David Katz (playwright and actor) is an award-winning composer, conductor, writer, actor and arts entrepreneur. Originally from Danbury, Connecticut, Katz attended the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, where he earned baccalaureate and masters degrees in composition and conducting, as well as an artist diploma in conducting. From 1984 to 1988, he studied under Maestro Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestra Musicians in Hancock, Maine, and later founded and conducted there the Monteux Opera Festival and Opera Maine. He formed Hat City Music Theater in his home city in 2002 and the Candlewood Symphony in 2004. He serves both as artistic director. In September 2006, Katz celebrated his 20th season as founding music director of the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra with a gala performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Navy Pier.

Mr. Katz was Margaret Hillis's assistant conductor with the Elgin Symphony in Chicago. For twelve seasons he was music director and artistic director of Michigan's Adrian Symphony Orchestra, where he founded Opera!Lenawee and created the Friedrich Schorr Memorial Performance Prize in Voice international competition. Honored in 2000 by the Governor of Michigan for his service to the arts, Katz has guest conducted all over the U.S., Canada and Mexico, including concerts with the Detroit Symphony, the Corpus Christi Symphony, the Oregon Mozart Players, the Regina Symphony (Saskatchewan) and the Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra (Mexico City), among scores of others. He has partnered such artists as Itzhak Perlman, William Warfield and Misha Dichter in concert, and has collaborated with some of the greatest composers of the age, including Elliott Carter, William Schuman, Hans Werner Henze and Milton Babbitt.

As an actor, Katz's experience extends from straight drama (in works such as Inherit the Wind and The Crucible), to opera (Die Fledermaus, The Merry Wives of Windsor) as well as many appearances with orchestra, narrating such works as Facade, A Survivor from Warsaw, Babar the Elephant, Pierrot Lunaire, Peter and the Wolf, and Lincoln Portrait.

David Katz's compositions may be found in the catalogs of G. Schirmer and Carl Fischer, among others. Honored by ASCAP and the National Federation of Music Clubs for his music, Katz's first opera, Light of the Eye, for which he wrote both words and music, was awarded special recognition in the Brooklyn College opera competition and has been performed many times. In addition to a planned off-Broadway engagement for Muse of Fire, Katz will tour the play to Chicago, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities.

Charles Nelson Reilly (director) directed many one-person plays since he conceived and directed the Tony Award-winning The Belle of Amherst (on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson) for Julie Harris in 1975. In addition to performing his own solo vehicle, The Life of Reilly, in over three hundred performances in Los Angeles, New York and on tour, Mr. Reilly directed Ruby Dee in her one-woman show, My One Good Nerve, co-wrote the Lincoln Center cabaret concert for his good friend, soprano Renee Fleming, conceived the play Paul Robeson for James Earl Jones, and directed At Wit’s End, on the life of Oscar Levant, for Stan Freeman. Other Broadway directing credits include Ira Levin’s Break a Leg, Larry Shue’s The Nerd, and the revival of The Gin Game, starring Miss Harris and Charles Durning, for which Mr. Reilly was the sole American director to be nominated for a Tony in 1997. He conceived and directed My Business is to Love for Miss Fleming and Miss Harris, seen at Lincoln Center and in London.

As an actor, Mr. Reilly appeared in the original companies of Bye, Bye Birdie, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Tony and Drama Critics Award), Hello, Dolly (Tony nomination), Skyscraper, Neil Simon’s God’s Favorite, and Charlotte, this last with his teacher, Uta Hagen. TV appearances included the The X Files and Millennium (Emmy nomination), the Drew Carey Show (Emily nomination) and The Larry Sanders Show. His first two Emmy nominations were for his role in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Mr. Reilly participated in countless game shows and talk shows, racking up over 100 appearances alone on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He directed the series Evening Shade for his friend Burt Reynolds and acted in a number of movies. Most recently, a film of his one-man play, Save it for the Stage: The Life of Reilly, has had notable success at film festivals across the country.

Mr. Reilly’s career as an opera director resulted from his friendship with soprano Roberta Peters, whom he coached for thirty years. He directed productions for Chicago Opera Theater, Dallas Opera, San Diego Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Toledo Opera, Milwaukee Opera and Opera Pacific. Mr. Reilly taught acting for 35 years, first at the HB Studio in New York, and later at his own school in Los Angeles. His pupils included Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin, Peter Boyle, Liza Minnelli, Teri Garr and Christine Lahti.

David Katz and Charles Nelson Reilly were friends for three decades, first meeting through their mutual Hartford voice teacher, Mrs. Friedrich Schorr. Mr. Reilly served for many years as Honorary Chairman of The Friedrich Schorr Memorial Performance Prize in Voice international competition.

Charles Nelson Reilly died in May 2007. MUSE of FIRE was his last play.

Charles Bruck (1911-1995) was for twenty-six years Master Teacher of the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestra Musicians in Hancock, Maine, where he mentored hundreds of conductors who now lead orchestras and opera companies all over the world.

Born in Timisoara, Hungary (now Romania), Bruck studied at the Vienna Conservatory and then in France, where he was one of Pierre Monteux’s first conducting students in Paris. Simultaneous to earning the degree Doctor of Laws from the University of Paris, he was appointed associate conductor of the Paris Symphony Orchestra in 1936 and went on to lead the Netherlands Opera, the Strasbourg Radio Symphony and the Paris Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (ORTF). Following World War II, he was made an officer in the French Legion of Honor for his work in the Resistance.

A noted champion of contemporary composers and their music, Bruck conducted world-wide, leading over seven-hundred premieres by such diverse composers at Prokofiev, Poulenc, Martinu, Xenakis and Stockhausen. Bruck recorded for Columbia, Deutsche Grammaphon, Erato and EMI. Most famous among his many discs are the historic first recording of Prokofiev’s opera, The Flaming Angel, and Gluck’s Orfeo, with the legendary Kathleen Ferrier.

Bruck made his U.S. conducting debut in 1936 and later guest-conducted many U.S. orchestras. He served as Director of Orchestral Activities at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford in the early 1980s and was a visiting professor at Princeton University in 1992.

Charles Bruck was appointed Master Teacher at the Monteux School in 1969. He died in Hancock, Maine on July 16, 1995 and was buried in Jerusalem.

To purchase recordings conducted by Maestro Charles Bruck or by David Katz, or for DVDs directed by or starring Charles Nelson Reilly, please click the “Gifts” link on the homepage.