currently be seen in the critically acclaimed and timely drama Monica, available to stream on VOD. She will next be seen in the biopic Lilly, playing the title role of Fair Pay activist Lilly Ledbetter. Most recently announced, Clarkson will return to the stage in early 2024 in London, in a West End production of Long Day’s Journey into Night, opposite Brian Cox. In 2015 Clarkson was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play and a Tony Award nomination for her role in The Elephant Man. On television, she will next be seen in the series Gray, in the lead role of Cornelia Gray, a CIA spy. In 2022, she was featured in AMC+/Sundance TV’s State of the Union, for which she won her third Emmy Award. 2019 garnered Clarkson the Golden Globe Award and Critics’ Choice Award for her role in HBO’s Sharp Objects. The same year she was honored with the prestigious Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema from the 54th annual Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. In 2018, Clarkson won the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Sally Potter’s film The Party. Among her numerous accolades through the years, her 2003 role in Pieces of April earned her nominations for Academy Award, Golden Globe, SAG, Broadcast Film Critics, and Independent Spirit awards.

Linda Collazo is a mezzo-soprano whose 2022-23 season includes performances as Carmen in La Tragedie de Carmen with Camerata New Jersey, debuting as a soloist at Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium and Alice Tully Hall with Choirs of America, Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro with SAS Performing Arts Company; Vocal Fellow and Meg (cover) in Falstaff at Aspen Music Festival; and Ruth in Pirates of Penzance, Dolores Dolores/Diana Dream in On The Town, and Older Alyce in Glory Denied with Opera Naples. Additional companies: Martina Arroyo's Prelude to Performance and Sarasota Opera. Additional Roles: Cenerentola (cover) in La Cenerentola, Zita and La Cesca in Gianni Schicchi, Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, Dinah in Trouble in Tahiti, Dorabella (cover) in Cosí fan tutte, Hansel (cover) in Hansel and Gretel. Competitions: encouragement award from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions New York and Connecticut Districts and a grant and encouragement award from the Gerda Lissner Foundation Operetta & Zarzuela Division and Lieder/Song Competition. Linda is currently a studio artist with Opera Orlando for the Fall 2023, Winter, and Spring 2024, where she is singing as the Shepherd Boy in Tosca, Alicia/Frida in Frida Kahlo & The Bravest Girl in the World, Frida (cover) in Frida, Wood Sprite 2 in Rusalka, Alisa in Lucia di Lammermoor, and Stepmother in The Juniper Tree. In her free time, Linda Collazo enjoys teaching voice and piano in her home in the South Bronx and online and is a frequent guest on BronxNet TV and was highlighted on News12 Bronx for Women’s History Month for her debut at Carnegie Hall.

Sonia Manzano is a first-generation mainland Puerto Rican, raised in the South Bronx. In the early 1970’s a scholarship took her to Carnegie Mellon University, where she participated in the creation of the Broadway hit show Godspell. From there she went on to affect the lives of millions of parents and children when she was offered the opportunity to create the role of “Maria” on Sesame Street. After forty-four years on Sesame Street she decided to write books. Her most recent Scholastic novel, Coming Up Cuban, set in 1959, follows the lives of four children who represent different intersections of race and class during the Cuban Revolution. Sonia has been recognized with 15 Emmy Awards for writing Sesame Street, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Arts and Sciences 2016. She most recently received the 2022 Beacon Award from PBS. Ms. Manzano has created and developed with Fred Rogers Productions an animated children's program for PBS. Alma's Way premiered in Oct 2021.

Sarah Mezzanotte recently reprised her role in Lincoln Center's remounting of Sarah DeLappe's award-winning play The Wolves and appeared in the Broadway revival of Six Degrees of Separation. She also starred in the world premiere of Dry Land, which garnered a New York Times Critics' Pick. Her film and television credits include Chambers on Netflix, Drunk Bus, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Royal Pains, Blame, Olga Dies Dreaming, and the Amazon pilot The Interestings. Mezzanotte is a graduate of The Tisch School at NYU.

Eric Sedgwick has performed with many of music’s top talents including Leona Mitchell, Sanford Sylvan, Marni Nixon, Nicholas Phan, Laquita Mitchell, Broadway leading ladies Sarah Rice, Carole Demas, and Debra Monk, and English hornist Thomas Stacy of the New York Philharmonic. He is a staff vocal coach at the Manhattan School of Music, a faculty coach at the Tanglewood Music Center, and has served as rehearsal pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the batons of Michael Tilson Thomas, Bramwell Tovey, John Williams, and Andris Nelsons. He is also a regular pianist for programming at the Met Opera Guild, and has been an artistic contributor to the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Omaha Opera, LA Opera, Bard Summerscape, and Beth Morrison Projects. Sedwick is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music and Brown University.

In addition to appearing in several films written and directed by John Sayles, David Strathairn’s film work includes the portrayal of Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, And Good Luck, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, Howl, Dolores Claiborne, American Pastoral, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Temple Grandin, for which he received an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Lincoln, Fast Color, UFO, Nomadland, Nightmare Alley, the play and film of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, and the soon to be released Angus MacLachlan film, A Little Prayer.

Willa Cather (1873 – 1947) was a canonical American writer, the peer of her contemporaries Wharton, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway. After graduating from the University of Nebraska, she spent two decades as a journalist, educator, and editor. With O Pioneers!, published when Cather was 40, she emerged as one of the most admired and widely read novelists of the early twentieth century. Cather wrote twelve novels, six collections of short fiction, a book of poetry, and a large body of nonfiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours and, in 1944, the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714 – 1787) was a German classical composer, best known for his operas, including Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste, Paride ed Elena, Iphigénie en Aulide, the French version of Orfeo, and Iphigénie en Tauride. He was knighted in 1756.