Ayodele Maakheru: guitar, mandolin, ukulele, bass & banjo     

-Studied at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (guitar, trumpet, music theory & composition) and City College of New York (nursing & music)

- Teacher for New York Pops, Council for Living Music, The Learning Tree, Huntington Arts Council, The Josephine Foundation, St. Mary’s HS Orchestra Director & The Midori Foundation. Teaching classes in guitar, mandolin, banjo, electric bass, ukulele, theory/composition, string ensemble, vocal music & instrument building. 

- Performed, toured & recorded with Lionel Hampton Big-Band, Randy Weston, Jaki Byard Apollo Stompers, Frank Wess, Tulivu Cumberbatch, Ray Holman, Ornette Coleman, Henry Threadgill and Rashid Ali. With performers Donna McKechnie, Eartha Kitt, Gregory Hines, Linda Hopkins, Ruth Brown, Whitney Houston, Phylicia Rashad, Melba Moore, Savion Glover, Leslie Uggams, Miriam Makeba, Nona Hendrix, The Fifth Dimension, The New York Philharmonic, The Queens Symphony & Unity of NY.

-  In the Broadway pits of HALLELUIAH BABY, The WIZ, A CHORUS LINE, ME & MY GIRL, WILD PARTY,  BLACK & BLUE, JELLY‘S LAST JAM, THE FULL MONTY, HARLEM SONG, FROM MY HOMETOWN, BRING IN DA NOISE/BRING IN DA FUNK, The BOY‘S CHOIR of HARLEM, SHUFFLE ALONG, DON’T BOTHER ME-I CAN’T COPE & BELLA. Musical Director for BLACK ORPHEUS & SPUNK.  Appeared with Maurice Peress/ Royal Palais Orchestra & The Clef Club, Gunther Schuller’s New England Ragtime Ensemble, the Urban Bush Women’s film & stage productions of PRAISE HOUSE and the tv orchestra for the ESSENCE AWARDS. Appeared on the tv shows GOTHAM, MADAME SECRETARY, BULL &Tonight Show w/ Jay Leno and in the films THE SINGING BIOLOGIST, EVERY DAY & THE LAST 5 YEARS. Banjoist/guitarist in the opera “Regina”(American Symphony Orchestra)

-In the off-Broadway pits of GREASE, GODSPELL, ONCE UPON A MATTRESS, ALADDIN, SCHOOL HOUSE ROCK, OKLAHOMA, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, SMOKEY JOE’S CAFÉ, FAME, RAISIN, SEUSSICAL , THE LION KING, THE COLOR PURPLE & DREAM GIRLS

- Bandleader for Quadrant, Ayo Maak‘s Jazz Pack, Windsong String Quartet. Released 3 CDs: SUNSHIP, DISTANT TRAVELER & ANOTHER COUNTRY. Bronx Art Council BRIO awardee (songwriter) and an ASCAP songwriter award. www.MaakheruMusic.net 

Charlotte Blake Alston is a highly sought after storyteller, musician, narrator and librettist who performs in  venues throughout North America and abroad. Venues are wide-ranging and include the John F. Kennedy  Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of Women in the Arts,  the Kimmel Center, the Women of the World Festival in Cape Town, South Africa, schools, prisons,  detention centers and a refugee camp in northern Senegal. 

She brings her stories and songs to international, national and regional festivals, schools, universities,  museums, libraries, concert halls and performing arts centers throughout the United States and abroad, as  well as local and national radio and television. Her repertoire is wide and programs are adapted to any  grade level or age group. She has been on numerous artist rosters including Midwest Arts, Young 

Audiences of NJ and Lincoln Center in NY.  

She breathes life into traditional and contemporary stories from African and African American oral and  cultural traditions. Her solo performances are often enhanced with traditional instruments such as djembe,  mbira or the 21-stringed kora. In 1999, Charlotte began studying the kora and the West African 

history-telling traditions of Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Guinea Bissau. Her teacher was the highly respected  Senegalese griot (jali), the late Djimo Kouyate. She has recently resumed her studies with Malian Virtuoso  Yacouba Sissoko.  

In 1991, Charlotte became the first storyteller to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra on both their  Family and Student concert series. Since 1994, she has been the host of Sound All Around, the orchestra’s  preschool concert series. 2018-2019 marked her 25th consecutive season as host of this award winning  series. She continues to appear as a guest host and narrator on the orchestra’s family concerts. For 6  seasons, Charlotte hosted “Carnegie Kids”, Carnegie Hall’s Preschool concert series and was a featured  artist and concert host on the Carnegie Hall Family Concert Series in NY for 19 consecutive years. She has  been a featured teller at The National Storytelling Festival, The National Festival of Black Storytelling, and  at regional festivals throughout North America and abroad. She has been a featured artist at both  Presidential Inaugural Festivities in Washington, DC and the Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Children’s Inaugural Celebrations in Harrisburg, PA. She was one of two storytellers selected to present at the historic 

weekend opening of the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016. 

She has been a featured narrator for several orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Orchestra  of St. Luke’s, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.  She represented Carnegie Hall in 2003 when she hosted a series of concerts in Miyazaki, Japan with the  Eddie Arron String Quartet and fellow storyteller, Motoko. In addition, she previously served as a host for  Carnegie Hall’s Community Sing-Ins. In February 2019, she made her debut with the Los Angeles  Philharmonic, narrating her original text to the 2nd Movement of a Duke Ellington Symphony. In the same  season, she was selected by The Philadelphia Orchestra to narrate Leonard Bernstein’s complex and  emotional Symphony #3 (Kaddish Symphony). Philadelphia Classical Music Critic David Patrick Stearns  wrote: “While (the original narrator’s) Kaddish was an individualistic journey, Alston somehow knows how  to speak for all of us. She brought well-considered gravity…and much nuance to the words, revealing their  aura more than their somewhat fractured sense”. Within two weeks of that performance, she received an  invitation to perform the work with the Saint Louis Symphony. 

A highly regarded professor, painter and master printmaker, Curlee Raven Holton has exhibited his work throughout the world. His paintings, drawings, and prints are held by major museums and collections in the U.S. and abroad. His most recent solo exhibition, Journey: The Artistry of Curlee Raven Holton, was held at the University of Maryland University College. 

Holton earned his MFA from Kent State University with a concentration in printmaking and his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Fine Arts in drawing and painting. He served as the David M. and Linda Roth Professor of Art at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. where he taught printmaking and African American art history. Holton founded the Experimental Printmaking Institute with a vision to provide artists with the time, space, materials, and professional support to create new work. This vision was realized with more than 200 works produced. In 2014 he was appointed executive director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at University of Maryland, College Park.

Holton was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Art and Philosophy from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA) at the 2018 commencement in New York City. In 2015 he received the Anyone Can Fly Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

Philly native Leonard ”Doc” Gibbs received his so-called “Doc”-torate from  the late, legendary jazz saxophonist, Grover Washington, Jr.   

While recording the Live at the Bijou album in 1976, Grover  acknowledged Doc for prescribing an herbal remedy that cured Grover of a  nasty night-before-taping cold. He then gave Doc this nickname that  appropriately describes a musician who performs with the precision of a  surgeon. Early in his career, Doc worked with many of the music industry’s  top artists, including Freddie Hubbard, George Benson, Thad Jones/Mel 

Lewis Big Band, Nancy Wilson, Bob James, Al Jarreau, Ricki Lee Jones,  David Sanborn, and Anita Baker. Doc has also worked with contemporary  Grammy-award-winning artists such as Erykah Badu and Wyclef Jean. And  BAM!!!  You may also recognize Doc from his work as the musical director  for Emeril Live on the Food Network.  

For the past twenty-five years, Doc has also been a dedicated  educator, teaching the arts of hand-drumming and percussion. In  Philadelphia, he worked with two organizations presenting music in  schools, Musicopia and Artreach. In 2015, Doc relocated to Los Angeles,  bringing his knowledge and experience to the West Coast, once again 

getting involved in teaching drum and percussion instruments. In LA, he  also created Baba Doc’s Healing Sound therapy, a practice that uses  percussion as a form of healing and reconnecting. Wherever Doc Gibbs is, 

there will always be an opportunity for people to get involved and  experience the rich culture of the drum, taking us all on an incredible  Journey of the Drum! 

Curtis Stewart & Jannina Norpoth, violins; Nick Revel, viola; Hamilton Berry, cello

2013 Concerts Artists Guild NEW MUSIC/NEW PLACES ENSEMBLE

Applauded by The Washington Post as “a perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music,” and by The New Yorker as “independent-minded,” PUBLIQuartet’s modern interpretation of chamber music makes them one of the most dynamic artists of their generation.  Dedicated to presenting new works for string quartet, PUBLIQuartet rose on the music scene as winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild’s New Music/New Places award, and in 2019 garnered Chamber Music America’s prestigious Visionary Award for outstanding and innovative approaches to contemporary classical, jazz, and world chamber music.  PQ’s genre-bending programs range from 20th century masterworks to newly commissioned pieces, alongside reimaginations of classical works featuring open-form improvisations that expand the techniques and aesthetic of the traditional string quartet.

PUBLIQuartet has served as artist-in-residence at top institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Sawdust and has appeared at a wide variety of venues and festivals, from Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Their latest album, Freedom and Faith, debuted atop the Billboard Classical Crossover Chart in May 2019. The 2019-2020 season brings a diverse array of programs to venues across the United States, including a special collaborative project with jazz violinist Diane Monroe.

PUBLIQuartet’s commitment to supporting emerging composers inspired their innovative program, PUBLIQ Access, which promotes emerging composers and presents a wide variety of under-represented music for string quartet--from classical, jazz and electronic, to non-notated, world and improvised music. Other unique projects include MIND|THE|GAP, a series of group-composed works developed by PQ to generate interest in new music while also engaging traditional classical music audiences.  These unique creations range from Bird in Paris (Claude Debussy meets Charlie Parker) to more recent extended works including What Is American? (an exploration of Dvorak’s beloved “American” String Quartet) and Sancta Femina (based on themes by three medieval and baroque female composers). 

Yacouba Sissoko was born in Kita, Mali, to a well-known djely family. Djelys for centuries they have been the traditional musicians and keepers of the factual history and fables of past rulers, nobles, social groups and families. The kora was the traditional instrument that djelys played.

At the age of 9, Yacouba started learning the kora and the oral traditions associated with it from his grandfather until he moved to Bamako, Mali’s capital, to attend the National Institute of the Arts. Based in the capital, he caught the attention of the music world and began touring with noted international African artists which eventually led him to settle in the United States in 1998.

With an intention to introduce and share the stories of his people but also to learn from other musicians and cultures, Yacouba incorporates a variety of musical influences into his repertoire, and as such has developed his own unique style of kora.

He performed, toured and recorded with well known African musicians such as Baaba Maal, Sekou (Bambino) Diabate and Kerfala Kante. Yacouba, not limited to African music has also recorded and performed with a variety of artists including Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and Lauren Hill. He has recorded tracks on over 15 CDs.

Rooted to give back to the community, Yacouba regularly performs for cultural programs and benefit concerts. In recognition of his commitment to educating others in 2007  he was selected as a Teaching Artist by the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall and returned again to Carnegie Hall in 2016 and 2019 as a featured artists in the Musical Explorers Program in New York, NY and Savannah, GA. He also received a Sunshine Award for Performing Arts, African Music in 2016.

Yacouba continues to blend effortlessly with other musical styles, whether it is performing Indian ragas or Appalachian tunes. Yacouba can be seen regularly touring with Regina Carter, Rachel Brown, Jordana de Lovely, Oran Etkin, Kavita Shah, Benyoro and his own band SIYA. His first solo CD SIYA was released in 2017.