Our Team
Daniel Knapp
Founder and Artistic Advisor
Daniel Knapp is a cellist and arts manager drawn to new musical expressions and committed to supporting contemporary artists. Praised for his “strikingly beautiful” playing (I Care If You Listen), Daniel brings passion and innovation to every aspect of his work.
Highlights of Daniel’s recent performances include collaborations with Eighth Blackbird, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. As cellist of The Ἔris Quartet, he is featured on a forthcoming collaborative album with Wendy Eisenberg and has toured extensively, engaging audiences in prisons, parlors, libraries, galleries, and community spaces. Most recently, the quartet served as the Ensemble in Residence for New Music on the Point, collaborating with the JACK Quartet. Daniel’s Carnegie Hall debut was with the Oberlin Orchestra for the United Nations General Conference, and he has since returned to New York City for Bang on a Can’s Long Play and Loud Weekend festivals.
As the founder of the Musikos Collective, Daniel directed and produced four seasons of concerts that have "grown into a staple of Oberlin life" (The Oberlin Review). Daniel now serves as the organization’s artistic advisor.
Daniel is currently the Label Manager for NYC-based record label Bright Shiny Things and is the Director of Touring Productions for the label. His favorite color is somewhere between a blood orange and a mango. And a pomegranate.
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
Founder and Executive 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.