In March of 2018 Schregardus collaborated with bass-baritone Perry V. Hayes of Los Angeles to produce his new CD “Dedication” to be released in January, 2019 in preparation for concert tours in the United States and abroad. Mr. Hayes has been a music professional for over thirty years. His talents include bass-baritone vocalist, pianist, organist as well as music and choral director. He began taking piano lessons at age six and during his formative years he continued performing is school choirs and orchestras. At age seventeen, Perry directed his first church choir and in this capacity served several churches in Los Angeles. Perry has performed on stage, television and recorded with notables as Barry Manilow, Wynton Marsalis and Dianne Reeves. He has toured nationally and internationally with the Pacific Symphony, the San Diego Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and several concert halls throughout Europe and Japan.

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Thomas West is a dedicated arts leader and creative producer.  A singer, pianist, cross-disciplinary artist and entrepreneur, his work expands across a breadth of genres and includes over a dozen world premieres of both songs and opera. He is a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, a National Public Radio (NPR) spotlight arts leader, and the founder of an arts leadership group for high school students in Tennessee called ReGenerate. He is one of the creators behind OperaComp, a workshop for Juilliard singers, composers and playwrights to develop new opera. His cross-disciplinary arts organization, Collaborative Arts Ensemble (CAE) is making waves in the arts world for its unique programming and social mission. In 2018 Schregardus invited vocalists Thomas West and Philip Stoddard to his hometown in Davis, CA for a performance and to raise awareness of CAE. The organization enables emerging musicians, actors, and dancers to collaborate and perform together on many different themes with the goal of increasing understanding between people.

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A native of Phoenix, Arizona, Philip Stoddard is an actor, singer and director based in New York City. He will earned his MFA in Acting from Julliard’s Drama Division in May, 2018. He recently graduated from Julliard’s Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts with a Bachelor of Music, making him the first student in school history to attend two different Julliard divisions. Last year, he created and produced OperaComp, the first interdivisional, new opera development laboratory at Julliard, which culminated in the world premiere of six new operas. Its second season will perform this March.

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The Collaborative Arts Ensemble (CAE) received their first grant in 2017 to further their artistic performance. Using music, text, and physical movement, the world-class performing artists of CAE create and share stories that speak to a time in history, a social justice issue, or a question unique to a local community. CAE’s Letters of the American South debuted in Georgia in 2017. The program placed Southern musical compositions—everything from Ray Charles to Charles Ives—in dialogue with poems, letters, and literature from Southern writers such as James Baldwin, Harper Lee, and Bryan Stevenson. A From the Top Alumni Leadership Grant supported the expansion of the project to schools and concert venues in Alabama in 2019. In May, CAE premiered its newest program The Bach Project at The Juilliard School in New York. The organization travels to Africa this summer for its inaugural international performance at the Ubumuntu Arts Festival in Kigali, Rwanda. 

“Our stories are told by placing various art forms into conversation with one another—such as text spoken by an actor being paired with music played by a pianist, or a dancer telling a story alongside an opera singer,” says West. “We believe that these kinds of collaborations offer an audience multiple pathways into every story shared. And by reaching into what makes each of these artists uniquely creative, our organization has invested in a process and therefore a product that is kaleidoscopic as the artists themselves," stated Thomas West.

Initiated in 2014, “Hope comes to Watts” was established by Schregardus between Hope College (Holland, MI) and the Watts Learning Center (WLC) in Watts, CA. Students from the Hope spend three weeks during May term mentoring children in grades one through nine in this under-resourced community of south-central Los Angeles. Following graduation, one former Hope College student-mentor joined the teaching staff at WLC.

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