The Team

Peter Rosen (Producer/Director) has created over 100 full-length films and television programs which have been distributed world-wide and have won awards at all the major film festivals. He has worked directly with many important figures in the arts such as Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Stephen Sondheim, Alexander Godunov, Martha Graham, Placido Domingo, Van Cliburn, Claudio Arrau and Gordon Getty. He won the prestigious Directors Guild of America Award for his production “Here to Make Music: The Eighth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.” The show also won a prime-time Emmy Award, and was called “enriching and inspiring” by the New York Daily News. He was again nominated for the DGA Award for his film, “First Person Singular: I. M. Pei”. “Playing on the Edge: The Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition”, with KERA/PBS, sponsored by ExxonMobil, won the prestigious Peabody Award.

Laura Kaminsky (Artistic Consultant) possesses “an ear for the new and interesting” (The New York Times). Laura frequently addresses social and political issues in her work with a distinct musical language that is “full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection.” (American Record Guide). Her first opera,  As One (co-librettists Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed) is the most produced contemporary opera since its 2014 premiere, with 60+ productions to date internationally. Other operas: Some Light Emerges, Today It Rains, Hometown to the World, Finding Wright and February.  Upcoming: a chamber opera in poems, The Post Office, for Queen City Opera and Time To Act for a consortium led by Pittsburgh Opera. Awarded the Polish Gold Cross of Merit (Zloty Krzyż Zasługi RP) by the President of Poland for exemplary public service/humanitarian work, Kaminsky has been recognized by the NEA, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Opera America, Chamber Music America, and USArtists International, among others. Kaminsky is on the faculty of Purchase College Conservatory of Music and Boston Conservatory of Music at Berklee, and is currently a mentor for Seattle Opera’s Creation Lab.

Ben Krywosz (Advisory Committee Member) is the Artistic Director of Nautilus Music-Theater. His work with Nautilus includes directing productions, conducting the Composer-Librettist Studio, and directing the Wesley Balk Opera/ Music-Theater Institute since 1983, teaching classes in integrated singing-acting. He has also produced over 200 Rough Cuts programs, Nautilus’ monthly series of new operas and other forms of music-theater. Krywosz has staged full productions for The Minnesota Opera, San Francisco Opera‘s Merola Program, Skylark Opera, and many other companies. He is on the faculty at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and conducts annual master classes at the Boston Conservatory. From 1984 to 1987, Krywosz was Project Director for Opera America’s OPERA FOR THE 80s AND BEYOND program, where he focused on introducing the professional opera field to the work of innovative music-theater artists.

Heidi Waleson (Advisory Committee Member) is the longtime opera critic for The Wall Street Journal. As a music critic and arts journalist, Heidi has reviewed hundreds of productions in New York, across the U.S., and internationally. In her work for the Journal and numerous other publications, including Opera News, Musical America, Symphony Magazine, and Early Music Magazine, she has explored a wide range of issues in the arts, tackling such subjects as artistic innovation and institutional sustainability. Heidi’s first book was MAD SCENES AND EXIT ARIAS: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America (Metropolitan Books). Her perspective of City Opera’s artistic side comes from over three decades of attending and then reviewing their performances. Heidi is also a faculty member of the biennial Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, teaching and mentoring young music writers.

David Smith (Co-Producer, Finance) is semi-retired from a long career in finance and investment banking. He practiced law for three years at the beginning of his career, then moved to work on mergers and acquisitions.  David is passionate about literature, theater and opera, and was a board member of Minnesota Opera from 2017 to 2020. David is also a playwright, novelist, poet, and librettist who participated in the Composer Librettist Studio at Nautilus in 2018. His plays have won national and regional awards and have had minor regional productions.  David is currently working with several composers in different states on a wide variety of projects, including chamber operas, comedic, musical theater, and opera.  His website is aptwordsmith.com.

Bob Beverage (Co-Producer, Production) is a performer, writer, and producer of long standing in the Twin Cities. He has written, directed and/or produced numerous scripts for television and the stage including work for The Discovery Channel, TPT’s Newton’s Apple and The Miracle Network Telethon (Minneapolis production). His plays have been produced across the country and in Europe. His most recent projects include writing and co-directing an 80-minute, dramatic video production, “The Life and Loves of Sinclair Lewis,” produced for the Sinclair Lewis Foundation, and co-writing SISTERS OF SWING, produced at History Theatre. Bob has also written and/or produced many short-form industrial videos for such companies as Honeywell, Roche Diagnostics, US Foodservice, Allied Chemical, Ciba-Geigy, Boehringer-Ingelheim and IBM.