Stoddard currently serves as Director of Fellowships with Satellite Collective.
Satellite Collective believes in artists collaborating as equals, globally and virtually. We incubate performances, arts exchanges, and publications that allow artists to work together because we believe that is the future. We grow artists.
Satellite believes that the current commercial marketplace is exploiting young artists’ need for fiscal sponsorship, and in the process monetizing what should be knowledge shared amongst artists to grow their business viability and enable full careers. To that end, Satellite has launched a hands-on, uniquely-tailored fellowship for artists who show career promise, an ability to raise money to fund themselves, and a willingness to work in collaborative environments. Currently, we are represented in dance, world music, film, theater, interdisciplinary performance, and visual arts – with the vision of expanding into literary arts, opera, science and technology.
The inaugural cohort of Fellows was announced in April 2020. The second and third cohorts were introduced in the spring of 2021 and 2022, respectively.
“The Workshop of Broken Faces” at the Beyond The Machine Festival (2019)
Perhaps the most tragic casualties of the Great War were the soldiers whose faces had been horribly disfigured in battle. For these mutilés, the war would never be over. Shunned for their grotesque appearance by the very communities they fought to protect, many refused to leave the hospital; some committed suicide. Inspired to help when the medical community turned their backs, Anna Coleman Ladd, an American sculptor living in Boston, voluntarily moved to Paris and established the Studio for Portrait-Masks in 1918. Here she developed a unique method that used her artistic talent to create cosmetic masks so life-like that they “gave life back to them that prayed for death.” Through music, dance, film and innovative technology, The Workshop of Broken Faces brings the remarkable true story of Anna’s transformational encounter with a wounded young soldier to life on stage for the very first time.
“The Bach Project” with Collaborative Arts Ensemble (2019)
The Bach Project re-contextualizes Cantata 97, In Allen Meinen Taten, of Johann Sebastian Bach for four singers, cello, violin, keyboard and vibraphone. The program poses questions and responses to the the major themes at work in Bach’s worldview as well as contemporary society: doubt and faith, hatred and tolerance, injustice and peace. The cantata is interrupted with material that is contrapuntal to Bach’s statements of faith — including poetry and dramatic text from Kaveh Akbar, Adam Zagajewski, Lilian Hellman, and Rainer Maria Rilke and musical material such as Haitian folk songs, gospel, Arvo Pärt, and original compositions. Created to celebrate and challenge our collective humanity, The Bach Project is a kaleidoscopic journey through profound expressions of what it is to be human.
“Echo & Narcissus” with Satellite Collective (2018)
“… the artists of Satellite Collective vividly and memorably reinterpreted the myth at BAM Fisher. It is too bad that there were only two performances of this imaginative production directed by Philip Stoddard.”
Featuring original music, live chamber performance, visual art, ballet, multimedia, opera, and lighting design, Echo & Narcissus illuminates the unrest and discord of our current political moment. This ambitious interdisciplinary project by the Satellite Collective showcases the deftness of its team. Live music of original score performed by ShoutHouse. Co-written and Directed by Philip Stoddard.
OperaComp at National Sawdust (2018 and 2017)
The Opera Composer Collaborative Project was the first interdivisional opera development laboratory in Juilliard history. Alongside colleagues in the composition and vocal arts departments, Philip was co-founder of this vital new program that still exists today. In addition to the serving on the inaugural leadership team, he directed the world premieres of The Magician and the Magician’s Assistant by Jack Gulielmetti and Vulnerable City by Yihan Chen.
Selected Works:
The Workshop of Broken Faces (2019) for the Beyond the Machine Festival
Role of Reason: a mixed-media oratorio by Jack Gulielmetti (2018) for BTM
Assistant Director of Verdi’s La Traviata at the Aspen Opera Center (2017)
World premiere operas: The Magician and the Magician’s Assistant (2017) and Vulnerable City (2017)
Scenes from Massenet’s Werther with artists from the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Program (2016)