Artists

Jean-Philippe Grégoire began his classical studies at the Conservatory of Marseille, under Régis Campo, receiving top awards there including the Henri Tomasi's Composition prize and the SACEM prize. In 2008, he went to the Paris Conservatory to study Jazz Performance. Breaking onto the Paris jazz scene, Grégoire began performing in groups including the Julian Getreau 4tet at some of the finest clubs and festivals in Paris, including Duc des Lombards, Le Basier Salé, and Jazz Festival of Flavors.

Pianist Laura Loewen is a long-time colleague and collaborator at the University of Manitoba's Desautels Faculty of Music in Winnipeg. Loewen is one of Canada's most expressive collaborative pianists, performing with leading singers and instrumentalists across the country. Her ongoing work with saxophonist Allen Harrington led to the recent Ravello Records release of METROPOLIS, a recording of new compositions for saxophone and piano. Loewen teaches collaborative piano and coaches singers at the Desautels Faculty of Music, where her "Passionate Diction" approach to language has inspired a whole new generation of language enthusiasts. Together, Mel Braun and Loewen have toured Canada and commissioned numerous works, always evolving as recitalists and collaborators.

Baritone Mel Braun is a long-time colleague and collaborator at the University of Manitoba's Desautels Faculty of Music in Winnipeg. Braun is well known for his Bach singing, with performances and broadcasts that have taken him all across Canada.

La Mandragore distinguishes itself in two ways: its energic and contagious dynamism and its approach to the music, equal parts musicological rigour and modern creativity. The group presents unique arrangements of ancient melodies and of world folk music on a panoply of heterogeneous instruments, from the crumhorn to the nay, from the ud to the bouzouki and the gaida, and a whole range of percussion instruments.

Joe Porter is a Canadian percussionist, teacher, and composer. He is the recipient of the Global Music Awards, Gold Medal Prize for Creativity and Originality, and has been a winner in multiple performance, composition and recording contests. Joe has performed in Brazil, Britain, Holland, Japan, China, Trinidad and Tobago, Hawaii, Florida, Indiana, Idaho, and throughout Canada.

Joel Goodfellow has been studying piano for 18 years, has his ARCT in piano performance and is working towards a Bachelor of Music at the University of Lethbridge. He has performed as a soloist with the Youth Symphony of the Okanagan, the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra, and the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra, with critics praising his musical sensitivity and fresh interpretation. Additionally, he has received many awards as both a soloist and chamber musician in music festivals throughout BC and Alberta. Joel is currently based in Lethbridge, where he is much in demand as an accompanist and teaches for the Lethbridge Music Conservatory.

The Daydream is a music group for kids consisting of Scott and Cathy Liebenow and their children, McKenna, Mark, and Mia. Over the years Scott and Cathy have written over 100 kids songs for various publications and recordings.

Dr. Juan Álamo is an internationally known performer, composer, and educator. Originally from Cidra, Puerto Rico, Álamo has presented solo recitals at universities and percussion and jazz festivals throughout the United States, Central and South America, Europe and the Caribbean. He has been featured as a soloist and with jazz ensembles in television and radio shows in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela and the United States.

The musicians of THE LARKSONG TRIO, Peggo Horstmann Hodes, soprano, Jennifer Yeaton-Parris, flute, and Calvin Herst, piano, began playing together more than a decade ago on a lark. From that happy accident, they discovered their signature sound - elegant, playful and stunningly beautiful. From Celtic to Copland, from Beatles to brand new, the Larksong Trio dazzles with surprising arrangements and breath-taking musicianship. Each member of the trio is a classically trained, expressive, world-class musician. Together, they enjoy an engaging irreverence and spiritual connection that tugs at your heart and brings you home.

We entertain, encourage, and educate children and families about the adventure of being human through music that presents positive ideas for living a life full of possibilities.

It all began 25 years ago when he heard his uncle play bass in his bluegrass band. He freaked out and picked up his dad's classical acoustic guitar. That's all he had access to at that point. His parents wouldn't buy a bass guitar for him. So he had to earn it. So much for cliche that "only children are spoiled." Not so in that household. He began performing a few years later; both in church playing gospel tunes on guitar, in theatres playing in various pit orchestras and rock bands as a bassist.

Marco Buongiorno Nardelli's (b. Rome, Italy, Nov. 21, 1964) broad musical interests span from the baroque repertoire to jazz, contemporary, and electronic music. Educated as both a musician and a physicist (Ph.D., Condensed Matter Theory, 1993), he holds a B.M. in Music Theory and Composition from the Conservatorio "Luigi Cherubini" in Florence, Italy, studied flute with Oro and Gian-Luca Petrucci in Rome and Brooks deWetter-Smith at UNC-Chapel Hill and sung in the choir of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana with M. Pablo Colino, who introduced him to music at a very early age.

For the young Jimmy Crew, trips to the maternal grandparents' home meant hours of exploring a vintage player piano. The numerous piano rolls featuring the music of Sousa, Foster, and others were enough to keep anyone interested, but removing the various panels, exposing the insides of the beast, was equally enthralling. An older cousin could sight read from the hymnal. She taught him "Heart and Soul" but made him promise not to play it.

Richard Stoltzman's virtuosity' technique' imagination' and communicative power have revolutionized the world of clarinet playing' opening up possibilities for the instrument that no one could have predicted. He was responsible for bringing the clarinet to the forefront as a solo instrument' and is still the world's foremost clarinetist. Stoltzman gave the first clarinet recitals in the histories of both the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall' and' in 1986' became the first wind player to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize.

Thomas Lee is a founding member of the Oscuro Quintet. He studied piano at the Julliard Pre-College division in New York with Richard Fabre and Antonio Fermin, and later at Yale University with Elizabeth Parisot. From 2005-2006 he studied carillon with Eddy Marin at the Royal Carillon School, Jef Denyn, in Mechelen, Belgium, where he was only the fifth student in the school's history to graduate with "Greatest Distinction." He received his carillon accreditation with the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America in 2006, and has been a regular performer in the United States, Belgium, and the Netherlands since then. He is also half of the carillon duo "Campana Nova" with Eddy Marin. Lee has composed and arranged many pieces for carillon, and has begun to study tango music with Juan Martin Fernandez of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Alban Bailly is a multifaceted instrumentalist who studied composition, jazz, and improvisation in France. After spending his youth playing mainly rock music, Alban moved onto studying jazz, which opened him to free improvisation, and in 2001 he studied Arabic music and oud in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Shinjoo Cho studied piano performance and pedagogy at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton NJ, where she cultivated her role as a solo and chamber musician, as well as an educator in choir, theater, and classroom settings. Intrigued by the music outside her discipline, she returned to her place of birth, Korea, to study Korean traditional music theory and history in 2001.

Benjamin Blazer, a native of Lancaster PA, joined the Oscuro Quintet in the summer of 2007. Blazer attended Temple University, where he attained a B.M. in music theory and double bass performance, as well as an M.M. in music composition.

At the age of 47 and on the cusp of the breakthrough that is every artistis dream, the comedian John Kawie suffered a devastating stroke which he thought would derail his career, and life. With the sardonic wit that landed him gigs as a writer/contributor for comedians such as Bill Maher, Dennis Miller, and David Brenner, John focused on his experiences with the stroke and created BRAIN FREEZE, a hysterical, poignant, and affirmative journey through the bumpy road to recovery and beyond.

A North Carolina native, Mel went to Lafayette, Louisiana in the summer of 1969 to visit a college friend and play a little music before going back to UNC. His plans changed when he became totally immersed in the rich culture and physical beauty of southwest Louisiana. He moved permanently to Lafayette at the end of the summer and began playing in a band he co-founded with Sonny Landreth, the Louisiana slide guitar-playing superstar.