Melissa Barak (b. 1980) was born in Los Angeles, California, and began her ballet training at the age of eight at Westside School of Ballet in Santa Monica, where she studied with Yvonne Mounsey, Rosemary Valaire, and Nader Hamed. In 1996, she moved to New York to attend the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of New York City Ballet. There she originated a role in Christopher Wheeldon’s Soiree Musicale for SAB’s 1998 Workshop Performances. In June 1998, Ms. Barak was invited to become an apprentice with New York City Ballet, and less than a month later she became a member of the corps de ballet.

Ms. Barak danced numerous corps roles from the Company’s vast repertory, as well as featured roles in George Balanchine’s Cortège Hongrois, The Four Temperaments, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Helena), George Balanchine’s The NutcrackerTM (Hot Chocolate, Coffee, Flowers, and Dolls); Peter Martins’ The Sleeping Beauty (Courage and Carabosse) and Swan Lake (Russian and Princess); and Christopher Wheeldon’s Carnival of the Animals. She also originated a featured role in Christopher Wheeldon’s Klavier and corps roles in Eliot Feld’s Organon; Mr. Martins’ Chichester Psalms; Richard Tanner’s Soirée; and Christopher Wheeldon’s An American in Paris, Evenfall, and Mercurial Manoeuvres.

In June 2001, Ms. Barak choreographed Telemann Overture Suite in E Minor for the School of American Ballet’s Annual Workshop, which had its NYCB premiere in January 2002. In addition, Ms. Barak’s If by Chance premiered in June 2002 as part of the Company’s 2002 Diamond Project. Her third work for NYCB, A Simple Symphony, premiered in winter 2009.

Ms. Barak left New York City Ballet in January 2007 and joined Colleen Neary and Aage Thordal-Christensen’s Los Angeles Ballet, where the premiere of her ballet Lost in Transition occurred in February 2008. Ms. Barak is a recipient of the 2001 Choo-San Goh Award for Choreography, and her film credits include a brief appearance in the movie Toys.

Jay Greenberg (b. 1991), though still a teenager, has already created a significant catalogue of solo, chamber, and orchestral literature that examines and builds upon classical forms. The youngest composer to have an exclusive agreement with Schirmer/AMP, Greenberg’s other notable first-achievements include exclusive contracts with Sony Classical and with IMG Artists. The public first heard Mr. Greenberg’s story in a 60 Minutes interview in 2004, in which Samuel Zyman—who taught Greenberg literature and materials of music at the Juilliard School of Music—said that the young composer’s potential puts him in the company of Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Saint-Saën, music’s most illustrious young prodigies. His works have already been played by orchestras across the United States including the Pittsburgh and New Haven Symphony Orchestras.

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Jay Greenberg began playing the cello when he was three years old, and later taught himself how to play the piano. His first formal lessons in theory and composition began when he was seven; three years later he enrolled as a scholarship student in both the pre-college and college divisions of New York’s Juilliard School of Music. Mr. Greenberg’s teachers at Juilliard included Zyman, Ira Taxin, Samuel Adler, Ernest Baretta, Lance Horn, and Kendall Briggs. He says he has also learned from the writings of contemporary composers, such as Stravinsky’s Poetics in Music and the Norton Lectures that Leonard Bernstein delivered at Harvard University in 1973, as well as Aaron Copland’s essays and texts on music and composition.

Typical of a young artist, Mr. Greenberg has little to say in explaining his creative process or describing his music. In conversation, his self-confidence and his intelligence are leavened by a sharp, playful sense of humor—the perfect means of deflecting questions about his methods. He maintains a catalogue of his works dating from 1999, when he began to apply himself seriously to composing. His catalogue is already rich in full-scale compositions. In addition to five symphonies, more than a dozen piano sonatas, and a wide variety of solo piano pieces, he has composed string quartets and other chamber music, three piano concertos, and concertos for the violin and viola. In 2001, he began using a computer for composing, which enabled him to work at a much faster pace. “I don’t usually work them out on paper,” Mr. Greenberg says of his composing process. “They tend to work themselves. Generally, fairly quickly.”