Elena Park
Founder & CEO
Throughout her colorful career, Elena Park has looked for ways to explore ideas, tell an array of stories, and connect the worlds of arts, culture, media, and technology. The Emmy-nominated filmmaker has created award-winning music and culture programs for San Francisco Opera (SFO), the Metropolitan Opera, and WNYC Radio, curated and hosted performances and talks for venues from National Sawdust to the Kennedy Center, and produced tributes such as the Jessye Norman Celebration at the Met. The daughter of Korean immigrants, she has worked as a strategic advisor for clients ranging from Meyer Sound to Cambodian Living Arts, the Phnom Penh-based NGO.
Elena's first hour-long documentary, Eun Sun Kim: A Journey Into Lohengrin (2024) garnered two Northern CA Emmy nominations (outstanding direction and arts/entertainment program) following multiple broadcasts on KQED. Her Visual Cavafy series (2023) showcased the talents of Taylor Mac, Julianne Moore, Caroline Shaw, and Carl Hancock Rux, among others. Commissioned by the Onassis Foundation, the visual poems were screened at the NYC’s New Museum and later seen in Athens and Alexandria.
Additional director/executive producer credits: eight In Song short films for SFO, featuring artists including Pretty Yende and Jamie Barton; Cleveland Orchestra’s Emmy-nominated In Focus programs, conducted by Alan Gilbert and Jane Glover; Vân-Ánh Võ for Stanford Live; and Jake Heggie's Intonations for the Cabrillo Festival.
Other credits: MTT25: An American Icon for the San Francisco Symphony; Stanford Live’s 10-show digital series featuring musicians such as the Kronos Quartet, Zakir Hussain, and Chanticleer.
Her lively performance and conversation series, NationalSawdust+, taps artists and thinkers including Laurie Anderson, Marina Abramovic, Yo-Yo Ma, Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Patti Smith, Esperanza Spalding, and Carrie Mae Weems. Featuring unusual pairings, crossing disciplines, and spanning musical genres, NS+ is often tied to contemporary events, with a current focus on nature and climate; it has explored issues of race, gender, and equity with partners such as PEN and London Review of Books. She has created evenings for Guggenheim Works + Process and for the Kennedy Center, where she was an Artistic Consultant on a variety of initiatives for five years.
For the Metropolitan Opera, Elena is Executive Producer of its international Saturday radio broadcasts and served as Supervising Producer for The Met: Live in HD for its first 140 shows, seen in more than 70 countries around the world. Before founding her independent production company, she was Assistant General Manager at the Met, supervising creative content, marketing and public relations, and special audience initiatives at a time of institutional reinvention.
Prior to the Met, she was Executive Producer, Music & Culture, for WNYC Radio, developing culture stories and producing live broadcasts as well as national specials spanning Walt Whitman: Song of Myself and The Ring and I: The Myth, The Passion, The Mania. Film and TV credits include Music Producer for the feature film Bel Canto (starring Julianne Moore, voiced by Renée Fleming) and Creative Consultant for amazon’s Golden Globe-winning Mozart in the Jungle.
Previous work includes stints at Brooklyn Academy of Music, and as editor-in-chief of andante.com, with additional writing for outlets such as Playbill and the San Francisco Chronicle (including interviews with artists such as Fiona Shaw, Bill T. Jones, Clive Owen, Philip Glass, and Yoko Ono).
In addition to serving on grant panels for organizations such as MAP and the Jerome Foundation, she speaks regularly at conferences in the U.S. and abroad, including Taiwan’s Theater * Future Encounters forum (presented by the Koo Foundation in 2019), ISPA (Seoul, Korea) and Classical: NEXT, where she served on the 2016 jury for the Rotterdam conference.
ODED LEV-ARI
CONTENT STRATEGY & DEVELOPMENT
A highly skilled and creative thinker about content and business strategy, Oded Lev-Ari has participated in the creation and production of podcasts, live events, and music for media, and served as Director of Content for classical music startup andante.com.
As a music and composer, he has earned tremendous praise; in a feature about his work, DownBeat magazine stated that “Putting lightning in a bottle is what Oded Lev-Ari specializes in." Born in Tel Aviv but a longtime resident of New York City, his work drew comparisons to jazz sound painters Gil Evans and Maria Schneider to tango nuevo king Astor Piazzolla and contemporary classical composers. Beyond those descriptions, Oded has his own, individual soundprint, one of cinematic richness and open-hearted lyricism.
Oded directs and owns the Anzic Records label, alongside iconic clarinetist Anat Cohen.
His numerous record producing credits include Cohen’s Luminosa, vocal trio Duchess’ self-titled debut and woodwind sage Marty Ehrlich’s A Trumpet in the Morning. He served as musical director for a Billie Holiday tribute concert starring Madeleine Peyroux, Bucky Pizzarelli Ron Carter and others at Brazil’s Tudo e Jazz festival.
RAS DIA
PROGRAMMING & PRODUCTION
Ras Dia is a Brooklyn-born producer and arts administrator whose work has been described as “stirring” (Washington Post), “bracing, compelling, and heartbreaking” (Musical America), and “grippingly produced” (The Boston Globe). He serves as Deputy Director, Creative Projects at National Sawdust, and as Producing Director of VisionIntoArt (VIA), where he leads commissions and productions supported by National Sawdust such as Primero sueño with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sensorium, a groundbreaking opera and social impact project at the intersection of disability and artificial intelligence, and We Were Fridays, a cultural heritage and music project inspired by diaspora, collective imagination, and co-creation, in addition to producing creative initiatives such as the National Sawdust/VIA Impact Lab Fellowship program.
Ras previously served as the Creative Producer at Little Island, a public park and arts organization developed by the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, where he helped to lead and curate its first three seasons, as the Assistant Producer of the Metropolitan Opera’s Peabody- and Emmy award-winning Live in HD series, and as the Managing Director of the New York City Master Chorale, in addition to marketing, development, production, and administrative roles with the National Children’s Chorus, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Carnegie Hall, and The New School, where he supported programs for immigrant, refugee, and survivor communities across New York City.
Past projects include Heartbeat Opera’s BREATHING FREE: a visual album, the Frederick R. Koch Foundation’s Townhouse Series, San Francisco Symphony’s MTT25: An American Icon, and San Francisco Opera’s In Song. Ras is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Purchase College (SUNY), and the Boy’s Choir of Harlem.
SIOBAHN SUNG
PROGRAMMING & PRODUCTION
Siobahn Sung is a Korean-American Brooklyn-based California native who enjoys a varied career, in which she engages in projects that are multiplanar and non-traditional. She is enthusiastic about performance, storytelling, and congruence across the arts. Whether in a temporary pop-up space or the main stage of a hallowed opera house; a radio station in a Bushwick lot, or a Flatbush dance hall, her main operative is to always be a consummate connector of people, an uplifter of community, and a forerunner for identifying that which activates the creative impulse.
JEFF TANG
PROGRAMMING & PRODUCTION
Jeff Tang’s practice as a creative producer is rooted in his deep delight in the cross-pollination of artistic disciplines, a dedication to the redirection of the cultural narrative, and an ambition to re-center historically underrepresented voices and values in the arts.
Recent producing credits include as Executive Creative Producer for Iphigenia, a new opera, currently in development, by jazz icons Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding, with set designs by the architect Frank Gehry; and as lead producer for composer Mason Bates’s genre-bending KC Jukebox series at the Kennedy Center.
As the former Producer for the NationalSawdust+: performance and conversation series in Brooklyn, he worked with poets, scientists, filmmakers, musicians, mixologists, and jugglers, and his previous role at the Metropolitan Opera saw him on the producing team for the award-winning international Live in HD and radio broadcasts, and as a catalyst for public programming, audience engagement, and social impact.
For virtual audiences, he produced The Heart of the Song for The Dallas Opera, featuring the music and stories of a trio of star tenors from Mexico; and with Lumahai Productions, he piloted Active Hope, a virtual event and podcast series created with The Apollo Theater, The Kennedy Center, and National Sawdust.
As a composer, his music theater work has been seen in New York, London, Minneapolis, and Chicago, and his music for podcasts has been commissioned for projects by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and Rainn Wilson’s SoulPancake production houses.
He serves on the Equity Committee of the newly-formed Creative & Independent Producer Alliance (CIPA), and is a proud member of Peoplmovr, a creative studio specializing in involvement that centers anti-racism and equity in its commitment to collective liberation.