Souhail Kaspar
Souhail Kaspar is a highly acclaimed performer on Near Eastern percussion instruments. Born in Lebanon, Mr. Kaspar received his early musical training in Syria, where he studied the basic theory and technique of Arab percussion playing with established artists. In the United States, Mr. Kaspar and his partner Ali Jihad Racy have performed in major […]
Ho Chan
Ho Chan plays every instrument of the pin peat ensemble, a form of percussive Cambodian classical music. He began study at age 16 with his grandfather. In 1975, under the Khmer Rouge regime, Chan was forced into slave labor camps; he fled to Thailand in 1979 where he joined a pin peat ensemble headed by [...] Pirayeh Pourafar
Pirayeh Pourafar began her musical life at the age of nine when she entered the Royal National Music Conservatory of Tehran. In addition to her study of the radif, the basis for traditional Persian music, Pourafar chose the tar as her instrument. Made of mulberry wood with a double-bellied body, its two and a half […]
Cecil James (Big Jay) McNeely
Cecil James (Big Jay) McNeely, a legend of the R&B and jazz music scene, is known as the “King of Honking Tenor Saxophone. ” Mr. McNeely has been performing his pioneering style of music since the 1940s, touring with other well known performers such as Billie Holliday, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Chuck Berry, and […]
Hospicio Dulnuan
Hospicio Dulnuan was born in the Ifugao Province of the Cordillera Mountains in the northern Philippines. For 45 years, he has performed the traditional Cordillera instruments including sagay-po (bamboo pan flute), kolasing/kulitong (nose flute), gangha (set of 4 and 6 brass gongs), solibao (elongated drum), libbit (short drum), tambi (zither), patang-gok (stringed bamboo zither), ungngiyong [...] Jagan Ramamoorthy
Jagan Ramamoorthy is a violinist in the North Indian classical style called gaayaki-ang (singing through the instrument, a playing technique which emulates the flexibility of the human voice). Both his father and grandmother taught him the violin at an early age and then he began studying with Dr. N. Rajam, the foremost violin virtuosa in […]
Yinn Ponn
Yinn Ponn was one of the few artists to survive the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the 1970s. Mr. Yinn fled Cambodia in 1978, having worked in and survived the labor camps. With the help of the National Council for the Traditional Arts and other organizations, he worked to rebuild the traditions […]
Aziz Faye
Aziz Faye was raised in the village of Medina, the nguewel (griot) suburb of Dakar, Senegal. Nguewels are oral historians, musicians, dancers, singers and storytellers. Faye is the son of Sabar (drumming) master Sing Sing Faye and protoge of percussion virtuoso Doudou N'Daye Rose. He has been playing the sabar, djembe and djun-djun drums since [...] Frank Simpson
Frank Simpson plays the Irish tin whistle, an instrument which has been a part of Celtic traditional music from its inception and which has played a significant role in the developing and sustaining of the genre of traditional Irish music throughout its history. Simpson has been playing the tin whistle for 25 years and began […]
Lakshmi Shankar
Lakshmi Shankar’s performance style is often described as mesmerizing, spellbinding her audiences with her extraordinary voice. Born in Northern India, Mrs. Shankar began training as a dancer when she was young, but was forced to stop dancing due to a serious illness, and began a singing career at the age of 25. Mrs. Shankar first […]