Ghost of the AI Empire

Luke Terence Scott has been seen on stages around the world and across Europe. Notably in Germany, England, Czechia, Finland & more. Performing with companies such as National Theatre Prague, Finnish National Opera, Savonlinna Opera Festival, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Chamber Orchestra and many others of Finland’s world leading orchestras. From stages to broadcasting, Scott has been seen & heard over the sound waves of BBC Alba, YLE 1, and Radio Classique.

A dynamic young artist, Scott has been selected as a ‘Rising Star of Voice’ at the 2025 edition of the prestigious Edinburgh International Festival. Winner of the Special Prize for Song from the SOI Cedolins International Competition 2024 and the Finnish Wagner Society’s Bayreuther Festspiele Scholarship prize and Audience prize. The latter which led to Scott being selected from amongst his fellow scholarship holders to perform at the famous Bayreuther Festspiele International Scholarship Holder Concert.

Natalka Pasicznyk is a coloratura soprano who studied at the Royal College of Music with Mary Nelson. Natalka was a Stanley Picker Award Holder, supported by the Pidem Scholarship and the Audrey Sacher Award as well as being kindly supported by the Josephine Baker Trust. She was a 2025 Leeds Song Young Artist and is currently an Oxford Song Young Artist. Recent projects include debuting the role of Adele in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus as a Westminster Opera Company Emerging Artist, performing in Green Opera’s production of TESTAMENT at the Grimeborn Opera Festival and performing the role of Rooster in the RCM production of Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Earlier this year, Natalka worked as the soprano cover in Max Richter’s Woolf Works at the Royal Opera House.

Coloratura soprano Olivia Moss is known for her flair for contemporary repertoire. She is a Britten Pears Young Artist for the 2026/27 season on their celebrated Composition & Performance programme. Upcoming engagements for Olivia include soloist appearances at the Aldeburgh Festival and with Refugium Musicum Orchestra, singing Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi (Liverpool Mozart Orchestra) and touring Finland and internationally with the Helsinki Chamber Choir. In the 2025/26 season Olivia sang Caelia in the world premiere of Launis’ Les Flammes Gelées (Urkuyö ja Aaria Festival), Oiwa in Yūrei: Ghost of the AI Empire (Muramatsu & Huang-Kokina, Operactive Arts at ENO’s Tuning into Opera), Love Expert in the world premiere of Trbojevic’s The Art of Loving, and she toured with the Finnish Baroque Orchestra. Previous roles include Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte at Bergen National Opera Academy, soloist in Bernstein’s Mass at the Royal Festival Hall under Marin Alsop, and Charlotte in Krenek’s Der Diktator with Tapiola Sinfonietta. Olivia is the recipient of Glyndebourne’s Gus Christie Award 2018, the second prize in the Helsinki Lied Competition 2021 and a Martin Wegelius Foundation Merit Award.

Vladyslava Yakovenko is a Ukrainian soprano and recent graduate of the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London.

She made her professional debut in 2022 with BBC Radio 3, performing Stravinsky’s Pribaoutki with Ubu Ensemble. Her recent engagements include Glyndebourne, where she covered First Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte during the 2024 Festival, appeared as a soloist in the 2024 Glyndebourne Christmas Concert, and subsequently covered Musetta in Puccini’s La bohème. She will return to Glyndebourne for the 2027 Festival as cover for the title role in Janáček’s Jenůfa.

Award-winning baritone John Ieuan Jones is graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music, where he numerous accolades including won the James Martin Onken Song Prize and the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Scholarship. He was also the runner-up in the prestigious Elizabeth Harwood Memorial Prize. At the National Eisteddfod of Wales, Ieuan has won both the Osborne Roberts Memorial Prize and the Towyn Roberts Scholarship.

Since graduating, Ieuan has worked with some of the UK’s foremost opera and theatre companies, including Welsh National Opera, Grange Park Opera, and the National Theatre, London. Recent engagements include: Dottore Grenvil in La Traviata, Mr Bogdanovich in The Merry Widow (Buxton International Festival), Antonio in The Gondoliers, covered and sang Silvio in Pagliacci (English Touring Opera), Baritone Trio Trouble in Tahiti (Mid Wales Opera), Jacob Yurei: the Opera (OperActive, European Premier) & Fossoyeur in Hamlet (Buxton International Festival), and Maximilian Candide (Welsh National Opera). In theatre, Ieuan has performed at the National Theatre in Emlyn Williams’ The Corn is Green and has shared the stage with Sir Bryn Terfel in Robat Arwyn’s Welsh musical Hwn yw fy Mrawd at the 2018 National Eisteddfod and recently completed a tour with the London Concertante Orchestra in their West End Musicals Concerts.

Ieuan’s versatility has made him a sought-after concert artist, performing throughout the UK and overseas. Highlights include Opera Galas at the Bridgewater Hall and St David’s Hall, guest soloist at the Festival of Male Voices at the Royal Albert Hall, and guest appearances at the North America Festival of Wales in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Ottawa for the Ontario Festival of Wales.

Ieuan is a proud patron of the Joshua Tree Children’s Charity.

Clíona Cassidy is a soprano, composer and improviser from Dublin. She has worked for Scottish Opera since 2012, and is a member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. Her practice is focused around operatic improvisation and she is passionate about exploring the boundaries of her instrument and where the seemingly disparate practices of free improvisation and operatic vocal technique can merge, reimagining classical structures through an experimental perspective. With this focus, she wrote her improvised song cycle “Hiatus” and performed it with the New String Collective at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Tectonics Festival, and has co written an improvised opera “Silk Threads” with Raymond MacDonald that has been featured on BBC Radio 3. She has been a frequent guest lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, teaching both free improvisation and choral singing.

She has been exploring the art of free improvisation for 15 years, as a member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and in close collaborations with many improvising artists from around the world, including Maggie Nicols, George Burt, Raymond MacDonald and performance art duo Hexekaidecagon.

While at Scottish Opera, she has appeared in co productions with Opera Holland Park, D’Oyly Carte Opera and in productions broadcast on BBC 4 and Opera Vision. She has sung Harry in Scottish Opera’s Albert Herring, toured as Aud in Joanna Nicholson’s Aud the deep minded, and has performed Board Member 1 and the Narrator in Alexandra Huang Kokina, Atzi Muramatsu and Ryan Morgan’s opera trilogy Ghost of the AI Empire for Operactive Arts and as part of English National Opera’s tuning into opera series. She is also improvisation coach to singers and instrumentalists on this project.

Joe is a lyric baritone and a graduate of the Masters programme at the Royal Northern College of Music, where he also obtained a first class honours degree at undergraduate level.

Joe’s operatic credits include Sid (La Fanciulla del West) for Opera Holland Park, Crebillon and Rabonnier (La Rondine) with Atelier Armonico, Gabriel von Eisenstein (Die Fledermaus) with the Lyric Opera Studio Weimar, Monostatos (The Magic Flute) with Charles Court Opera and Il Messaggero (Aida) with FKP Show Creations as part of a German arena tour in front of audiences of up to 8,000 people. Joe has also been a part of the chorus for the last three seasons at Opera Holland Park, performing in Turandot, Un Ballo in Maschera, Die Fledermaus, La Traviata, Lucia de Lammermoor, Tosca, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Edgar and The Yeomen of the Guard, as well as for Gothic Opera’s Offie-nominated production of Maria de Rudenz.

Described as "really one of a kind" by Maja Laskowska of Everything Theatre, Ryan Morgan is a London-based composer, performer, and educator whose work is characterised by maximal-minimal gestural brushstrokes, building dense musical textures from simple gestures driven by the rhythms of movement and dance. By locking spontaneous vocal improvisation into strict metre and turning the everyday building blocks of play into musical material, he crafts highly physical and immediate work that prioritises shared transformation between performer and audience.

He is the inaugural recipient of the London Mozart Players’ Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Prize and a Classically Black The Next Movement 2026 to 2027 artist. His recent work includes the choral piece Permission to Play, published by Stainer & Bell and featured on NMC’s Young Composer 7 album. His past collaborative projects include works for organisations such as Terra Invisus, the London Sinfonietta, and the Birmingham Opera Company. Currently serving as Head of Music, Ryan views education as a direct extension of his artistic practice, dedicated to making contemporary composition and music making highly accessible.

Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina is a Bicentenary Fellow in Music at the University of Manchester, pianist and creative director whose work bridges music, literature, intermediality, and digital creativity. As a maker of immersive opera and performer/curator of experimental music ensembles, her practice directly informs her research at the intersection of performing arts, digital innovation, and intercultural inclusivity.

Her current work employs opera as case study and engine for collaborative creativity, harnessing AI and data science to expand participatory and artistic possibilities. Through radical innovations in storytelling and audience engagement, she has designed, written, and directed two experimental operas Yūrei (2025) and The Covenant (2026), infused with Japanese Noh and Kabuki theatre, improvisation and gamification. Her vision is to reimagine the future of opera, making it more accessible, engaging, and sustainable for diverse audiences. She is also the Artistic Director of Operactive Arts, a UK-based cultural enterprise reimagining classical music for the modern world.

Arturs Kokins is Managing Director and co-founder of Operactive Arts, and producer of Ghost of the AI Empire. He leads the company's business and architected the technology that lets the audience steer the show from their phones, as well as Surtitles in a Box, the company's surtitling product. Before Operactive Arts he spent twenty years leading technology and business-transformation programmes. He holds an MBA with distinction from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Nick Bond is a freelance director, writer and producer who graduated from Mountview with a distinction in MA Theatre Directing after completing his BA in Music and Drama at the University of Manchester. He was the Young Associate Board Director for Buxton International Festival for 2021-2024. His production of The Boatswain’s Mate by Ethel Smyth was part of BIF’s 2024 season, nominated for an International Opera Award for Best Festival and a UK Theatre Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera.

Upcoming projects include: Legally Blonde (Chichester Conservatoire) and Little Shop of Horrors (Bird Conservatoire).

Directing credits include: In and Out of Knowing (The Other Palace), Lucky Stiff (Hope Mill Theatre), The Boatswain’s Mate, The Enchanted Pig and Scenes from a Musical (Buxton International Festival), Go! The Musical (Upstairs at the Gatehouse), Sondheim Showcase (Trinity Laban) Kiss Me, Kate (Emil Dale Academy), Merrily We Roll Along, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, And The World Goes 'Round (Arden School of Theatre), In and Out of Knowing: A New Musical, Far Away (Mountview), The Addams Family, Guys and Dolls, The Rocky Horror Show, Urinetown (Chichester Conservatoire), Motherhood (Hen and Chickens Theatre), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (University of Manchester), and Seussical (University of Manchester Musical Theatre Society).

Assistant Directing credits include: La Sonnambula (Buxton International Festival), Company, Macbeth andMusical Theatre Showcase (Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts).

Atzi Muramatsu is an award-winning composer and cellist based in Edinburgh. His works are seen across multiplicity of genre - concerts, dance, poetry, visual art, and film. His art is rooted in free improvisation, inclusive music-making, and embodied music cognition.

He is a self-taught musician progressed later in life to contemporary classical music. He studied with Nigel Osborn and Peter Nelson, and attained MMus Composition at the University of Edinburgh.

His recent works include Deep Wheel Orcadia, a string quartet accompaniment to a theatrical poetry reading by Harry Josephine Giles, a chamber opera Yũrei- Ghost of the AI Empire commissioned and performed by Operactive Arts, and a short orchestral score Flux, commissioned and performed by Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble. His music features in three BAFTA winning films, including a New Talent Award in 2016. He plays in various contemporary and experimental ensembles including Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and New String Collective.

As Creative Director of inclusive music charity Sonic Bothy, he leads innovation in new music with disabled artists - radically advocating for equality in contemporary music.

Harry is an electroacoustic composer currently undertaking a PhD on the sonification of dynamic optimisation at the University of Manchester. His current compositional work is rooted in post-digital aesthetics, exploring broad sonic environments inundated with granular information to the point of distortion. Harry's work also involves building computer-based sound-making tools, both for musical purposes and to aid understanding of algorithmic behaviour.

Harry is a keen collaborator, working on recent projects with Prof Frank Boons, developing an AI vs Human musical Turing test game; with Dr Catherine Walsh, composing music from sonifications of celestial data recorded by the University of Leeds; with Dr Alexandra Huang, developing a system to reflect audience emotion through live electronics in an operatic context; and with bass clarinettist Marij van Gorkom, generating accompanying electronics from particle swarm dynamics.

Before Tracey’s move into theatre, video, and lighting design, she was an established advertising photographer in Manchester. With a career of collaboration and creating imagery behind her, along with her dance career, the move to theatre was a natural progression.

She began her theatre journey in 2016 by studying lighting and video design at LIPA Liverpool. Graduating in 2019. She went on to win the ALPD I-Blue Theatre Graduate Award for excellence in video design in 2019

Her ambition is to create lighting and video designs that are immersive and engaging for performers and audiences alike. She also connects deeply with how light, in all its forms, can transport us to places and emotions, continuing her journey of discovery and learning in the creative world of theatre and performance.

Recent Credits: Lighting Designer Women of Troy Manchester School of Theatre
Lighting Designer We’re in Love Actually Dark Horse Theatre Company
Video Design Neddy Goes to Glastonbury Hark At Her Productions

Chloe Wyn is a Set and Costume Designer based between North West England and North Wales.

Originally from North Wales, Chloe graduated with First-Class Honours in Theatre and Performance Design from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) in 2020.

In 2025, Chloe was shortlisted for The Stage Debut Awards for her Set and Costume Design for The Walrus Has a Right to Adventure at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool.

Chloe is particularly interested in theatre that engages non-traditional audiences and brings real-life stories to the stage. Her practice focuses on creating thoughtful and visually distinctive environments that support storytelling and connect with a wide range of audiences.

Frances is a multi-disciplinary theatre practitioner based in Manchester. After studying Drama and Theatre Practise at the University of Hull, she has been freelancing in the industry, taking on a wide variety of roles: from puppeteering to facilitation; devising to production management.

Frances is looking forwards to joining this exciting venture with Operactive as Stage Manager.