Works include a trilogy of song cycles in collaboration with poet Megan Levad: Murder (2010), Love (2011), and Labor (2014). For the Marigny Opera House and Marigny Opera Ballet: Salve Regina, for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra (Winner, 2014 Tribute to the Classical Arts Award for Best Performance of New Classical Music); Orfeo, a full-length ballet score (October 2015); Giselle Deslondes(November 2016). The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned and premiered Louie the Buoy (2016). His music has been played by the Albany Symphony, New Resonance Orchestra, Polymnia Quartet, Musaica, Da Capo Chamber Players, and the American Symphony, among others. He studied with composers Joan Tower, Christopher Theofanidis, Evan Chambers, Bright Sheng, and Michael Daugherty, and holds degrees from Bard College (B.A.), Peabody Conservatory (M.M.A.), and the University of Michigan (D.M.A).

Brenden Patrick Gunnell is an American  “Heldentenor”.  He has performed leading roles in the major opera houses of Europe as well as on the concert stage and recital hall, specializing in the songs of Schubert, Mahler, Britten and Strauss. In September 2015, Gunnell jumped in at short notice for the title role in The Dream Of Gerontius at the Laiszhalle Hamburg with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jeffrey Tate. The concert was highly acclaimed and Gunnell was celebrated by the press as “A sensational tenor! The young American unites heroic radiation with lyrical warmth and made the soul’s journey into the beyond a moving experience. “(Hamburger Abendblatt).

Recent opera roles include Perdillo in Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio at Glyndebourne, Maler in Berg’s Lulu with the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Hüon in Weber’s Oberon with the Bavarian State Opera, and the Cologne Opera, Erik in The Flying Dutchman with the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, and Loge in Das Rheingold and Siegmund in Walküre with the Goteborg Opera.  The press was especially enthusiastic about Brenden Gunnell’s portrayal as Peter Grimes at the Staatstheater Saarbrücken: “His tenor has power, steel and fire in abundance – but he also handles the moments of the collapse Grimes with most fragile tones. Overwhelming! An exceptional singer …” Saarbrücken Newspaper, March 14, 2016.

More recent engagements include the role of Judas in Sally Beamish’s Passion According to Judaswith the Orchestra Age of Enlightenment in Edinburgh and London and with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Francisco.  and in Liszt’s Faust Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Antonio Pappano. Additional engagements include Frank Martin’s Golgotha in Basel and iMahler’s Das Klagende Lied with RAI Torino, 

Megan Levad’s writing has been praised as “surprising,” (San Francisco Chronicle), “exquisite” (Bombay Gin), and “odd, darkly funny, very smart” (Portland Mercury). Levad’s first musical collaboration was Murder, a song cycle with Tucker Fuller; one of the songs, “American Murderer,” was published in the Everyman's Library anthology Killer Verse. She has since collaborated with several composers. About her work on When There Are Nine, composed by Kristin Kuster and premiered at the 2019 Cabrillo Festival, San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “Librettist Megan Levad cannily seizes on snippets of Ginsburg’s interviews and writing and presses them into service as vivid, imposing poetry.” 

A MacDowell Fellow, Levad is the author of What Have I to Say to You, which The Paris Review wrote is “one of the best poetry books of the last fifteen years.” Her first book, Why We Live in the Dark Ages, was the inaugural selection in Tavern Books’ Wrolstad Contemporary Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Poem-a-Day, Granta, Fence, and London art and fashion magazine AnOther, among other publications. Born and raised in rural Iowa, she now lives in California