Audrey Chen is a 2nd generation Chinese/Taiwanese-American musician who was born outside of Chicago in 1976. Chen’s work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her music is improvised and completely un-processed and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her performance work incorporates sound, movement and visual/sculptural concepts. It explores the combination and layering of an analog synthesizer, preparations and traditional and extended techniques, and seeks to combine these elements into a unique ecstatic personal language.

Monthati Masebe is a southafrican music composer, vocalist and a classically trained pianist with strong late romantic/impressionist influences. Monthati is interwoving their music with southern african indigenous music and coming from an artistic family, it came as no surprise that Monthati wanted to take the hat as the modern griot. Their experimental style blends with her versatile music background and personality. They’ve written multiple works for saxophone and string quartet, choir and vocal ensembles, chamber orchestras and are currently writing an indigenous orchestral work. Electronic music and working with programming has become a recent development in their creative obsessions.

Sami Pageaux Waro is a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist and a new Griot who masters the art of the Loop, Transe, Maloya and World Music into the future with his trio. The thirty-year-old koraiste from Reunion, son of the great Danyèl Waro, is at the origin of numerous musical projects (Lo Griyo, La 25e Corde, the film-concert Bagdad Fantaisie). He has collaborated with great names in both contemporary and traditional music (e.g. Ibrahim Maalouf, Ballaké Cissoko) and has an impressive work of auto-looping from a set of more than cosmopolitan instruments (kora, Likembe, Cajon, Kayamb, Roulèr, Daf, Arab, Persian and Reunionese percussions).