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Join us for the final reading of this amazing new work before it goes into its final development period and world premiere in the fall of 2010.  If you’ve been following the development of The Voice Within, this will catapult you into a new dimension of its intricate and stunning landscape of vocals and text.  The Voice Within is a richly textured exploration of the voice – the voice as vocal instrument, the voice as our expression of all we behold around us and all that emerges from us and, ultimately, all that connects us to that singular voice of our humanity.  We welcome you into the journey, the discovery and look forward to what emerges from The Voice Within.

The cast: Terry Burrell, Aisha de Haas, Darius de Haas, Tina Fabrique, La Tanya Hall, Brianna Horne, Dennis Stowe, Richard Waits, Jason Walker, and J.D. Webster.

Diedre Murray

Diedre Murray is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, two-time Obie Winner and master musician. She is an innovative composer, cellist, producer and curator. In the 1970s and 80s, she pioneered the use of the cello as a jazz and new world music instrument.  Since the 90s she has turned her attention to composing for extended musical works and the theatre. Credits include Unending Pain, co-presented by the Performance Garage and the Whitney Museum of American Art, toured to the Studio Museum of Harlem and Productions Traquen'Arts Cello Festival in Montreal; Lets Go Down to the River, for the Willasau Jazz Festival in Switzerland; The Eves of Nhor, for National Dutch Radio and De Effenaar Festival in Eindhoven Holland; Kamerados, for mixed ensemble at The Women's Improviser Festival in New York; Five Minute Tango, for the inaugural concert at the Danny Kaye/Sylvia Fine Playhouse entitled, performed by the Manhattan Brass Quintet; The Conversation for the Seattle-based New Performance Group at the Walker Arts Center in Minnesota; You Don't Miss the Water, a music-theatre piece, in collaboration with noted poet Cornelius Eady, produced by the Music Theatre Group (MTG); Women In The Dunes, a dance piece created by Blondel Cummings for the Japan Society; the jazz-opera Running Man, for which she wrote the original story and score, and book with Cornelius Eady (two Obie Awards, finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama); music arrangements for Eli's Coming (Obie Award); The Blackamour Angel; an adaptation by Diane Paulus of James Baldwin’s Another Country; Current projects include The Voice Within, with playwright Marcus Gardley, commissioned and produced by Harlem Stage with a world premiere scheduled for fall 2010; a new musical, Sweet Billy and the Zooloo’s, with writer Lynn Nottage, for Colored Girl’s Productions; and Spoleto, a series of rags for solo piano in 2009.  She received a B.S. degree from Hunter College in Ethnomusicology and has numerous recordings.

Marcus Gardley

Marcus Gardley is a multiple award-winning poet-playwright who recently won the prestigious 2008 Helen Merrill Award. His most recently produced play, Love is a Dream House in Lorin received outstanding critical acclaim in a sold-out, extended run, and was nominated for the National Critics Steinberg New Play Award. He has had six plays produced at Yale Repertory Theatre. Gardley is a 2007 Kellsering Honoree and the recipient of the SF Bay Areaís Gerbode Emerging Playwright Award, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Award, a NEA/TCG Playwriting Participant Residency, and the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize. He has received commissions from the New York State Council on the Arts, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Shotgun Players, Arena Stage, Harlem Stage and three from Yale Repertory Theatre. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale Drama School and is a member of New Dramatists and the Lark Play Development Center. Gardley, a native of West Oakland was recently chosen as one of 50 writers to watch by Dramatists Magazine.

Co-presented with The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University & Columbia/Harlem Jazz Project