Ryan Brown is the founder and artistic director of Opera Lafayette, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in the 2019/2020 season. Through his work with Opera Lafayette, Ryan has gained an international reputation for his role in the revival and reassessment of significant works from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. His discography of twelve sound recordings for Naxos has focused on the French repertoire, including well-known works by composers such as Lully, Rameau, and Gluck, as well as premiere recordings of operas by Rebel/Francœur, Monsigny, Philidor, Grétry, Sacchini, and Félicien David. Ryan has also created two DVDs with Opera Lafayette for Naxos, including the modern premiere of Gaveaux and Bouilly’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal, the model for Beethoven’s Leonore, the latter which Opera Lafayette will present in its 25th anniversary season, as well as Rameau’s Les Fêtes de L’Hymen et de L’Amour, ou Les Dieux d’Egypte, a collaboration with the New York Baroque Dance Company, the Seán Curran Dance Company, and Kalanidhi Dance. Ryan has also led  performances of operas by Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Paisiello, and Cimarosa. He regularly appears in Washington, DC and New York with Opera Lafayette and has also conducted in San Francisco, Seattle, and at The Glimmerglass Festival, and the Opéra Royal de Versailles. Ryan was raised in a musical family in California and performed extensively as a violinist and chamber musician before turning his attentions to conducting. His teachers included Dorothy DeLay and Gustav Meier. He is a recipient of La Médaille d’Or du Rayonnement Culturel from La Renaissance Française, and when not conducting spends his time in southwestern Colorado. 

Quigley is known for his engaging performances of historically-informed programming that draw in new audiences and delight regular concertgoers. A ceaseless advocate for a more inclusive concert experience, Quigley’s programs regularly span more than 1000 years of musical history. Through recordings, performances, and new editions, Quigley has championed the culturally relevant voices of Spanish Renaissance composer Tomas Luis de Victoria, the 11th century polymath and saint Hildegard of Bingen, and 18th century Cuban composer Esteban Salas y Castro.  Quigley deeply respects music traditions outside the Western European canon and has developed concerts and collaborations highlighting the music of the Babylonian Jews, New Orleans’s Black Gospel tradition, Latin Pop, and the Baroque music of North and South America.  

​Recent and upcoming programs include Bach’s orchestral suites and violin concerti with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Gil Shaham at Carnegie Hall, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and La Servante Maîtresse with Opera Lafayette at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a return to Chicago’s Music of the Baroque in the music of Purcell and Handel, conducting debuts with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Rhode Island Philharmonic, and scenes from Jean Philippe Rameau’s Castor et Pollux with Seraphic Fire. 

​Other guest conducting invitations have come from the Charlotte Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Mobile Symphony, ARTIS Naples, the New Jersey Symphony, New World Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and the Utah Symphony. 

​Quigley, along with co-founder Joanne N. Schulte, established the indie-classical ensemble Seraphic Fire in 2002. The ensemble presents a full season of live concerts of historical and contemporary music in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Collier counties. Seraphic Fire invests in its own local, regional, state, and national communities through its education programs running from 3rd grade through post-graduate level students. The ensemble has most recently commissioned works by Alvaro Bermudez, Sydney Guillaume, and Tawny Olson; and has given modern, regional, national, international, and recording premieres of contemporary and historical works by Hildegard of Bingen, Shawn Crouch, Susan Labarr, Thomas Luis de Victoria, Nico Muhly, Esteban Salas y Castro, Greg Spears, Christopher Theofanidis, and Ileana Perez Velazquez, among others.  The Seraphic Fire Media recording catalogue contains 16 titles, representing diverse musical voices: Two titles have received Grammy nominations. The ensemble has also recorded with the international pop star Shakira. 

​Quigley holds an undergraduate degree in Music Theory and History from the University of Notre Dame, studying under Daniel Stowe, Alexander Blachly and Walter Ginter. Quigley studied conducting with Marguerite Brooks while earning a Master of Music degree at the Yale School of Music. He has assisted Michael Tilson Thomas in rehearsals, performances, and recordings at the San Francisco Symphony.  Quigley is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and currently resides in Washington, D.C.  

Eric Simpson is thrilled to be joining Opera Lafayette as Director of Development. A violinist since age four, Eric brings to his new role more than seven years of nonprofit fundraising experience, deep musical knowledge, and a lifelong passion for the arts.

From 2012 to 2018, Eric was an editor at The New Criterion, a monthly review of arts and letters, where he supervised music and theater coverage and edited features and reviews in all sections, in addition to overseeing the magazine’s fundraising activities. From 2018 to 2020, he was Chief Development Officer at the Paideia Institute, an education nonprofit that promotes the study of the classical humanities. While at Paideia, he helped professionalize the young organization’s development activities, creating a regular series of engagement events, more than doubling the size of the annual gala, and securing the largest program grant in the Institute’s history. Immediately prior to joining Opera Lafayette, Eric earned his MBA degree from the Yale School of Management, with a particular focus on the administration of nonprofit organizations.

From 2012 to 2020, Eric became an established part of New York’s musical press corps. He was a regular critic for New York Classical Review and contributed pieces to The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion, The Hopkins Review, Musical America, and Operawire. His more than 400 published articles include reviews of leading cultural institutions worldwide, such as the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, the English National Opera, Wigmore Hall, the Verona Festival, the Bregenz Festival, and the Teatro alla Scala.

Eric graduated in 2011 with a degree in Classics from Yale College, where he studied violin performance with Syoko Aki. Raised in Haverford, Pennsylvania, he studied for many years with Lee Snyder at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia. Though no longer performing professionally, he maintains an active violin practice and occasionally appears in chamber recitals around New York. In February 2020, he gave a recital of works for unaccompanied violin by J.S. Bach, Eugène Ysaÿe, and H.W. Ernst, at St. John’s Church in the Village. In 2016, he was a finalist in the “Moonlighters” competition hosted by WQXR, New York’s classical music radio station.

Jace joins Opera Lafayette bringing with her a mixed background of perspectives. She received her BS in Psychology from Georgia Southern University, where she focused on graduate work in Experimental Psychology. Jace then moved to Florence, Italy in 2018, where she completed coursework and assistantships for her MA in Museum Studies focusing on social inclusivity within art sectors. She moved back to the US to join The Phillips Collection in DC, as the inaugural Sherman Fairchild Fellow, where she worked on diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion measures, as well as educational programs and community engagement pieces. Her capstone in-person program “Meditation in the Galleries” and virtual program “Weekly Meditation” has since been adopted as permanent programming within the museum, hitting its second anniversary in 2022. She has combined all her passions to focus on various areas of interest relating to how the arts and institutions of cultural heritage can promote better physical/mental well-being as well as social inclusion among all individuals and generations. Jace strongly believe that the musical and visual arts are truly meant for everyone and can offer many benefits to those who engage with it.