About the Concert

World-class Chinese pipa player and composer Gao Hong will headline a star-studded concert featuring two Grammy-winning performers, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on Arabic music, and performances on seven members of the lute family of musical instruments. In one concert, you can experience powerful music from five world traditions as well as groundbreaking collaborations in both world and U.S. premiere pieces. Joining Gao Hong will be 4-time Grammy winner George Kahumoku, Jr. from Hawaii on slack key guitar and ukulele, Grammy-winning banjo player Alison Brown - accompanied by fiddler Darol Anger and bassist Garry West, Lebanese-born oud master Bassam Saba, one of the nation’s leading experts on Arabic music who performs regularly with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble accompanied by Arabic percussionist extraordinaire April Centrone, and classical guitar legend Jeffrey Van.
           
LUTES AROUND THE WORLD BIOS

Gao Hong
Pipa master and composer Gao Hong began her career as a professional musician at age 12. She graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, where she studied with the great Lin Shicheng. In both China and the U.S. Gao has received numerous top awards and honors. She is the only musician in any genre to win four McKnight Fellowships for Performing Musicians and was the first musician to win a Bush Fellowship for Traditional and Folk Arts. Other awards include 1st Prize in the Hebei Professional Young Music Performers Competition, an International Art Cup in Beijing, a 2012 Global Music Award, and prestigious fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Gao has performed throughout Europe, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and the U.S. in solo concerts and with symphony orchestras, jazz musicians, and musicians from other cultures. Her performances of pipa concerti include several world, U.S., and regional premieres and performances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony, Heidelberg (Germany) Philharmonic, and Louisville Orchestra among others. She also toured with the Lincoln Center production of “The Peony Pavilion.”
As a composer, she has received commissions from the American Composers Forum, Walker Art Center, the Jerome Foundation, Zeitgeist, Ragamala, Theater Mu, Minneapolis Guitar Quartet, Lars Hannibal, and Twin Cities Public TV. She is currently on the music faculty of Carleton College where she teaches Chinese instruments and directs the Chinese music ensemble and is a Guest Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

Alison Brown 
Alison Brown has taken an unlikely path in establishing herself as an internationally recognized banjoist.  A former investment banker (she has a bachelor's degree in History and Literature from Harvard and an MBA from UCLA), she toured with Alison Krauss and Union Station and Michelle Shocked before forming her own group, The Alison Brown Quartet.  She has recorded 10 critically-acclaimed solo albums, received 4 Grammy nominations, a Grammy award and the Banjo Player of the Year award from the International Bluegrass Music Association.   
            Alison has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR's All Things Considered and in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.  She was personally requested to play at the inauguration of Harvard’s first female president, Drew Faust, and was the 2007 recipient of Irish America Magazine’s “Stars of the South Award” for Compass Records’ efforts towards the “cultivation and preservation of Irish music.” In 2011 she was selected by the Mayor of Nashville to serve as the Ambassador of Friendship to initiate a sister city relationship with Kamakura, Japan and in the fall of that year embarked on a 6 city tour of Japan with performances including Kamakura, Tokyo, Osaka and The Country Gold Festival.  
            Alison is also co-founder of the internationally recognized Compass Records Group which oversees more than 600 releases from the Compass Records, Green Linnet and Mulligan Records catalogs and which has been called by Billboard Magazine “one of the greatest independent labels of the last decade.” In addition, she currently serves on the board of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and the International Bluegrass Music Association as well as on the adjunct faculty of Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music. Alison lives in Nashville with her husband Garry West and their 2 children:  Hannah (10) and Brendan (5).

George Kahumoku Jr. 
There’s a reason he’s been called Hawaii’s Renaissance man: George Kahumoku Jr. is a four-time Grammy Award & multiple Hoku Award winning master slack key guitarist, ukulele player, songwriter, world-traveling performer, high school and college teacher, artist and sculptor, storyteller and writer. In February of 2006, George and fellow slack key artists and producers were thrilled to receive the 48th Grammy Award for Best Hawaiian Album for their compilation recording, Masters of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar, Vol. 1: Live in Concert from Maui. But George’s Grammy fame doesn’t stop there: The sequels to this recording, Legends of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar: Live from Maui which includes additional artists (Dennis Kamakahi, Martin Pahinui, and Richard Ho’opi’i) won the 49th Grammy and then in 2008, Treasures of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar won the 50th Grammy Award. In 2009, The Spirit of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar was an honored Grammy nominee and the compilation. Masters of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar, Vol.2 was released. All of these recordings are compilations from George’s weekly Wednesday night show, the prestigious Masters of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Concert Series at the Napili Kai Beach Resort on Maui. George is the musical host and features a different solo artist each week. This is the first long-running concert hall setting in Hawaii created to feature the great slack key performers of today.
George has also played slack key guitar in several documentary films about the music and cultural richness of the Hawaiian Islands, including the soundtrack for the 1993 film ‘Onipa’a (Kalama Productions), which chronicles the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Playing several of Lili`uokalani's songs in the film inspired George to release his first instrumental solo album, E Lili’u

Bassam Saba
Bassam Saba of Lebanon is a world-renowned virtuoso, multi-instrumentalist
and leading figure of Arabic music, performing on the nay (Arabic end-blown
reed flute), oud (Middle-Eastern lute), saz (Turkish long-necked lute), western flute, and violin. Saba studied at the Lebanon National Conservatory, the Conservatoire Municipal des Gobelins in Paris, and the Gnessin Musical Pedagogical Institute in Moscow. Saba toured extensively with Arab icons Fairouz and Marcel Khalife and worked with Ziad Rahbani, Wadi‘ El-Safi, Majida El-Roumi and Taoufiq Farroukh. He has collaborated
with classical and pop stars Sting, Yo-Yo Ma, Alicia Keys and Santana, and jazz icons Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones, among others. One of the most sought-after teachers of Arabic music, Saba co-founded and directs the 35-piece New York Arabic Orchestra and leads lectures and workshops around the world. Saba currently performs with Daniel Schnyder's Nay Concerto, Simon Shaheen and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. As a soloist, Saba has performed with philharmonics worldwide and has toured throughout the world. In 2010, Saba released his album of all-original music, Wonderful Land.
 
Jeffrey Van
Guitarist and composer Jeffrey Van has premiered over 50 works for guitar, including Dominick Argento's Letters from Composers, five concertos, and a broad variety of chamber music.  He has performed in Carnegie Hall, London's Wigmore Hall, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and as part of Duologue, with flutist Susan Morris De Jong, premiered and recorded commissioned works from more than a dozen composers, including Stephen Paulus, Roberto Sierra, Tania Leon, Michael Daugherty, Libby Larsen and William Bolcom.  He is a founding member of The Hill House Chamber Players, now in their 26th season.  He has been featured on many NPR broadcasts, made several solo and ensemble recordings, and appeared on ten recordings with the Dale Warland Singers.  A recording of his Reflexiones Concertantes (Concerto for Two Guitars and Chamber Orchestra) has been released on the Centaur label.
Van has performed and taught master classes throughout the United States, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Minnesota School of Music, where he recently retired as a lecturer in classical guitar.  Former students include Sharon Isbin, John Holmquist, and members of the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet.   Mr. Van's compositions include works for guitar, guitar and violin, guitar and flute, chorus, chamber ensemble, and vocal solo.

Darol Anger
Fiddler Darol Anger has helped drive the evolution of the contemporary string band through his involvement with numerous path breaking ensembles such as his Kozmik Trio, The Republic Of Strings, the Turtle Island String Quartet, the David Grisman Quintet, Montreux, Psychograss, the Duo and other ensembles. Today Darol can be heard on the Sim City soundtracks and on NPR's "Car Talk" theme every week, along with Earl Scruggs, David Grisman and Tony Rice.  In addition to performing all over the world since 1977, he has recorded and produced scores of important recordings, is a MacDowell and UCross Fellow, and has received numerous composers’ residencies and grants. He has been a featured soloist on dozens of recordings and motion picture soundtracks. He is an Associate Professor at the prestigious Berklee School of Music and recently began an ambitious online Fiddle School at ArtistWorks.com.

April Centrone
Accompanying Bassam Saba will be April Centrone, one of the leading classical Arabic and world percussionists in America. She has performed with renowned Arab artists such as Marcel Khalife, Bassam Saba and Najib Shaheen. On drum set and world
percussion, she has shared the stage with a variety of rock, jazz and avant-garde artists including Primus (Les Claypool), Mike Patton, Secret Chiefs 3 (Trey Spruance), Trevor Dunn, and Eyvind Kang, among others. Centrone has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and has toured throughout the U.S., Europe, Taiwan, South America, and New Zealand. She was a featured soloist with the East Oakland Bay Symphony and Christian Jarvi’s Absolute Ensemble. Centrone is the executive director, co-founder, and lead percussionist of the New York Arabic Orchestra.  As an educator,
Centrone was a teaching artist and consultant for Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Connect, and serves as Musicians For Harmony’s Lead Teaching Artist, where she directs Music of the World for youth and teens. Centrone leads lecture/demonstrations and workshops in Arabic music at universities around the U.S. and abroad.

Garry West   
           Garry was raised in Atlanta and began his musical studies at age 11.  After attending the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Garry moved to Nashville and toured with country artist Patty Loveless before signing on with rhythm and blues legend Delbert McClinton and folk/pop songstress Michelle Shocked. In addition to his work as a bassist, Garry is also a busy producer, most recently producing releases from Paul Brady, The Waifs, Catie Curtis and Alison Brown.  He has been featured in numerous publications including Bass Player Magazine, Billboard Magazine and Mix Magazine. In addition to his work as a bassist and producer, Garry is also the director of A&R for Compass Records, the independent record label which he and Alison co-founded. 

This activity is funded, in part, by appropriations from the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the State's general fund, and its arts and cultural heritage fund that was created by a vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.