Recording Engineer / Producer John “Beetle” Bailey is the owner-operator of The Drive Shed Recording Studios in Ontario, Canada. Since graduating from the Music Industry Arts program at Fanshawe College in 1990, he has enjoyed a diverse career spanning  work in almost every genre. From his early Rock & Roll days working with Triumph, Voivod, & Tom Cochrane, to his many years recording and mixing albums for Ian Thomas, The Rankins, Hilario Durán, Monkey House, Marc Jordan and Amy Sky, Olivia Newton-John, and Matt Dusk… John’s been busy at The Drive Shed Producing recent and upcoming releases from Twin Flames, Sultans of String, Billy Newton-Davis, Molly Johnson, and more to come!John has earned Juno awards for “Recording Engineer of the Year” in 
2007 and 2020, and Juno nominations in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2021 and 2022. He also earned a nomination for a Latin Grammy for Best Engineered  Album, Alex Cuba’s “Sublime” LP in 2020, and won Producer(s) Of The Year 2021 and 2023 Canadian Folk Music Award with Chris McKhool (Sultans of String). In 2022 John placed a Grammy on his shelf for mixing Alex Cuba’s Best Latin Pop album, “MENDÓ.Alongside his career as an award-winning Recording Engineer & 
Producer, John’s passion is technology - and nothing drives the creation of collaboration tools more than necessity! As Chief Technology Officer of Synchronicity Media AS, John oversees the architecture, development plans, and milestones, ensuring that SyncDNA™ brings the best-designed, customerdriven and competitive system to market. Working closely with chief architects, VP of Products, marketing & sales departments, overseeing R&D, and synchronizing architecture and development teams with the Product Roadmap, John leads the technology team at Synchronicity Media AS and SyncDNA™

Photo by Selina Bailey

Kat is an award-winning playwright, director, screenwriter, and served as the Artistic Director of Theatre Brouhaha in Toronto. Her plays have been performed across Canada and internationally. As a writer/director she has staged nineteen of her original plays in the last decade, including most recently, the world premiere of WILDWOMAN at Soulpepper Theatre. Awards include the Dora Mavor Moore award for Outstanding New Play, the Austin Film Festival Award for Best Fiction Podcast, the Summerworks Spotlight Award and the Best of Fringe Award. She has written for Kim’s Convenience, Good Question Media, Limetown (Podcast), Film Coop and Little Engine, and she is developing a handful of feature films and television shows with eOne, Gunn Films, TJ Content and the Donaldson Company. She is a graduate of Queen’s University and the Canadian Film Centre.

Nick Dunston is a composer, improviser, and sound artist. Called an “indispensable player on the New York avant-garde" (New York Times), his performances have spanned a variety of venues and spaces across North America and Europe. In addition to 9 albums released as a leader, he has been commissioned by artists and organizations such as Wet Ink Ensemble, Bang on a Can, JACK Quartet, A L'ARME Festival, Ex-Aequo, Tenth Intervention, Johnny Gandelsman, TROMPO, Gaudeamus Festival, PULSE String Quartet, and Ekmeles. As a sideman he has worked with artists such as Marc Ribot, Ches Smith, Vijay Iyer, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Moor Mother, Darius Jones, Lucrecia Dalt, Joy Guidry, Son Lux, Craig Taborn, Dave Douglas, Allison Miller, Anna Webber, and Amirtha Kidambi. In 2019 he was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship by Roulette, which supported the creation of the trans-media song cycle La Operación, the double bass quintet piece The Floor is Lava!, and his debut studio album, Atlantic Extraction, which was referred to as “the debut of 2019” (JazzTimes Magazine). In 2020 in collaboration with Dogbotic Labs, he co-created “Ear Re-training”, a music composition course focusing on media-bending experimental techniques and concepts. Alongside Katherine Young, Dunston was featured as the inaugural Artists-in-Residence with Wet Ink Ensemble for the 2021-2022 season, where he created his 14-piece ensemble work Reverse Broadcast, himself performing on double bass, live-processed radio, and improvised Conduction. He released his improvising trio album Spider Season in 2022 in which Pitchfork Magazine noted “Even in a trio setting, Dunston’s curiosity creates a plethora of possibilities. No two songs of his ever sound alike.” His performing and improvising can also be heard on the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All At Once, which won the Oscar that year for Best Original Score. Nick Dunston’s most recent album, the Afro-surrealist-anti-opera COLLA VOCE, was released in 2024 on Out Of Your Head Records. He has given artist talks and presented his works at academic institutions such as The University of Southern California, California Institute of the Arts, The University of Iowa, and Stony Brook University. He was nominated for the Deutscher Jazzpreis (German Jazz Prize) in 2023, 2024, and 2025; and alongside Cansu Tanrikulu, won the SWR Jazz Prize of 2024. Dunston currently resides and maintains an active presence in both the Berlin and New York experimental music scenes.

Simon studied with a huge range of drummers in the US, Australia and Korea. Since 1990 he has performed regularly throughout Australia, Europe, Asia and the US. He has produced a large collection of solo drumming recordings and over the past 20 years he has been involved in numerous ongoing collaborative projects including Chiri (trio with Bae il Dong and Scott Tinkler), Showa 44 (duo with Carl Dewhurst), duo with Scott Tinkler, and most recently, a duo with saxophonist Hinano Fujisaki.

He has also played regularly with many of Australia’s most established ensembles including the Phil Slater Quintet, Matt McMahon trio, the Australian Art Orchestra, Vince Jones,  Paul Grabowsky sextet, Cameron Undy’s 20th Century Dog, Stu Hunter, as well as various groups led by Scott Tinkler. Over the past few years Simon has collaborated with numerous local and international artists including Jen Shyu, Gian Slater, Kim Hyelim, Chris Hale, Tony Malaby and Kris Davis, Jo Jonghun and Lim Mijeong (Byeolsinak), Mary Rapp and Carl Dewhurst, as well as with Henry Kaiser, Bill Laswell, and Rudresh Mahanthappa. 

Piotr Turkiewicz is an experienced music curator and artistic director with nearly 20 years in the field. Since 2008, he has been the Artistic Director of the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, where he pioneered new music commissions and expanded the festival internationally, including an annual New York edition starting in 2014. Piotr has also served as Curator of Jazz and Contemporary Improvised Music at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin since 2018 and became the guest curator at De Singel in Antwerp in 2024.

Piotr’s broad leadership experience extends into key global arts organizations. From 2012 to 2020, he served on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA), where he co-chaired the Program Committee and chaired Pitch New Works. Additionally, Piotr was Vice-President of the Europe Jazz Network from 2014 to 2018.  

A frequent speaker at prestigious international conferences, Piotr has presented at the ISPA Congress in Toronto and Bogota, a seminar at The Juilliard School in New York, the Asian Performing Arts Festivals in Shanghai, and the Live! Conference in Singapore.  

Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Cree/Halfbreed; German/Polish) is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter and critical thinker with family roots from Papaschase First Nation / amiskwaciy wāskahikan and Kikino Metis Settlement. 

Andria Hickey is a curator, writer, and strategic advisor. She is currently Head of Programs at Shorefast and Fogo Island Arts. Andria’s curatorial research and practice is focused on cross-disciplinary experimentation, socially engaged art, and contemporary approaches to abstraction in the digital age. She is inspired by the intersections of art and ecology, civic engagement and art in the public realm. 

Prior to joining Shorefast, Andria oversaw the visual art program at The Shed, NY, and was previously global Senior Director and Curator at Pace Gallery from 2018 to 2022, where she established a new curatorial team and initiated the live arts program Pace Live. Before joining Pace, she was Senior Curator at MOCA Cleveland. Hailing from St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, Andria earned her BA from Memorial University and an MA in Canadian Art History from Concordia University in Montreal. She moved to the United States in 2007 for a role in the Visual Arts Department at the Walker Art Center, where she was a curatorial fellow until 2010. Moving on to New York, she was Curator of Art in General in New York and later appointed Curator at the Public Art Fund where from 2011-2016, she organized public art exhibitions and new commissions throughout New York City. 

In addition to her curatorial work, Andria is a strategic advisor to artists, cultural foundations, philanthropists, and arts institutions. She has lectured broadly, and her written work has been published in a wide variety of journals and exhibition catalogues. 

Andria lives in upstate New York and spends time on Fogo Island whenever she can.