Joy H. Calico is Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Department of Musicology at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music. Her scholarship focuses on the interdisciplinary study of Cold War cultural politics, Schoenberg, and opera since 1900. She is the author of two monographs, Arnold Schoenberg's 'A Survivor from Warsaw' in Postwar Europe (California, 2014; published in expanded Italian translation in 2023 and Russian translation in 2025) and Brecht at the Opera (California, 2008), as well as numerous articles and book chapters. Calico is a member of the working team of the Black Opera Research Network (BORN), a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and co-founder, with Daniel K. L. Chua, of the California Studies in Global Musicology book series. Justin Vickers is Distinguished Professor of Music and Artist Teacher of Voice at Illinois State University.

He co-edited and contributed to Elizabeth Maconchy in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2026) with Lucy Walker; Benjamin Britten in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art (The Boydell Press, 2017), both with Vicki P. Stroeher. He was a 2020-2021 U.S. Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom. He is currently writing The Aldeburgh Festival: A History of the Britten and Pears Era, 1948-1986 (The Boydell Press), and with Philip Reed he is editing Elizabeth Sweeting: The Best and Happiest Days (Bittern Press, 2026), the memoir of the first manager of the Aldeburgh Festival, alongside a series of her letters with Benjamin Britten, among other midcentury British projects.