For nearly 30 years Ralph Peterson has been one of the most distinctive and recognizable drummers in jazz.  Peterson quickly rose to prominence after meeting master drummer Art Blakey in 1983.  A few months after sitting in, Blakey called Peterson (then a college junior) to play alongside him in his two-drummer big band.  Peterson takes seriously the honor and responsibility of being the “Last messenger Drummer” and later paid homage to Blakey on his 1992 recording “Art”.  His recording and touring resume includes jazz greats like Terrence Blanchard, Branford Marsalis, Stanley Turrentine, David Murray, The Count Basie Orchestra and many more of the greatest names in jazz.

Now considered to be a Master drummer himself, Peterson’s previous recording “The Duality Perspective, garnered rave reviews from major publications including the New York Times, DownBeat Magazine and JazzTimes to name a few.

Nicole Mitchell is a creative flutist, composer, bandleader and educator.  As the founder of Black Earth Ensemble, Black Earth Strings, Ice Crystal and Sonic Projections, Mitchell has been repeatedly awarded by DownBeat Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association as “Top Flutist of the Year” for the last four years (2010-2014). 

Mitchell formerly served as the first woman president of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and has been a member since 1995. In recognition of her impact within the Chicago music and arts education communities, she was named “Chicagoan of the Year” in 2006 by the Chicago Tribune. With her ensembles, as a featured flutist and composer, Mitchell has been a highlight at festivals and art venues throughout Europe, the U.S. and Canada. 

Ms. Mitchell is a recipient of the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts (2011) and has been commissioned by Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Jazz Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Chicago Sinfonietta Orchestra and Maggio Fiorentino Chamber Orchestra (Florence, Italy).  In 2009, she created Honoring Grace: Michelle Obama for the Jazz Institute of Chicago. She has been a faculty member at the Vancouver Creative Music Institute, the Sherwood Flute Institute, Banff International Jazz Workshop and the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio, and in magazines including Ebony, Downbeat, JazzIz, Jazz Times, Jazz Wise, and American Legacy. 

Described as “the celebrated trumpeter and composer who explores vital connections between jazz and Arabic music” (New York Times), Amir ElSaffar is an Iraqi-American composer, trumpeter, santur player, and vocalist working at the intersections of jazz, Western classical, and Maqam music of Iraq and the Middle East.

Trained as a classical and jazz trumpeter, ElSaffar has invented techniques to perform microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music that are not typically heard on trumpet. He has worked in the ensembles of Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Danilo Perez, Vijay Iyer, and in 2023 performed the improvised trumpet role in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Anthony Davis's X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.

ElSaffar has premiered new works at the Newport Jazz Festival, Berlin Jazz, Festival, Jazztopad Festival (Poland), Dream City Festival (Tunisia), Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Festival d’Avignon (France), Flamenco Biennale (Netherlands), and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, among others.

He tours internationally with his six-piece Two Rivers and 17-piece Rivers of Sound Orchestra, and has created works for symphony orchestras, string quartets and small chamber ensembles, large and small jazz ensembles, Middle Eastern music ensembles, as well as hybrid projects with Raga, Flamenco, and Sub-Saharan African trance music.

ElSaffar’s awards and honors include the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2013), United States Artists Fellowship (2018), a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton

University (2020-2021) and an IDEA Residency at Opera America (2023-2024), in support of his forthcoming Maqam opera in Arabic. In 2023, he began a new initiative, Maqam Studio, and a record label, Maqam Records, which have a mission of preserving and fostering the development of Iraqi Maqam and related practices in Brooklyn, NY, and in Iraq and the Arab world.

Jason has worked with icons such as Roy Haynes, Herbie Hancock, Jimmy Smith (the organist), Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Kurt Rosenwinkel (first trumpeter ever hired by this highly acclaimed guitarist), Ravi Coltrane, Geri Allen, Patrice Rushen, Clarence Penn, Jeff Ballard, Kenny Barron, Phil Woods, Common (hip-hop icon), Roy Hargrove, and Lewis Nash.

Jason took 1st Place ($10,000 prize) in the 2009 Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition. The June 2007 issue of Downbeat Magazine cited Jason as one of the "Top 25 trumpeters of the Future".  Also in 2011 Jason is an awarded Fellow in composition for the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

In addition to performing on over a dozen albums as a sideman, Jason has recorded three albums under his own name and is currently a Steeplechase Records Recording artist. His debut recording entitled "Songbook" (Ayva Musica) features guest saxophonists Ravi Coltrane and Greg Osby. The record garnered rave reviews upon its' release and appeared on several "Best of 2008" lists including All Music Guide's list for best jazz album. 

Dylan Pearce has directed six feature films, ten award-winning short films and has worked extensively with virtual reality and 360-degree stereoscopic filmmaking. His films have been screened worldwide from theatrical to festivals, TV and VOD. He most recently directed the award-winning 40 Below and Falling 3D, which included a VR experience. The film is Canada’s first 4K 3D feature film with a VR experience, and has earned him a 2016 Canadian Screen Award nomination for best directing.

Dylan’s latest feature in development, Iron Dogs 3D won the 2015 Best Pitch award at the Stereo Media summit in Belgium this past year. Dylan is currently directing three VR short films and is exploring VR storytelling in trans-media. Dylan’s depth of work in the stereoscopic VR field has led him to work closely with 360/180-camera developers and VR headsets creators.

Mark Clintberg is an artist who works in the field of art history. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Critical and Creative Studies at the Alberta College of Art + Design, and earned his Ph.D. in art history at Concordia University. His work has recently been shown at The Rooms, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Artspace, and the Western Front, and he is represented by Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain. He was short listed for the Sobey Art Award (Canada's largest contemporary art award for young artists) in 2013.

Sarah Fillmore is Chief Curator of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. She has worked at the AGNS since 2005, overseeing the provincial art collection, as well as the Gallery’s acquisition, interpretation, education, conservation and exhibition programs, and Artist-in-Residence program. Fillmore is chair of the jury for the annual Sobey Art Award; Canada’s preeminent award for artists forty and under. 

Fillmore has curated group and solo exhibitions including the retrospective exhibition of Canadian Abstract painter, Jacques Hurtubise, Skin: the seduction of surface, Forces of Nature, The Last Frontier, Open Tuning (WaveUp) by Stephen Kelly, Lisa Lipton: Stop@forever and, since 2008, the Sobey Art Award exhibition. Recent work includes an exhibition of Graeme Patterson, as well as co-curating a major retrospective and accompanying publication of Canadian realist painter Mary Pratt.

Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey (b.1959 / 1959 in England) are internationally acclaimed for creating multi-disciplinary works that intersect art, activism, architecture, biology, ecology, and history. Referencing memory and time, nature and culture, urban political ecologies, climate breakdown, and biodiversity loss, their time-based practice reveals an intrinsic bias towards process and event.

Ackroyd and Harvey are renowned for their monumental architectural interventions, as well as their multi-award winning photographic work, in which blades of seedling grass provide a highly light-sensitive surface that the artists use to create a unique form of photography, imprinting complex images in the living material through the controlled production of chlorophyll.

Recent exhibitions include Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas; Royal Academy of Arts, London; David Attenborough Building, Cambridge, UK; Le Centquatre-Paris, France; Festival Images, Switzerland; Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Italy; Void, Derry, N. Ireland; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, USA; Mostra SESC des Artes, Brazil; Chicago Public Arts Program, USA; Rice Gallery, Houston, USA. The artists have been awarded numerous prizes, including the Royal Academy Rose Award, Wu Guanzhong Prize for Art and Innovation, L’Oreal Art and Science of Colour Grand Prize, NESTA Pioneer Award, and Wellcome Trust Sci-Art Award.

Matthew Huber is Associate Professor of Geography at Syracuse University. He teaches on energy, environment and the political economy of capitalism. His research looks at the relationship between energy systems and the larger social, cultural and political forces. His 2013 book, Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom and the Forces of Capital examines the role of oil in shaping suburbanization and the rightward turn of American politics in the 1970s and beyond. His new project examines the industrial fertilizer industry and their immense natural gas consumption and carbon emissions.