Episode 1: Welcome, Introductions and Raison d'être
Hartford Stage, Hartford
Cynthia Rider
Hartford Stage's eighth Managing Director, appointed in 2019. She came to Hartford from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where as executive director she built a ten-year strategic plan and led major artistic, capital and fundraising initiatives.
Managing Director, Hartford Stage
Steve Collins
Leads the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, which he joined in 2014. He steered the orchestra through the pandemic, completed a $10 million capital campaign and grew endowed funds by more than 140%. Previously ran the Waterbury Symphony and led education at the New Haven Symphony.
President & CEO, Hartford Symphony Orchestra
Episode 2: Music and Drama at Yale
Adams Center for Musical Arts, New Haven · Yale School of Music
James O’Donnell
Spent 23 years as Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey, directing music for the 2011 royal wedding and the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Now teaches at the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music — whose autumn 2026 calendar of evensongs, Schola Cantorum concerts and Great Organ Music at Yale recitals is now under way.
Professor in the Practice of Organ & Sacred Music, Yale
Evan Yionoulis
Dean, David Geffen School of Drama; Artistic Director Yale Rep
Obie Award-winning director who became Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean and Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre on 1 July 2026, arriving from Juilliard's Drama Division. Her first season runs from Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in October to Quisqueya on the Hudson next May. A Yale directing graduate, she taught at Yale for 20 years and was a Yale Rep resident director.
Coming Soon…
Available 9/27/26
Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme
Episode 3: Arts on the Shoreline
Leads the Florence Griswold Museum at the birthplace of American Impressionism, and joins us to discuss Patchwork: Connecticut Artists Consider 250 and the Museum's programme for the nation's semiquincentennial.
Executive Director, Florence Griswold Museum
Peter Steere
Jenny Parsons
Senior Curator; Co-Chair, Arts and Programming, Florence Griswold Museum
Joined the Museum in 2016 after a national search and now leads its curatorial programme, directing the Artist-in-Residence scheme it founded in 2019. A University of Virginia art history PhD who came to Old Lyme by way of the National Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection, she curated Flora/Fauna: The Naturalist Impulse in American Art and Fragile Earth. She takes us behind the scenes of Patchwork, the juried show of Connecticut artists inspired by the Museum's 1976 Bicentennial Quilt, on view 27 June–8 November 2026.