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 Reed
Co-Founder and Artistic Director
Diana Reid is a first-year student at Oberlin College and Conservatory studying cello performance with Dmitry Kouzov. Her musical journey began with the piano, which she has studied since she was 5. After seeing the cello in a OneRepublic music video when she was 10, she fell in love with the instrument and started taking lessons.
In high school, she spent three years as a leader of the Carmel Valley Summer Symphony, a non-profit, student-run summer music intensive. Throughout these three summers, she raised more than $5,000 for local music programs, served over 300 student musicians, and successfully transitioned the non-profit to distanced and virtual settings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Diana was awarded the assistant principal chair in the San Diego Youth Symphony’s Ovation Chamber Orchestra, played as a principal cellist with the San Diego City Ballet Orchestra, and was the principal cellist and president of the Canyon Crest Academy Orchestras for three years. She attended Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute in 2021 and currently serves as a BUTI Ambassador. Furthermore, she has been accepted to the Idyllwild Chamber Orchestra Festival, the Idyllwild Symphony Orchestra Festival, and the Marrowstone Music Festival, and has played in masterclasses with esteemed cellists such as Mickey Katz, Walter Gray, and Evangeline Benedetti. She has also played as a cellist in California’s All-Southern Symphony and as a member of the Sunroad Quintet, the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus’ student-ensemble-in-residence.
On the piano, she has completed all 10 levels of the MTAC Certificate of Merit and was awarded the California State Honor for her performances and theory scores, in addition to receiving the Superior rating at the San Diego MTAC Romantic Festival four times. She believes that all art – whether it is music, acting, painting, or otherwise – tells a piece of a story, and that the full story is revealed when these art forms work together. As such, she is passionate about crafting multi-disciplinary performances that stretch across artistic borders and engage both performers and audiences alike.