Ellen Hoffman makes her life as a composer, arranger, pianist, music director, recording artist & music educator. Ellen co-founded Jazz Camp West, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, and Berkeley Broadway Singers. She has received national awards, commissions and grants for her music, with performances by the Atlanta Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Vallejo Symphony, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Pacific Mozart Ensemble and Piedmont Children's Chorus. Recent works include Ragtime Stew, performed by Sonos Handbells & Diablo Symphony, Go Tell It, commissioned by Bay Brass and premiered at Grace Cathedral, and Jingle Blues & Dreidels, performed by Oak. E. Bay Symphony, Chorus, & Audience. Ellen has appeared with Linda Ronstadt, Joan Baez, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Frederika von Stade, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Bobby McFerrin, Linda Tillery & the Cultural Heritage Choir, and others. She regularly performs her own music with Oak. East Bay Symphony, music director Michael Morgan. Currently she directs Open Mike at the Berkeley City Club and at the Freight and Salvage Coffee House, and plays piano at San Francisco's Great Dickens Fair. She has taught at Contra Costa College, Laney College, the Berkeley Jazz School, and currently teaches privately. Ellen earned her Master's Degree from Mills College, and Bachelor's from University of Illinois. She is delighted to be part of this program about the extraordinary George Gershwin.

Nurit Jugend is an accomplished composer who has authored more than a dozen published works that have been performed and broadcast worldwide. She works internationally with leading performance groups such as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Maestro Zubin Mehta, St. Lawrence String Quartet, EurOrchestra under Maestro Francesco Lentini, and the Slovenian Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Sean Edwards, among others. Dr. Jugend completed her doctorate at Stanford University (USA), Masters in Art at the Hochschüle der Künste (Germany), and Bachelor in Music and Art at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy for Music and Dance (Israel). Learn more about Nurit Jugend at http://www.nuritjugend.com.

Ronit Widmann-Levy has received accolades for her operatic and concert performances throughout the world. A versatile artist equally at home on both concert and opera stages, Ronit has sung in opera houses and festivals in San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, Tanglewood, Cincinnati, Kentucky, Berlin, Munich, London, Bangkok, and Jerusalem. She sang at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, the Bath and Dartington Festivals in England, the Jüdische Kulturtage in Berlin, and the America Haus Concert Series in Munich. Ms. Widmann-Levy made her début with the San Francisco Symphony in February 2005 in Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher. Since her debut, Ronit has regularly performed with Michael Tilson Thomas and the SFS in Carnegie Hall, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the New World Symphony Orchestra as well as with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.