ARTIST BIOS

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Archway Gallery hosts

Rhapsode Guild in "A Sense of Place: cellos, poetry, and conversation"

featuring cellists Daniel Saenz & Adrian Tellez

and poets led by Katherine McDaniel (Synkroniciti)

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celebrating the "Road Trip" exhibition of Lisette McClung

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Sunday, August 16, 2026

6PM

Archway Gallery,

2305 Dunlavy Street, Houston, Texas

Rhapsode Guild Founding Board

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B. P. Herrington (artistic director) was born in the Big Thicket of eastern Texas and his music is rooted in the folk ballads, Pentecostal gospel music, rural singing styles and instrumental music of this unique region.  His works have been performed by artists such as soprano Tony Arnold, conductor James Baker, Ensemble Linea, El Perro Andaluz, the London Sinfonietta, the Royal Academy Symphony Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the BBC Singers, in venues such as Rothko Chapel, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Carnegie Hall, and London’s Purcell Room. 

Composition awards include the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize, Morton Gould Award (ASCAP), Leo Kaplan Prize (ASCAP), First Music Award (New York Youth Symphony) and two composition awards from the Royal Academy of Music. 

Herrington earned a Ph.D. in music composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he studied with Simon Bainbridge. He also studied with Marc Satterwhite and Steve Rouse at the University of Louisville, and with Joe Alexander and Frank Felice at Lamar University. Herrington founded the New Music Lab contemporary music ensemble at Sam Houston State University and currently chairs the Music Department at Lone Star College-CyFair near Houston.

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Misha Penton (founding member) is singer-composer, improvisor, and multidisciplinary artist creating immersive vocal works, sonic installations, and mythic media experiences. Blending voice, electronics, moving image, and atmospheric composition, her work explores memory, landscape, transformation, and the poetic edge between ancient ritual and speculative futures.

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Misha’s works include two residencies with her ensemble Misha Penton Collective for Sculpture Month Houston; Threshold, a site-responsive vocal work for the monumental Silos at Sawyer Yards in Houston; Anecdote of the Spirit, a contemplative sonic meditation for the Rothko Chapel; The Medusa Project, which premiered at the Women Composers Festival of Hartford and was reimagined as a film installation for Bath Spa University’s 35-foot MediaWall in the UK; and Blessings of the Moon, an musico-visual invocation of the mythic feminine. Misha made her directorial debut with Houston Grand Opera's Star Cross’d web opera series, and she has spearheaded many original evening-length performance works, experimental music films, and music media projects. 

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Misha holds a PhD in Music & Performance from Bath Spa University, UK, and collaborations and guest artist residencies include Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Menil Collection, Dallas Museum of Art, DiverseWorks, The Juilliard School, Concordia University Montreal, University of Houston, Sam Houston State University, Texas A&M College Station, and Concordia University, as well as others across music, visual art, and literature.

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Upcoming projects: Resonant Bodies, a sound installation and performances at Bosque Gallery in Cypress, Texas in collaboration with ceramicists Jeff Forster and Gaby Soto; and Watercolor Scores: Sound, Water & New Mythologies at Archway Gallery: an evening of new original music, poetry, and dance inspired by a collection of Misha’s watercolor paintings with guest artists from ConTempo Studios. mishapenton.com

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Stephen Yip (founding member) obtained his doctor of musical arts (D.M.A.) at Rice University. He has attended major music festivals including: Wellesley Composers Conference, Aspen Music Festival, Asian Composers’ League, ISCM World Music Days, Chinese Composers’ Festival, Darmstadt, Germany. Residencies include: Yaddo Colony and MacDowell Colony.

 

Yip’s works have been performed in the Asia, Europe and America. He has received several composition prizes, included “Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award”, “Taiwan Music Center International Composition Prize”, “Singapore International Composition Competition for Chinese Orchestra”, the ALEA III composition Competition. His musical works are published by the Universal edition

and Babelscores; and recorded on CD labels such as: Kairos, Albany, ERM-Media, PARMA, Capstone, North South recording, Ablaze records, ATMA Classique, and Beauport Classical labels and now serves faculty at HCC and Lone Star College-CyFair.

More information: www.stephen-yip.com

 

Composers, Poets and Performers

 

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Kathi Crawford is a Houston-based writer, collage artist, and founder of People Possibilities, LLC, where she has coached humans through life’s plot twists since 2008. She is the author of two chapbooks, consider the light and running with the beasts, published by Finishing Line Press, and was delighted to be selected as Best Entry in the 2024 Finishing Line Press Open Chapbook Competition. She will be the Featured Reader at the upcoming Poetry Open Mic at Brazos Bookstore hosted by Houston Writing Central on August 21, 2026.

 

Two of her collages were featured in the Hardy & Nance Cut It Out! Exhibit in February 2026. Her collage entitled Strings was selected for the cover of the upcoming Dignity issue of Synkroniciti magazine. Through the interplay of writing and collage, Kathi is interested in exploring her voice guided by a deep curiosity about human nature and the motivations behind our choices. She hopes her work leaves you feeling moved and introspective. Connect with her on Instagram or LinkedIn @kathicrawford and subscribe to her blog at https://kathicrawford.com/.

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George Heathco - As a guitarist, composer, educator, and collaborator, Houston musician George Heathco has worked with a wide variety of artists, organizations, and schools. Equally at home in a diverse range of styles, the genre-hopping musician has played guitar with many of Houston’s leading music and theater organizations, local songwriters and rock/pop bands, and numerous churches and contemporary worship services. He has composed and contributed music for television, radio, theater, jazz and chamber ensembles, and rock/pop acts. In 2016, his setting of Psalm 88 was premiered by Duo Scordatura at Carnegie Hall. Since 2004, George Heathco has been active as a music educator, teaching privately, conducting workshops, and teaching classes and courses at numerous Houston-area schools and colleges.

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Katherine McDaniel is an award-winning poet and visual artist. Her poetry appears in Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, How to Tend a Wall: Friendswood Library’s 2025 Ekphrastic Poetry Anthology, and Archway Gallery's 50th Anniversary Collection. Currently, she has two poems displayed as part of the WILD exhibition at Sabine Street Gallery. She won first and third prizes for poetry in The Fire Within, Women in the Visual and Literary Arts 2025 anthology. In 2012, Houston Grand Opera commissioned her to write a trilogy highlighting unique experiences of Latin American immigrant women.

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Her paintings and photography have shown at Hardy & Nance Studios and Art on the Avenue. She won third prize in WiVLA’s RISE exhibition in 2025.

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Combining her passion for community and the arts, she founded Synkroniciti, a creativity incubator, and serves as the editor of Synkroniciti Magazine since 2019. She has taught workshops for Houston Botanic Garden, Writespace and WiVLA and now teaches via Zoom for Synkroniciti. The new “Permissions” Ekphrastic series explores the life and art of selected artists, such as Frida Kahlo, Henry Ossawa Tanner and Paul Klee. You can read more about that at What’s Going On? – synkroniciti .

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John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. Milkereit has since completed an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Ekphrastic Review, Synkroniciti, and The Comstock Review. He has judged various poetry contests and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. In December, Kelsay Books published his fifth poetry collection, The Beginning of Undoing.

 

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Cellist Daniel Saenz has performed and presented master classes throughout South America, Mexico, and the USA. Recent engagements have taken him to internationally renowned venues throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. 

As a concerto soloist, he has performed with orchestras in the United States, France, and Bolivia. An advocate of the music of our time, Mr. Saenz has performed under the auspices of Aperio, Music of the Americas, The Foundation for Modern Music, the University of Missouri Kansas City Musica Aestas Composition Festival, and SoundSCAPEComposition and Performance Exchange in Maccagno, Italy. 

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More recently, Daniel performed at the Schlern International Music Festival in Völsam Schlern, the Rio International Cello Festival in Rio de Janeiro, and the National Arts Institute (UNA) in Buenos Aires. 

A graduate of the University of Houston, Rice University and the Eastman School of Music, Mr. Saenz is the Assistant Professor of Cello at Sam Houston State University School of Music where he teaches cello, coaches chamber music, and is a member of the Kolonneh String Quartet.

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Varsha Saraiya-Shah authored “VOICES,” a poetry chapbook by Finishing Line Press.

 

Her poem has been featured on Academy of American Poets’ website Poem-a-Day Project: https://poets.org/poem/anthem-america.

 

Also, published in Ambidextrous Bloodhound, Borderlands, BorderSenses, Cha, Convergence, Dos Gatos, Echoes of the Cordillera, Ekphrastic Review, Mutabilis, Orchard Street Press, Penguin Random House India, Pippa Rann-UK, Synkroniciti and elsewhere, her work has appeared on Houston’s WIVLA, Rice Gallery installations, international panels, Austin’s Jazz-Poetry performance, Public Radio, and a multi-language/century dance program: “Poetry in Motion” at Hobby Center for Performing Arts, MATCH Houston, and Miller Outdoor Theatre, produced and directed by Silambam, Houston.

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Sandi Stromberg lives in Houston, Texas, after many years as a nomad in five countries across two continents. Her two poetry collections—Moonlight, Shaken (2026) and Frogs Don’t Sing Red (2023)—were published by Kelsay Books. Her poems and books have also experienced special opportunities...
 

• set to music on the erhu, a Chinese two-stringed bowed instrument and played in Singapore

• set to music and sung in preparation for a performance by composer, performer Misha Penton

• translated into Dutch and published in Brabant Cultureel, Netherlands, where she lived several years

• translated and published in Arabic

• nominated multiple times for the Pushcart and Best of Net prizes

• juried in the Houston Poetry Fest eleven times

• judged recently as finalists in issues of equinox and synkroniciti
 

• read as the feature at First Friday, Houston's oldest reading event

• published widely in small journals and anthologies

 

She is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review and has also edited three anthologies of poetry: Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press, 2015), Echoes of the Cordillera (Museum of the Big Bend, 2018), and Ekphrastic Poetry and Prose, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Houston's Archway Gallery. ​​

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Cellist Adrian Tellez is an active performer and educator in the greater Houston area, and has appeared in orchestras such as the Toledo Symphony, Adrian Symphony, and Brazos Valley Symphony. He is currently completing a Certificate in Music Performance at the University of Houston under the tutelage of Dr. Eunghee Cho. He received his Master’s degree in Music Performance from Bowling Green State University studying with Dr. Brian Snow as a graduate assistant where he was the principal cellist of the Bowling Green Philharmonia, and cellist in the Graduate String Quartet.

 

He received his Bachelor’s degree from Sam Houston State University studying with Dr. Daniel Saenz. Adrian has a passion for cello pedagogy, and he strives to teach his students valuable lessons about goal-setting, discipline, and dedication through music. In his free time, he enjoys watching sports, especially the Houston Astros!

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