Our Team
Daniel Knapp
Founder and Executive Director
Daniel Knapp is a cellist, manager, and improviser who aims to support the ever-changing world of contemporary music. As the founding member of The Ἔrιs Quartet and Executive Director of The Musikos Collective, Daniel works to encourage creative collaborations and community placemaking, with a particular focus on the sounds that make your face scrunch up a little. Recent performances have included collaborations with The JACK Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Ross Karre, Du Yun, and Nicole Lizée. Daniel’s favorite color is somewhere between a blood orange and a mango. And a pomegranate.
Beyond his performances, Daniel is carving a path in Arts Administration, embodying his commitment to education and community engagement. Noteworthy achievements include the development of "IConnect," an educational program for young cellists with the International Cello Institute, and past positions with The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and The Meadowmount School of Music, where he managed extensive concert programs featuring over 200 student performers. In his current roles, Daniel works as the Digital Strategist for the Bright Shiny Things record label, assists in management roles for Sybarite5, and is the Student Assistant and Peer Advisor for the Oberlin Professional Development Department, guiding fellow students in their artistic and professional endeavors.
Zola Saadi-Klein
Producer
Zola Saadi-Klein (b.2003), is an Iranian-American, genderfluid composer, vocalist, and artist, from Los Angeles, CA. For much of their work, they draw inspiration from their Persian and European heritage, exploring the cross-cultural bonds of music from the West and of the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. As a member of the Oberlin Buddhist Fellowship, they are interested in the concepts of how one perceives themselves in the present, and how that interconnectedness can be expressed through their music. The practice of mindfulness and concentration meditation has also deeply influenced their musical life; they often collaborate with like-minded creatives at Oberlin, and in the world at large most recently with artist, violist, singer and mathematician Illana McNamara, I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land (2023), and vocalist, poet, Molly Chun, Songs for Those Who Came Before (2024).
In 2020, they received the ASCAP Foundation Irving Berlin Scholarship Award. From 2019-2021, they were a Fellow in the LA Phil Composer Fellowship Program under the mentorship of Andrew Norman, Sarah Gibson, and Thomas Kotcheff. In 2020, they were selected to be a Luna Composition Lab Fellow—founded by Ellen Reid and Missy Mazzoli—during the 2020-2021 season where they were mentored by composer and pianist, Gity Razaz. Currently, Zola studies composition with Professor Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones, and Michael Frazier, at Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Orson Abram
Producer
Orson Abram (b. 2002) is a composer, percussionist, improviser, filmmaker, and sound artist from Columbus, Ohio. They currently attend Oberlin Conservatory and College, where they study TIMARA (Technology in Music and Related Arts) and Cinema Studies under the instruction of Francis Wilson, Heather Mease, Rian Brown-Orso, Ross Karre, and Pat Day. Their previous teachers include Christopher Poovey, Miles Friday, Hunter Brown, Eli Stine, Pablo Rieppi, Michael Rosen, Third Coast Percussion, Cameron Leach and Matthew Peyton Dixon. Orson's work deals with personal memory and the translation of this into universal memory in various multimedia forms of art, from video art, performance art, and installations to notated music and improvisation through alternative uses of media and everyday objects and instruments. In their free time, their hobbies include DJing, going on extensive nature walks, reading graphic novels, and watching any kind of movie.
Diana Reid
Co-Founder and Artistic Director
Diana Reid is a cellist, historian, and interdisciplinary artist based in Oberlin, Ohio who creates experiences that, by weaving together myriad artistic disciplines and practices, immerse audiences in a different world. She is the founder and president of the Oberlin Cello Society, an organization that creates cello ensembles, brings guest artists to give masterclasses and performances, and organizes community lecture and alumni networking opportunities for Oberlin cellists. Additionally, she previously led the Carmel Valley Summer Symphony, a nonprofit that provides free, professional-grade music education to hundreds of students across the San Diego area. Throughout all of her work, Diana focuses on producing opportunities for artists to share and dialogue about their ideas, talents, and experiences with others in order to reinforce the human connection within and between communities.
Diana is also an award-winning pianist and a singer, actress, amateur filmmaker, avid ballet, contra, and swing dancer, and sometimes funny stand-up comedian. She loves swing jazz, the color green, and every book by Kazuo Ishiguro (her favorite is Klara and the Sun). Diana is an alumna of the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Mostly Modern Festival, the Tanglewood Institute, PRISMA, the Shkolnikova Academy, and ARIA Summer Music Academy. She has worked with and played in masterclasses for cellists Mickey Katz, Jeffrey Zeigler, Norman Fischer, Mike Block, Dave Eggar, Henry Shapard, Evangeline Benedetti, and Walter Gray as well as the Meta4, Dior, and Verona Quartets. Previously, she worked as a principal and section cellist of the San Diego City Ballet Orchestra. She is currently writing her honors thesis in 20th century U.S. history and has been offered internships as a historian with NASA.