about the artists

Heather Kropf’s classical piano training, honeyed folk/jazz-fueled voice and deft, evocative song craft have garnered acclaim from WYEP Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Magazine, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and airplay at over 60 radio stations nationally, including WFUV Bronx and WXPN Philadelphia. Her fifth release Lights was nominated for Top Entertainment + Media Project (2018) by the Creative Industries Network, and was listed as a top Pittsburgh album by TribLIVE (2017). Some of these songs are included in We Know There Are Oceans.

Her live shows are notable for immersing her listeners into a subtle and mesmerizing world that explores the complexity and beauty of modern life and romance from many angles, much as an artist would paint various studies of a still life.

When she isn’t making music and traveling, Heather is passionate about home design/Feng Shui (she is a certified practitioner), environmental wellness, organizing for her passion project Fair Play Pittsburgh, haunting her favorite jazz clubs, daydreaming, walking cemeteries and city parks, and hanging out with her two rescue cats. She is always down for meeting you at a diner for breakfast.

Michelle Milne is a performer, writer, director, and educator working across the United States, including both coasts and regions in between. She has created multiple original theatre shows, including The Telling of the Bees (mixing science, technology, mythology, and honeybees), and For Those Who Cannot Fly (about our relationship to borders and walls). Currently, she is expanding the latter for touring under the title Edge Effects. 

Michelle has performed her poetry as the character “Carmelina du Jour” in Chicago’s Poetry Bordello; appeared as Supervisor McCrae in the sci-fi TV show pilot Decktechs; and was a part of the ensemble for Palissimo’s The Painted Bird at La Mama in NYC. She currently performs around the US and Canada with Ted & Company in the 2-person show, Discovery: A Comic Lament, for which she also served as movement director. 

Her recent directing work includes highly physical and immersive productions of Brontë (which won the 2017 Drammy Award for Best Production in Portland, Ore.), Julius Caesar, Eurydice, Every Brilliant Thing, and a collaboratively directed production of Macbeth at a prison in eastern Oregon. 

Michelle is a Feldenkrais Method practitioner, and has taught theatre and movement at colleges, universities, prisons, jails, and to the general public. She has spent the past 5+ years traveling around the US as part of an ongoing writing, photography, and story-gathering project called Traveling Home. Some of this work is included in We Know There Are Oceans.