Creative Team: Composer and Librettist

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Andrew Earle Simpson, composer

Andrew Earle Simpson is an Assistant Professor of Music at The Benjamin T. Rome School of Music of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.  A musician who creates vivid, colorful music, he seeks new modes of expression and technique while drawing strongly upon the classical tradition.  Recent performances in New York's Carnegie Hall under choral conductor Henry Leck, at Madison Square Garden under Marvin Hamlisch, and at the Amalfi Coast Festival (Italy) by pianist Brian Ganz represent a sampling of the diversity and appeal of his music.  Solo musicians have also responded to the vitality of his music: such noted soloists as bassist Michael Cameron, oboist Nancy Ambrose King, saxophonists Timothy McAllister and Robert Faub, and guitarist Douglas Rubio have played and recorded his works.

Simpson's music has received much critical praise, in both performances and recordings. The Washington Post praised a recent performance of his solo piano work: "Better still was Andrew Simpson's 'Flower-Terrible Memories,' a large-scale work loaded with pianistic effects . . . It's a wonderful piece."  Strad/The Double Bassist (United Kingdom) writes of Simpson's Exhortation III, for solo double bass: " . . . of striking technical demand . . . It exploits to the full the expressive and technical limits of the instrument."  Exhortation III appears on Mr. Simpson's first CD recording, Exhortations: Virtuoso Solo Instrumental and Chamber Music of Andrew Earle Simpson (Athena Records, New York City).

An accomplished pianist, Mr. Simpson appears frequently as soloist, accompanist, and chamber musician specializing in contemporary classical repertoire.  He performed the World Premiere of his Klytemnestra Songs with soprano Jessi Baden in March 2002 in Athens, Greece, and as soloist in the World Premiere of American composer Joseph Santo's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with the Washington Symphony Orchestra in June 2001.  Mr. Simpson's teachers have included Lukas Foss, Claude Baker, Eugene O'Brien, Frederick Fox, and Michael Schelle.  He earned a DM in Composition from Indiana University, a MusM in Composition from Boston University, and a BM in Theory and Composition from Butler University.  His first opera, Agamemnon--the first of a trilogy of operas setting Aeschylus' Oresteia--received its University Premiere at The Catholic University of America in April 2003.  The second opera in the trilogy, The Libation Bearers, was completed during the 2001-02 academic year, while he was in residence at the Department of Music of the University of Athens, Greece; it will receive a concert workshop production at The Catholic University of America in March 2004.  Work on the third Oresteia opera, The Furies, will begin in summer 2004.  A second CD recording of Simpson's instrumental music is also currently in progress.

Click here to see Andrew Earle Simpson's vita

Sarah Brown Ferrario, librettist

Sarah Ferrario holds a BSOF degree in flute, Latin, and Greek from Indiana University, Bloomington; an MPhil in Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures from the University of Oxford (acquired as a Marshall Scholar); and an MA in Classics from Princeton University.  During academic year 2001-02 she was a Regular Member at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece, where she was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship; she is currently pursuing her PhD in the Department of Classics at Princeton University.  For the academic year 2003-04, she is a Graduate Fellow of the University Center for Human Values (Princeton) while at work on her dissertation, a study of the idea of the 'great man' in ancient Greek historical thought.

Ms. Ferrario's other interests within the general field of classical studies are diverse and wide-ranging. In addition to translating the libretti for the Oresteia Project directly from the ancient Greek of Aeschylus, she has published a fragment of a literary papyrus from Greco-Roman Egypt (forthcoming in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series) and a translation of medieval Latin poetry to accompany the score of a choral symphony.  Her past teaching credentials include work at both the University of Oxford and Rutgers University; she is currently an Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Greek and Latin at The Catholic University of America, where she recently team-taught a seminar entitled "Greek Tragedy and Opera" with Andrew Simpson. 

Click here to see Sarah Brown Ferrario's vita