Christopher Cherney is a pianist, composer, conductor, and producer who explores the interaction between the worlds of jazz, pop, and classical music. He has written extensively for film, video, dance, and theater, and received an Opera and Musical Theater Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has written for, played with, and conducted the Duke Ellington Orchestra and shared the stage with jazz greats Candido, John Carisi, Milt Hinton, Britt Woodman, Doc Cheatam, and Sir Roland Hanna, among others. Chris researched and presented the world premiere live performance of A Drum is a Woman, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s allegorical history of Jazz. In 1999, for Ellington’s hundreth birthday, he conducted A Drum is a