Aszure Barton is a choreographer, director, and innovator who began dancing at age three. With training spanning from tap and African dance to Scottish Highland and character, she's been producing dances since her days as a student at Canada's National Ballet School. In the early 2000s, she founded Aszure Barton & Artists | AB&A — the core of her choreographic voice and an ongoing creative hub described by the US National Endowment for the Arts as “watching the physical unfurling of the human psyche.” While AB&A remains her artistic home, Barton’s reach extends globally. She has collaborated with celebrated artists and companies such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, María Pagés, Cyndi Lauper, Volker Bertelmann (Hauschka), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, English National Ballet, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Hamburg Ballet, Limón Dance Company, Martha Graham Dance Company, National Ballet of Canada, Nederlands Dans Theater, Sydney Dance Company, Teatro alla Scala, and others. Among her celebrated works, Mere Mortals premiered at San Francisco Ballet in collaboration with DJ Floating Points and Hamill Industries, marking the first full-length ballet by a female choreographer in the company’s 90-year history. Barton is currently Resident Artist at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and House Choreographer at Gauthier Dance at Theaterhaus Stuttgart — partnerships  that expand her choreographic web while remaining grounded in AB&A’s ethos. She has received numerous honors, including a Bessie Award for her work BUSK and the prestigious Arts & Letters Award. Barton was the first Martha Duffy Resident Artist at Baryshnikov Arts Center and is also an official ambassador of contemporary choreography in Canada.
 

Described by NPR Music as “a trumpeter of deep expressive resources and a composer of kaleidoscopic vision,” Ambrose Akinmusire has made a home at the crossroads of different musical forms and languages, from post-bop and avant-garde jazz to contemporary chamber music and hip-hop to singer-songwriter aesthetics. He began recording for Blue Note in 2011, earning widespread acclaim for his albums when the heart emerges glistening (produced by Jason Moran), the imagined savior is far easier to paint, A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard, Origami Harvest (top albums of 2018, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times), and on the tender spot of every calloused moment (2021 Grammy nominee, best jazz instrumental album).

Akinmusire has also created music for film and television projects including the new Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal series Blindspotting; appeared as a featured soloist with the legendary artists Archie Shepp and Roscoe Mitchell; and made signal contributions to groundbreaking albums including Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl, Brad Mehldau’s Finding Gabriel, and Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. He also played on Joni Mitchell’s 2014 release Love Has Many Faces, and in 2018 accompanied Chaka Khan, James Taylor, and other luminaries honouring Mitchell in a gala concert documented on Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration. Akinmusire received his second Grammy nomination, this time for best improvised solo on Carrington’s 2022 release, New Standards Vol 1. In 2024, Akinmusire signed to Nonesuch records and released the critically acclaimed Owl Song—the first of three records Akinmusire will release over the next few years.

HAMID DRAKE was born in Monroe, Louisiana but for the most part was raised in Chicago. In 1974 he began what was to be a long-term musical relationship with Fred Anderson who introduced him to performing with many of the other artists in the AACM. In late 1977 Drake joined Adam Rudolph and Foday Musa Suso to form the Mandingo Griot society, one of the first groups in the United States to explore the relationship between traditional West African and American musical idioms. He met Don Cherry when the group recorded their first LP on Flying fish Records. Drake’s relationship with Cherry continued until Cherry’s passing in 1995 doing many tours throughout Europe, Japan and the United States with him. Don Cherry provided a major breakthrough for Drake not only musically but spiritually as well. Since 1987 Drake has recorded toured extensively in Europe and the US with German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann and also with bass player William Parker in several of his ensembles and with many other artists.

The list of the people that Drake has worked and recorded with includes David Murray, Pharaoh Sanders, Iva Bitova, Misha Mengelberg, AB Bars, Luc EX, Adam Rudolph, Bill Laswell, Archie Shepp, Napoleon Maddox(Iswhat), DVK with Ken Vandermark and Kent Kessler, Nicole Mitchell, Punkt, Rob Wagner, Rob Brown, Cooper-Moore, Lewis Barnes, Kirk Knuffke, Fred Anderson, and Kidd Jordan.

In 2005 Drake formed the group Bindu and a few years later Bindu Reggaeology both formed with the purpose of highlighting through music and spoken word the spiritual, cultural and social importance that the Divine Mother Tradition (Divine feminine) has played throughout world.

Based in Oslo, Norwegian bass player Ole Morten Vågan has been a central part of the scandinavian jazz and impro community for the last decade, performing with among others Motif, The Deciders, Håvard Wiik Trio, The Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Maria Kannegaard Trio, Andratx, Bugge Wesseltofts NCOJ, Maciej Obara Int. Quartet, Audun Kleive´s Generator X and more recently also Joshua Redman Trio with Jorge Rossy and Ole Morten Vagan . After discovering jazz as a youngster in the Northern town of Brønnøysund (just below the polar circle), he went on to study with amongst others the fantastic bassist Mats Eilertsen, and attending the very influential Jazz Conservatory in Trondheim, Norway.

Also active as a composer, he has written commissions for a.o. the Grammy Nominated Norwegian string orchestra The Trondheim Soloists, and more recently for the well renowned Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, of which he is now Artistic Director for 2017-2019 - In addition to steadily writing for bands like Motif and The Deciders for the last ten years.

Folk music of different kinds has also been at the core of Vågans interests, and through collaborations with a.o. Jovan Pavlovic, Ola Kvernberg and Stian Carstensen, he has immersed himself in the gipsy music of eastern Europe, Indian Classical Music and also norwegian folk music. He has also had the pleasure of performing with artists from an array of different countries and cultures, including some of the premier Eastern European folk musicians, among them Giani Linca, Filip Simoneov, Ivo Papasov and Petar Ralchev (after a rehearsal with the latter two, Ole Morten experienced his first and probably also last odd meter-induced fever.)

A curious interest in folk music and also classical music is the main focus in the group Gammalgrass, where he plays alongside Carstensen and Kvernberg, two of the most talented musicians coming out of Norway in recent years.

Vågan was also the recipient of the Dnb Nor/Kongsberg Jazz Festival Award in 2009, following in the footsteps of people like Sidsel Endresen, Bugge Wesseltoft, Christian Wallumrød, Audun Kleive, Nils Petter Molvaer and many more.

Anna Moschovakis works with poetry and prose as a writer, editor, translator, publisher, teacher, and designer. Her most recent book is An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth, a novel (Soft Skull, 2024). Other books include Participation (2022), Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love (2018), They and We Will Get Into Trouble for This (2016), and You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake (2011), which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She is the translator of David Diop’s novel At Night All Blood Is Black (Frère d’âme), for which she and Diop received the International Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book award; other translations include Albert Cossery’s The Jokers, Annie Ernaux’s The Possession, Bresson on Bresson, and (with Christine Schwartz-Harley) Marcelle Sauvageot’s Commentary. She is a longtime member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse and a co-founder of Bushel Collective, an experimental mixed-use storefront space in Delhi, NY. Recently, she launched Dirt Editions, an informally distributed pamphlet press. Her collaborative translation of Mihret Kebede’s #evolutionarypoems will be published in November by Circumference Books.

As a 36-year veteran of the financial industry, Rob has an extensive track record of building and leading institutional asset management firms. He is the former CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Greystone Managed Investments, a prominent Canadian institutional investment manager known for its strength in alternative investments. During his tenure, Rob oversaw more than $35 billion of assets under management, positioning Greystone as one of the country’s largest pension assets manager. Prior to joining Forthlane, Rob was Chief Investment Officer of TD Asset Management Inc., which acquired Greystone in 2018. Earlier in his career, Rob was recognized by The Globe and Mail as one of Canada’s “Top 40 Under 40.” Rob has also contributed to a range of boards, including serving as Chair of the Regina Airport Authority. He has held board roles with the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance and the Saskatchewan Roughriders Football Club, and is a past President of the Saskatchewan Chapter of the Chartered Financial Analysts Rob holds a Bach

Weyni Mengesha is a groundbreaking stage and screen director. She served as the artistic director of Soulpepper Theatre for the last seven years, and has directed acclaimed productions nationally and internationally, ( ‘da Kink in my Hair, Kim’s Convenience, A Streetcar Named Desire, Queen Goneril, and Power of Sail) 

She has directed across Canada, London, New York, and Los Angeles, receiving numerous Dora Mavor Moore Awards, two NAACP nominations and recognition from the Drama League (New York) and Drama Critics Circle (Los Angeles). In 2024, she received the Trailblazer Award at the CBC Legacy Awards and the 2025 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize.

A committed educator, mentor, and producer of youth arts initiatives, Weyni was the artistic director of the A.M.Y (Artists Mentoring Youth) Project for seven years and co-founded a platform for young Ethiopian and Eritrean artists. She has trained artists at the National Theatre School of Canada, Canadian Film Centre and The Soulpepper Academy.