TAA Musings

Ricky Ian Gordon is a composer and writer based in New York, whose works have been performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and all over the United States and Europe. As a leading writer of vocal music that spans art song, opera, and musical theatre, Gordon’s songs have been performed and recorded by such renowned singers as Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Nathan Gunn, Nicole Cabell, Frederica von Stade, and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. The New York Times wrote, “If the music of Ricky Ian Gordon had to be defined by a single quality, it would be the bursting effervescence infusing songs that blithely blur the lines between art song and the high–end Broadway music of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. It’s caviar for a world gorging on pizza!”

His opera performances include The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, presented by the New York City Opera/National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene; Intimate Apparel presented by the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater; and Orfeo ed Euridice performed at Lincoln Center. His other many works include The House Without a Christmas Tree (Houston Grand Opera), 27 (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis); A Coffin in Egypt (Houston Grand Opera); Rappahannock County (Virginia Opera); Green Sneakers (Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and Lincoln Center); The Grapes of Wrath (Minnesota Opera); and The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Houston Grand Opera). His musical Sycamore Trees, performed at the Signature Theatre, won a Helen Hayes Award. My Life with Albertine won an AT&T Award and the Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Music Theatre Foundation Award. Dream True, performed at the Vineyard Theatre, won a Richard Rodgers Award. Gordon is currently working on an opera with librettists Lynn Nottage and Ruby Gerber titled This House.

As a teacher, Gordon has taught master classes and composition classes in colleges and universities throughout the country, including Yale, New York University, Northwestern, Juilliard, and the Manhattan School of Music. His honors include an Obie Award, the Stephen Sondheim Award, the 2003 Alumni Merit Award for exceptional achievement and leadership from Carnegie Mellon University, a Shen Family Foundation Award, the Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Theater Foundation Award, the Constance Klinsky Award, and many awards from ASCAP.

Gordon’s memoir, Seeing Through, was recently published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and is also available as an audiobook.

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Chaz Guest is an American painter and sculptor who is profoundly inventive and captures the raw essence of the human spirit. Blessed with the gift of realizing his richly textured visions and tapping into their vibrant essence, Guest leaves those who encounter his works moved in powerfully personal ways. Born in Niagara Falls, New York, he earned a degree and studied graphic design at Southern Connecticut State University, then studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. The city became his muse, nurturing boldness and improvisation within his spirit. He then moved to Paris, France, where he worked for the haute couture magazine, Joyce.

Guest has exhibited in many prestigious galleries in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the United States, and his work is found in many spaces of distinction. Barack Obama has two of his works: one of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and a portrait of himself. Oprah Winfrey owns a Guest painting of Maya Angelou as a little girl, Poised with a Pencil, as well as the work Industrial Revolution Classroom from the Cotton Series. This series of work grew from Guest’s personal connection to a plantation in Georgia owned by his great-grandparents. Using cotton picked from the grounds of the plantation as his inspiration, he created the Cotton Series. Guest says of this work: “I needed the world to understand that those men, women, and children were not slaves. They were enslaved people. I painted the dignity that lived inside them.”

Beyond his acclaimed solo exhibits, Chaz Guest’s soul is reflected in his philanthropy and lives and breathes deepest in his work with children. In 2011, he was the Goodwill Ambassador to the Republic of Gambia where his goal was to instill in its citizens an unshakable sense of pride in their culture. Guest reflects: "I want children all over the world to paint themselves – a kid from the ghetto connecting with a kid from Gambia swapping portraits. When you can depict yourself through art, you grow up with an amazing found respect for yourself and humanity."

"The greatest thing that people get from my paintings is seeing themselves within them, no matter who you are," Guest concludes. "By the time I leave this earth, I want to see people moving closer together."

Victoria Clark maintains a wonderfully diverse career as an award-winning actor, director, and educator. Equally at home in plays, musicals, film, television, and the concert stage, Clark continues to explore the human condition through her acting and singing. As a stage director, her work spans from original musicals to opera, to educational programming for all ages.

Clark began her musical training with voice and piano lessons at the age of six. She was blessed with extraordinary educational opportunities, along with generous teachers and mentors including Don Hermonat at First Community Church in Dallas, Sharon Grahnquist at the Hockaday School in Dallas, and Edward Sayegh in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Her education expanded to include the Interlochen Summer Arts Program, the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Clark graduated cum laude from Yale University with a degree in music, winning the Jonathan Edwards College Arts Award for extraordinary achievement in the arts. She then attended New York University’s prestigious Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program as a stage director (“Cycle 1” cohort).

The original production of Sunday in the Park with George was the beginning of her journey as a professional actor, which has led to thirteen Broadway and numerous off-Broadway plays and musicals, and many film and television appearances. Highlights include The Light in the Piazza on Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater for which she was awarded the Tony Award for Leading Actress in a Musical, as well as Tony-nominated starring roles in the original casts of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Sister Act, and Gigi.

Clark originated the title role in Kimberly Akimbo off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company, winning her a 2022 Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and receiving nominations from the Drama League and Drama Desk. The show moved to Broadway, earning Clark her second Tony Award for Leading Actress in 2023 and a Grammy nomination.  

Clark’s films, among others, include The Happening, Wanderland, Main Street, Harvest, Cradle Will Rock, and Archaeology of a Woman. Her television credits include The Gilded Age, Elsbeth, Homeland, The Blacklist, Pose, Little America, The Good Wife, Mercy, Law & Order, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Hallmark’s One Royal Holiday. Clark directed Dance of Death at Classic Stage Company, and the original musical Newton’s Cradle for the New York Musical Theatre Festival, winning the festival’s best director award. She directed the world premiere of The Trouble With Doug for the Fredericia Theater in Fredericia, Denmark, and most recently, in March 2025, directed Love Life by Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner at New York City Center Encores!, starring Kate Baldwin and Brian Stokes Mitchell.

Clark, an avid teacher and educator, began her professional career as a voice teacher and technician training all ages and all skill levels. She served on the faculty at Yale University and as artist-in-residence at Pace University and Duke University. She teaches at conservatories and universities worldwide, as well as in her private studio in New York City. Her solo debut recording, Fifteen Seconds of Grace, is available through PS Classics as well as the re-imagining of Maury Yeston’s acclaimed song cycle December Songs, featuring Clark with full orchestra.

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Emmy, Grammy, Tony, and SAG Award nominee Norm Lewis can currently be seen leading the cast in the off-Broadway production of Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, for which he received rave reviews. Prior to that, Lewis starred in the national tour of the Tony Award-winning production of A Soldier’s Play and in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies. He starred in Spike Lee’s critically acclaimed Da 5 Bloods and in the groundbreaking FX series Pose. Additionally, Lewis can be seen starring opposite Hilary Swank in the feature The Good Mother, Amazon Prime's newest series Swarm, and Hulu’s Up Here. He was also seen as Caiaphas in the award-winning NBC television special Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert. Lewis returned to Broadway in the fall of 2021, starring in Chicken and Biscuits at the Circle in the Square Theatre. His many off-Broadway roles include Sweeney Todd in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (winning the Audience Development Committee “AUDELCO” Award), Dessa Rose (receiving a Drama Desk nomination and AUDELCO Award), and Shakespeare in the Park’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona (receiving a Drama League nomination).

In 2014, Lewis made history as The Phantom of the Opera’s first African American Broadway phantom. He received Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle award nominations for his performance as Porgy in the Broadway production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and appeared in London’s West End as Javert in Les Misérables and Les Misérables: The 25th Anniversary Concert, which aired on PBS. Other PBS shows include the Live from Lincoln Center productions of Showboat, Norm Lewis: Who Am I?, and New Year’s Eve: A Gershwin Celebration. Lewis can be seen recurring in the VH1 series Daytime Divas, alongside Vanessa Williams. Other television credits include Women of the Movement, Law & Order, and Blue Bloods, as well as his recurring role as Senator Edison Davis on the hit drama Scandal.

Additional film credits include Christmas in Tune (starring opposite Reba McEntire), Magnum Opus, Sex and the City 2, Confidences, and Preaching to the Choir. His recordings include The Norm Lewis Christmas Album and This is the Life.

Lewis is a proud founding member of Black Theatre United, an organization which stands together to help protect black people, black talent, and black lives of all shapes and orientations in theatre and communities across the country.

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