Muldoon's Picnic (November)

Mike Birbiglia is a comedian, storyteller, director, actor, pizza enthusiast, and New York Times bestselling author who is currently making his Broadway debut in his solo show The New One at the Cort Theatre.

Clarinetist and composer Ben Goldberg grew up in Denver, Colorado. He was a pupil of the eminent clarinetist Rosario Mazzeo and studied with Steve Lacy and Joe Lovano. Since 1992, when his group New Klezmer Trio "kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music" (SF Chronicle), Ben has shaped a career through curiosity and experimentation across many genres and styles. The New York Times has noted that Ben’s music “conveys a feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising, the constant usefulness of musicians intuitively coming together and pulling apart.” 

Ben currently leads the following groups: Invisible Guy; Orphic Machine; Unfold Ordinary Mind; DIALOGUE, a duo with pianist / composer Myra Melford; the Ben Goldberg Trio with Greg Cohen and Kenny Wollesen; Ben Goldberg School; and Ben Goldberg’s Brainchild, an eleven-piece ensemble performing Ben’s on-the-spot compositions. Ben plays in Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom and is on the Music faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He also runs BAG Production Records.

Photo Credit: Peak

Sally Singer is the creative digital director of Vogue. In this post, which she has held since 2012, she oversees all content and creative direction for Vogue.com and social media platforms and partnerships, as well as original video production. Prior to overseeing the content of the brand’s digital properties, Singer was the editor in chief of the New York Times Style Magazine, where she edited both the print edition and the website. During her initial eleven years at Vogue, from 1999 to 2010, she was first fashion news director before becoming features director, at which time she was responsible for the coverage of fashion news, politics, celebrity, and culture; she also wrote several Vogue cover stories. Singer has been an editor at London Review of Books, the fashion director of New York magazine, and the style director of Elle. She has also contributed essays and criticism to the Guardian, the Economist, and the Atlantic. Singer resides in Manhattan.

J. Hope Stein is the author of Occasionally, I remove your brain through your nose (Poet Republik, 2017).

Her poems can be found in The New Yorker, Poetry International, Lenny Letter, In the Shape of a Human Body I Am Visiting the Earth: Poems from Far and Wide (McSweeney’s and Poetry International, 2017) and in the stage performance of Mike Birbiglia's The New One. 

Cassandra Wilson is an American jazz musician, vocalist, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi, described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack who has expanded the playing field" by incorporating blues, country and folk music into her work. In 2015, Wilson joined forces with the prestigious label Legacy, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Her latest project, Coming Forth By Day, was released on the 100th anniversary of Billie Holiday's birth (April 7, 2015). She was a recipient of the Irish Arts Center Spirit of Ireland Award in 2015.

Photo credit: Mark Seliger

Rogue Oliphant is: Chris Harford (guitar), Ray Kubian (drums), David Mansfield (guitar), Cáit O'Riordan (bass), Warren Zanes (guitar)