Our Team

Musical Director:

Joanna (Asia) Mieleszko is a singer, conductor, protector of the (very) old, and pioneer of the daringly new. With musical roots in both Eastern European folk music and the classical tradition, Asia’s noise-making oscillates between these musical conventions and, on occasion, bridges them.

Recent highlights include joining the Cortona Sessions for New Music as a 2024 vocal fellow, premiering “Across Tongues,” an audio-visual interrogation of third culture as a 2023/24 New Jersey Folk Festival Artist-in-Residence, premiering Hannah Barnes’ The Garden at SHE: Festival of Women in Music, and performing programs of Ukrainian village polyphony at the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival and across the Northeast. 

She’s looking forward to bringing the next iteration of Across Tongues to O+ Positive Festival and workshopping pieces for voice and live electronics at The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology at McGill University in the Fall of 2024.

Executive Director:

Rebecca Roland is a lifelong lover of classical and orchestral music, ranging from composers like Franz Schubert to genre benders like Isao Tomita. She participated in various choirs throughout childhood and picked up cello as a teenager. After many years away from singing and playing music, Rebecca returned to the cello as an adult and subsequently joined the Philadelphia Community Orchestra. She works as a blindness and low vision therapist by day and is an aspiring amateur musician by night. As executive director, she is thrilled to support the orchestra and its members in all administrative and clerical needs. 

Founder & Director Emeritus:

William (Bill) Dougherty is a Philadelphia-based American composer, sound artist, and writer. His creative work engages with elements of loss, decay, and memory through the sounds of audio recordings and audio recording technologies. Dougherty has received recognitions and awards from Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Academy in Rome, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Cité Internationale des Arts, and the Copland House. His works have been performed internationally by ensembles including Talea Ensemble, The Israel Contemporary Players, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Dougherty has published articles and interviews in Tempo, Music & Literature, and VAN Magazine and is co-editor of a forthcoming special issue of Contemporary Music Review. He earned degrees from Columbia University, the Royal College of Music, and Temple University and has served on the composition faculties of Columbia University and Temple University. Outside of the university, William volunteers as a music instructor and mentor for high school and elementary school students from underserved communities in Philadelphia. He currently serves as a teaching artist in composition for the Marian Anderson Young Artist Program—a tuition-free program that aims to serve those individuals whose communities have historically been excluded from the highest levels of musical excellence due to structural barriers.

For more information, please visit www.williamdougherty.com