Artist Bios
Juliet Papadopoulos is a Greek-American soprano who has performed in venues all over the New York metropolitan area and in England, Scotland, Austria, and Greece where the Greek National Herald praised her as having a “powerful and clear voice that dazzles audiences.” In January of 2024, she made her Carnegie Hall debut singing the soprano solo in John Rutter’s Magnificat, conducted by the composer himself. She was honored to return to sing at Carnegie Hall again this past May. Juliet’s international season began with a performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire at the Schoenberg Center in Vienna; in June, she toured the United Kingdom as soprano soloist in J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor with the Yale Schola Cantorum under the direction of David Hill. In August, Juliet made her professional operatic debut singing the role of Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with the Opera Theater of Connecticut. Juliet graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Purchase’s Opera program in May of 2022 and graduated this past May with her Masters in Music from the Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music and awarded the inaugural Yale School of Music Simon Carrington Award in Concert Voice.
Benjamin Harding is a Canadian-American pianist who holds a Masters degree and Professional Studies certificate from Manhattan School of Music, and a DMA in Piano Performance from the University of Maryland, College Park. He began his study of piano at the age of five, competing in a variety of festivals and competitions from an early age. Benjamin completed the performance requirements for the Associateship Degree of the Royal Conservatory of Music while in high school and has appeared on CBC Radio in his home province of New Brunswick. He has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Hong Kong. An active chamber musician, Benjamin has recently collaborated with cellists Michael Katz and Kangho Lee, violinists Anthea Kreston, Benjamin Shute, David Kim, Christopher Wu and violist Clark Potter. His primary piano teachers include Juanita Spragg, Carol O’Neil, Samuel Hsu, Nina Svetlanova, Bradford Gowen, and Edna Golandsky. Benjamin is comfortable performing in a variety of styles having performed on the stage of the Grand Ol’ Opry to Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. He serves on the piano and conducting faculty at the Csehy Summer School of Music. He is also Director of Worship Ministries at Riverstone Church in Yardley, PA.
J.A.C. Redford is a composer, arranger, orchestrator, and conductor of concert, chamber and choral music, film, television and theater scores, and music for recordings. Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Joshua Bell, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Kansas City Chorale, Los Angeles Chamber Singers, Los Angeles Master Chorale, London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra have performed his work. All Shall Be Well, The Alphabet of Revelation, Confessiones, Dappled Things, Eternity Shut in a Span, Evening Wind, The Growing Season, Inside Passage, Let Beauty Be Our Memorial, and Waltzing with Shadows are recordings devoted to his art music. He collaborated with Bruce Herman and Malcolm Guite to create the multi-disciplinary work Ordinary Saints. Redford’s 500 episodes of television include multiple seasons of Coach and St. Elsewhere, for which he was twice nominated for Emmy Awards. He composed the scores for The Trip to Bountiful, Newsies, and The Mighty Ducks II and III, conducted The Little Mermaid, and orchestrated the scores for Avatar, WALL-E, 1917, A Man Called Otto, and Skyfall, for which he also arranged and conducted Adele’s Oscar-winning title song.
Malcolm Guite, Life Fellow of Girton College Cambridge, is an internationally renowned poet and speaker, in addition to being a Coleridge scholar, and scholar of Theology & Literature, and an Anglican priest. He is the President of the George MacDonald Society, and author of numerous works on Theology & the Imagination, Coleridge, and Poetry, including chapters on George MacDonald. His publications include Mariner, a spiritual biography of Coleridge, Theology & the Poetic Imagination, and Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God. His poetry volumes include Sounding the Seasons: 70 Sonnets for the Christian Year, Parable & Paradox, and the forthcoming epic poem, Merlin’s Isle – a re-telling of the Arthurian legends. He is also host of the YouTube series, A Spell in the Library.
Eric Paździora is a composer whose music has been performed and published around the world. Reviewers have described his compositions as “fresh, exciting, and well-crafted” (Pastoral Music) and “an instant classic” (Global Christian Worship). Eric’s compositions examine the balance between ancient traditions and contemporary concerns. His D.M.A. dissertation, a one-act Scots-language chamber opera entitled House of Winter, tells the story of a woman’s struggle with dementia. The choral cycle Canticles for the Holy Innocents, composed in memory of child abuse victim Lydia Schatz, was premiered by Chorosynthesis Singers for their concert series and album Empowering Silenced Voices. Eric has also collaborated on several projects with award-winning author Jane Yolen, including the art song “Cell Phones in the Pockets of Dead Children,” commissioned by GRAMMY-nominated soprano Laura Strickling. He holds a doctorate in composition from the University of Maryland, where he studied with Mark Edwards Wilson. He was also a student of Mark Engebretson, Alejandro Rutty, and Edwin T. Childs. In addition to his composing, Eric serves as organist and music director at Epworth UMC in Gaithersburg, MD.
Chelle Stearns teaches theology at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. She has a PhD from the University of St. Andrews Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts; is the President of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music; and is an active mentor to many artists and musicians. Chelle is the author of Handling Dissonance: A Musical Theological Aesthetic of Unity, which is an exploration of a theology of unity through Arnold Schoenberg’s compositional philosophy and Colin Gunton’s trinitarian theology. Her current research focuses on the intersection of trauma, theology, the arts, and music. Her publications include book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and essays on prayer and music (with Esther Acolatse), Pneumatology and art, cultural trauma and the art of Steve Prince and Jacob Lawrence, lament in the works of composer James MacMillan, trauma and Christology, and a musical theology of trauma.