Christine Mori is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Bravo Niagara!. She began her early musical education at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Mozarteum, Aspen Music Festival, and Tanglewood before attending The Juilliard School. After graduating from Juilliard, Christine spent thirty years as the principal pianist for the Florida Orchestra, performing with renowned artists such as Isaac Stern, Henry Mancini, Victor Borge, Joseph Silverstein, and Bobby McFerrin. In 2014, she returned to Canada from the U.S. and co-founded Bravo Niagara! with her daughter, Alexis Spieldenner. Together, they are committed to presenting today's leading artists from Canada and around the world and to producing transformative new works. Creating Kimiko’s Pearl has been one of Christine’s most rewarding projects, as it has deeply connected her with her Japanese Canadian roots.

Alexis Spieldenner is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Bravo Niagara!. A fourth-generation Japanese Canadian, she is the recipient of Ontario's 2016 Lincoln M. Alexander Award, presented by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, for her leadership in eliminating racial discrimination and promoting positive social change. Alexis is a Fellow of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management in Washington, D.C. She currently serves on the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre Board of Directors and Ontario Creates’ Music Industry Advisory Committee. Alexis holds a bachelor’s degree in International Comparative Studies from Duke University, where she graduated with high distinction. Her undergraduate honours thesis “Voices of Four Generations: A Story of the Japanese Canadian Community from Issei to Yonsei” inspired the story of Kimiko’s Pearl.

Howard Reich is the Emmy-winning writer-producer of three documentary films and the author of six books, including "Prisoner of Her Past: A Son's Memoir" and "The Art of Inventing Hope: Intimate Conversations with Elie Wiesel." Howard served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Music four times, including the first time a jazz composition won, Wynton Marsalis’ "Blood on the Fields" (1997). Howard holds two honorary doctorate degrees and covered the arts for the Chicago Tribune from 1978 to 2021. His Tribune series "Mac's Journey" is the basis of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s new opera, "Before It All Goes Dark,” a Holocaust story that Music of Remembrance recently premiered in Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago. As the son of two Holocaust survivors, Howard finds profound parallels between his own family’s story and the Ayukawas’ experiences before, during and after Japanese Canadian internment.   

Described as a "self-assured voice" (Barczablog) with a "masterful control over his idiom" (Classical Music Sentinel), Kevin Lau has established himself as one of Canada’s most versatile and sought-after young composers. Awarded the 2017 Canada Council’s Victor Martyn Lynn-Staunton Award for outstanding achievement in music, Kevin’s work has been commissioned by almost every major orchestra in Canada, and his work has been performed internationally in the USA, Denmark, France, Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. In 2021, he will assume the role of composer in residence for both the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra (Winnipeg, MB) and the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (Houston, TX). He was recently appointed composer for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s 2021 original production of The Spirit Horse Returns, a multi-disciplinary show highlighting the history of the Ojibwe horse through the eyes of Indigenous artists, musicians, and storytellers.

In 2016 he composed the score for the National Ballet of Canada’s original full-length ballet Le Petit Prince, featuring choreography by NBOC Principal Dancer and Choreographic Associate Guillaume Côté. His second ballet score, Dark Angels, was commissioned by the National Arts Centre Orchestra for its Encount3rs project in 2017, and was described as “riveting” (Ottawa Citizen) and “extraordinarily accomplished” (Artsfile). His most recent large-scale work, an opera-oratorio (Bound) commissioned by Against the Grain Theatre, was hailed by the Globe and Mail as “a brilliant creation.”

Yosuke Mino began his dance training at the Akiko Kanamaru Ballet Studio in Japan. He moved to Canada in 1998 to train at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School Professional Division and became an Apprentice of the RWB in 2002. Mino spent one season with The Boston Ballet before returning to the RWB where he was promoted to Soloist in 2006.

Mino’s repertoire includes the Jester in Swan Lake, Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty, Jack Seward and Wolf in Dracula, Mercutio in Rudi van Dantzig’s Romeo + Juliet, and Papageno in Mark Godden’s The Magic Flute. Mino has also had a number of roles created on him; he premiered the roles of Peter in Peter Pan, Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge® – The Ballet and White Rabbit in Wonderland. In the 2012/13 season he was selected by choreographer Twyla Tharp to dance the role of King of the Underworld in Twyla Tharp’s The Princess & The Goblin. Recently, Mino stretched his choreographic wings, creating the work Kevät for the 2012/13 Q Dance, and the pas de deux Revelry/Rivalry for the RWB mixed repertoire performance of Pure Ballet

Aaron Tsang is a Canadian composer for film and mixed media who has provided original music and audio services to over 70 films, videogames, television shows, and commercials. Aaron’s music and sound design work for games can be found in franchises such as: Shrek (DreamWorks Pictures), Ghostbusters (Sony Pictures), and The Smurfs. More recently, Aaron’s work can be found in “Shuyan Saga”, a graphic novel style 3D action videogame starring Kristin Kreuk (Smallville) as the titular Shuyan. The game features a full orchestral soundtrack and was nominated by the Canadian Screen Awards in 2018 for “Best Original Interactive Production for Digital Media”. Aaron’s music has also appeared in many television commercials. Notable clients include: Mercedes-Benz, Tim Hortons, Cineplex, Novartis, and MasterCard. In 2020 the University of Toronto commissioned Aaron to compose a celebratory orchestral score to the virtual convocation ceremonies held in absentia as a result of the global pandemic. Aaron is also an active recording and mixing engineer for new Classical music. In 2017, working with Christos Hatzis and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Aaron was the mastering engineer for the album “Going Home Star – Truth and Reconciliation”, which won the Juno award for “Classical Album of the Year”.

Since graduating from The University of Manitoba Faculty of Fine Arts in 1980, Shannon Lovelace has shown in galleries across North American and her portraits and life studies can be found in corporate and private collections around the globe. Children, families, the world of ballet and the beauty of the natural environment have all found themselves in her canvases, lovingly rendered in luscious tableaux in acrylic and conte. Close collaborations with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet since 1993 as a milliner, decorator, dyer and designer, gave Lovelace backstage access to performances, which led to beautiful paintings of dancers that evoke the stylistic techniques of Degas and Sargent.

Her costume designs, like her artwork use threads of repeated colour and form to create a cohesive movement across the stage. Each costume is designed to help support the whole. In Kimiko’s Pearl, the past and present are defined not only by historic cuts but by tone. The past, like an old photograph is washed in sepia, gradually the costumes become more vibrant as the years progress to current day.

Shannon has designed Madame Butterfly, Sleeping Beauty and Moulin Rouge - The Ballet with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet as well as Ballet Memphis’ Sleeping Beauty. She has worked on several moves as costumer and illustrator.

Lighting designer since 1988 at the Shaw Festival, originally with Artistic Director, Christopher Newton. He is currently director of lighting design at Shaw. Kevin Lamotte grew up near Leamington, Ontario, and studied lighting in a technical theatre program at Niagara College and the Banff Centre for the Arts during the summer. He then studied lighting, set, costumes, and script analysis at the New York Studio and Forum of Stage Design with Lester Polakov.

For Shaw he has lit over seventy-five productions, notably John Bull's Other Island, Passion, Poison and Petrifaction, The Doctor's Dilemma, Peer Gynt, An Inspector Calls, You Can't Take it With You (1999), Heartbreak House, All My Sons, and SS Tenacity.

He has also worked at the National Arts Centre, Canadian Stage (Wit 2001 and Domesticated 2015), Citadel Theatre, Young People's Theatre, and Centaur Theatre. More recently, for Soulpepper Theatre Company, he has designed for memorable productions of Marat/Sade (2015), Father Comes Home from the Wars I, II, and III (2016), and Waiting for Godot (2017). He also designs for opera and ballet productions.

Lamotte is a recipient of the Pauline McGibbon Award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award, Jessie Richardson Award, Prix de la Masque, and Betty Mitchell Award. In 2006, he was nominated for the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre.

He is a member of the Associated Designers of Canada.

His work is marked by a heightened aesthetic sense, while still maintaining subtle treatment of detail and utter complicity with design partners.

Fourgrounds is an award-winning, boutique, film and video production house in Niagara, Ontario. Their work ranges from feature, short and documentary film production, video art, projection and public art installation, 2D animation and commercial video production.