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Flutes
Laura Bryant is well known for her recording work throughout the United States. She is endorsed by the Yamaha Corporation to give nationwide clinics and seminars on the woodwind recorder. Her most recent tour was with Lisa Lynn Franco and Celestial Winds currently signed by the Windham Hill record label. After Laura received her BA in music performance and composition from UCLA, she began teaching music to children in East LA and was truly inspired. Laura makes her home in the San Francisco Bay Area where she now provides complete music programs for schools that do not have the resources to make music available to children. Her company is called "From the Heart Music".
Philip Gelb is actively involved in two careers: as a shakuhachi player and teacher and also a vegetarian chef. Both of these interests began at an earlyage while growing up in Brooklyn, NY. As a shakuhachi player, he has become one of the most active performers and teachers in North America. As a teacher he runs the Bay Area Shakuhachi School, teaching traditional and modern music to over 30 students, with branches in Oakland and Santa Rosa, making this one of the largest shakuhachi teaching organizations outside of Japan!
Mohammad Nejad, a Persian-born master multi-instrumentalist, was born to a musical family in Tehran, Iran. He graduated from Fine Arts Academy in 1976, and in 1990 received a Bachelors of Fine Arts Musicianship and Performance from Tehran University, proficient in both the Western and Persian musical systems. He now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area where he established the Nejad World Music Center, to teach youth and adults in the community and bring world artists to the United States for collaboration and performance.
Raven, of Armenian heritage, has spent most of his life in different countries and a variety of cultures. Wherever he was, music was a part of him, inspired by his mother's beautiful voice, following him around the world. The largest influence came to him from the mystery and beauty of the Native American culture, which developed his unique musical career, thus creating sounds for the Native American flute never heard before.
Vocals
Crosspulse All Body Band is a powerhouse sextet from Oakland, CA, performing a fresh mix of a cappella singing, beatboxing and body music. Deeply rooted in jazz, funk, R&B and world music grooves, this ferociously talented ensemble creates soulful sounds infused with infectious harmonies and lightening-fast improvisations, percussively punctuated by beatboxing and body music -- the kinetic component that sets Crosspulse apart and on the cutting edge of a cappella performance.
HouseBlend, a male vocal quartet, performs its own unique renditions of jazz, gospel, doo-wop, classical, ballad and country. The quartet moves with ease through a myriad of musical styles - always and strictly a cappella. The members of the quartet-- Bill DeGarmo-Tenor, Doug Emigh-Lead, Kent Parr-Baritone and Jim McGuire-Bass -- came to know one another through the music ministry at Concord United Methodist Church.
Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir was founded in 1986 as a result of a Gospel music workshop led by Emmy-winning co-founder and Artistic Director, Terrance Kelly, at Rhythmic Concepts’ Jazz Camp West. OIGC consists of 55 singers and 3 musicians, who represent a multi-racial, multi-cultural, interfaith community of diversity. In the past 20 years, the award-winning Choir’s exquisite vocal harmonies and stirring Gospel repertoire have led to performances with a wide variety of groups, from The Five Blind Boys of Alabama to the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Young Performers International is a nonprofit children's performing arts company with classes in three San Francisco Bay Area counties. They believe that making music should be fun. And they believe that expressing oneself through the performing arts is a natural component of childhood. Their Mission is to create a sense of community among the children of the world through music and the performing arts; to provide for all children, regardless of their economic status, the very best instruction in these arts; and, through this, to foster in each child self-confidence, competence, fulfillment and an open heart.
Children’s Art Pieces
The Sound Essence Project, a Washington State Nonprofit Corporation, is a collaborative international gathering of people with the intention to create a cross cultural network of resources in an environment of mutual learning with an emphasis on cultural sustainability. Through the confluence of respective wisdom's, The Sound Essence Project hopes to converge traditional practices with sustainable ways of life to create a profound partnership which expands world community and peace through education, herbal medicine, sound, color and cultural communion.
