Adrian L. Dunn

(Creator/Composer/Producer)

Adrian Dunn is a varied singer/performer and conductor. He opened for international hip hop recording artists The Roots at Indiana University Auditorium in 2005 and was a featured artist on the Higher Ground Live DVD recording, Finland in 2007. He has prepared and provided background vocals for numerous artists in the US and abroad including Tony Momrelle (UK band Incognito), Rena Darling (EU), Max C (EU) and others. He has appeared as a vocalist with the Rob Parton Jazz Orchestra. In the summer of 2006 he was musical assistant/vocal coach to Walt Whitman and the Soul Children of Chicago. Mr. Dunn has also sung with the Chicago Symphony Chorus, Grant Park Symphony Chorus, and The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus. In summer 2005 he studied in Novafeltria, Italy in the Centro Stud i Lirica Opera Festival. He served as assistant conductor on a tour of England with the Cleveland Heights Acapella Choir in 2003 and was fortunate to have learned from the late Dr. Moses Hogan.

He is currently the director of the gospel vocal ensemble One Inspiration Crew and conductor of Roosevelt University's Legacy Celebration Choir. He is the creator and director the HOPERA Summer Music training program for high school students. Mr. Dunn holds a Bachelors of Music in vocal peformance from Chicago College of Performing Arts, Roosevelt University and has aquired additional studies at the Sibelius Academy of Music, Helsinki.

Rueben D. Echoles

(Stage Director)

Rueben D. Echoles’ work has been seen around Chicago and the U. S. He is an accomplished director, choreographer, designer, and instructor. Mr. Echoles is the Associate Artistic Director of the Black Ensemble Theater (B.E.T) as well as the resident choreographer and wig designer. His work at the B. E.T. includes The Jackie Wilson Story, The Way We Were, for which he won the 2005 Sammy Davis Jr. award from the Black Theater Alliance Awards for best choreography, At Last: In tribute to Etta James, for which he received the award best actor in a musical from both the Black Theater Alliance and the African American Arts Alliance. He was recently Jeff recommended for Sounds so Good Makes You Want to Holler, which he co-wrote and directed.

Mr. Echoles began his theater training at ETA Creative Arts Foundation where he studied music, dance, and drama. Now the very classes he took at Eta he now teaches. Rueben is a resident choreographer and director at the Southside Theater. He has appeared in such works as Eye’s which received the best musical award from the Black Theater Alliance Awards. Mr. Echoles received several nominations for Home The Musical, including best choreography by Mr. Echoles and Anchorman.

Ebone Lewis

(Choreographer)

St. Louis native departing Columbia College of Chicago as a Dance Making major and Black World Studies minor with future plans to continue working toward an aesthetic to deconstruct the “idea” of audience ex pectation and confronting societal issues through the art of movement. Eboné has had the honor of performing works by and sharing the stage with choreographers locally and internationally such as: Keesha Beckford, Shell Benjamin, Liz Burritt, Malik Camara, Christie Cesar, Nora Chipaumire, Lisa Gonzales, , Jenn Grisham, Jeff Hancock, Darrell Jones, Gesel Mason, Beth McNeil, Jimmy Payne, Erica Wilson-Perkins, Anna Sapozhni, Sarah L. Schafer, and Reggie Wilson.