Sasha Lazard

Siren Queen

sashalazard.com

Classically trained vocalist turned cultural protagonist, Sasha Lazard is one of the most innovative and extraordinary talents on the international music scene pioneering a modern mix of operatic vocals and electronic rhythms that are both haunting and hypnotic. An accomplished soprano, Sasha received her vocal training at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, but with an edgy sophistication and an artistic desire for freedom, Sasha eventually rebelled against the constraints of the tight-laced opera scene and left behind her established career as a classical performer. She began collaborating with pop producer Frank Fitzpatrick and redefined her performance to overwhelming critical acclaim across the globe. Soon followed, the Myth of Red, Sasha Lazard’s debut album, was released on Higher Octave Music/EMI and in addition to great critical acclaim and made a remarkable impact on both Billboard’s Hot Dance Chart and Billboard’s Classical Crossover Chart. Her music has since been used in a variety of mediums from television to film, having appeared most recently in the Fall 2006 Victoria's Secret campaign, the movie Kissed by an Angel, the movie Modigliani starring Andy Garcia, and as the theme song for the Toronto International Film Festival. Sasha has performed for top designers, luxury brands, and celebrities at events in the top venues of the world including The Whitney Museum, Carnegie Hall, The New York Public Library, Shea Stadium and the National Arts Club, and has been featured in Billboard Magazine, The New York Post, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country to name a few. Her latest CD “Siren,” was released on Manhattan/EMI Records.

Dave Eggar

L’Enfant Terrible

Critically acclaimed musician, cellist Dave Eggar, has performed throughout the world as a solo cellist and pianist. His work is a mix of musical genres that allow the romantic voice of the cello to sing while fusing his classical background with world music, Jazz and ambient rock. Recent engagements included gigs at Carnegie Hall, The Lincoln Center Festival, London's Barbican Center Concert Hall, the JVC Jazz Festival, the Hollywood Bowl. A virtuoso of many styles, Dave has performed and recorded with artists in numerous genres including the Who, Michael Brecker, Evanescence, Josh Groban, Coldplay, Dave Sanborn and Trans-Siberian Orchestra to name a few. As a founding member of the FLUX quartet, Eggar has premiered over 100 works of contemporary music. Dave is a graduate of Harvard University and the Julliard School's Doctoral Program. His list of awards and accomplishments includes accolades from Time Magazine, ASCAP, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Geraldine Dodge Foundation and the Leonard Bernstein Foundation for his work in contemporary music. In 1997, he was awarded SONY Records “Elevated Standards” prize for his accomplishments in the field of classical music. His latest release “Left of Blue” is an interphase with the multiple aspects and genre's of Eggar‘s experiences throughout his live performance career.

Dina Fanai

Alchemy Priestess

Dina Fanai has performed throughout the United States and abroad as a vocalist, pianist, original composer and as a singer with the platinum selling arena rock band Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Dina has written and produced for Universal Records USA and Columbia/Japan Records. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards from The Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and the National Endowment for the Arts as well as leading tours and educational programs in the US, Southeast Asia and Japan. She is currently touring as lead vocalist for “Games Of Steel,” Attack Theatre‘s acclaimed dance rock opera, in which she co-wrote the music with Grammy nominated artist Dave Eggar. She was honored to sing the National Anthem for the New York Rangers in commemoration of Pearl Harbor Day at Madison Square Garden. She continues to do extensive A&R and artist development for major label recording acts and arena tours. Dina has released 4 independent CDs and is now working on her latest recording project “CINEMA 12” due out at in the beginning of 2009.

Pamela Cederquist

Minstrel Provocateur

Pamela Cederquist’s talent stretches across a variety of fields. From her experience as an actor, to that of a designer, to that of a director, she has always been plagued by a life long addiction to live performance that began with a summer on the road as a child actor with a traveling theatre troupe. She received her Masters in Fine Arts from New York University, and was hand picked by the Cinematography Chair to participate in the Graduate Film Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts while directing her first Off-Off Broadway show. She moved to Los Angeles to work on Spike Lee's “Joe&rsqo;s Bed Stuy Barber Shop“ as a Production Assistant and quickly rose to become Production Coordinator and Assistant to the Associate Producer at Ivan Reitman’s company, Northern Lights. After participating in studio politics on several high budget films, Pamela was accepted into the Directors Guild of America Training Program. She has since directed everything from plays, to operas, to her own creative films. She helped produce the Woodstock Film Festival for 3 years, joined the team of the Imagine Festival of the Arts, and assisted with the broadcast of the ING New York City Marathon. Currently residing in New York City’s West Village, Ms Cederquist is in the process of writing a mini-series while continuing to lecture at UCLA and the DGA, all the while teaching that film has the power to entertain and educate, and that filmmakers have a responsibility to show the world what it is and what it can become.

I wish I could change the world by wishing
I love that I can change my age at will
I like that money is paper or metal
I wish that food always tasted the way it does in that perfect bite
I love that my curiosity is the canary's and the cat's
I like Serius Johnson
I wish hope was the same as expectation
I love touching waterfalls
I like reading (actually I love it but I thought I should have another like)
I wish every person spent every moment in awe of everything.

Emily Olin

Empress of Song

Emily Olin is a lecturer, voice coach, pianist and accompanist. Her area of expertise is in Russian vocal music, diction, style, interpretation, and the development of repertoire. Since 1996 she has been a lecturer at the Yale University School of Music, and prior to that served on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music and the Ufa Academy of Arts in Russia. Ms Olin is also a member of the jury of the Doulhanova Art Song competition in Russia. She has appeared as an accompanist and soloist throughout the United States, Italy, and throughout the Republics of the former Soviet Union. In New York, she maintains a private studio where she has coached professional singers for performances in such houses as the Metropolitan Opera, Bolshoi Opera, Kirov Opera, and the Salzburg festival.

Katie Costello

Perambulating through the modern world similar to that of a bubble in outer space, “Song-Doodler” Katie Costello fancies herself an elderly, Victorian dame trapped inside an awkwardly youthful body. Compelled by the forces of Euterpe and Polyhymnia, the muses of music and sacred song, Katie wishes to lyrically startle the foundation of musical consciousness. Although she has lived in a birdhouse for nearly eighteen years, she is willing to emerge and take flight across the vast landscape that is creative existence. Do not be fooled by her towering stature... She is probably wearing extremely high shoes in order to not appear as overwhelmingly small. Katie Costello likens herself a twenty-first century Napoleon Bonaparte of song, minus Waterloo of course. This haiku summarizes Katie Costello&rsqo;s philosophy on the essential beauty of creative exploration:

Living without paint,
Is living without a voice.
Get some paint, or else.

Caitlin Moe

Haunted by a vision while wandering deserted passageways of Venice, Italy, Miss Moe throws herself into unknown, abandoned waters to unravel more of her mysteriously beautiful past life. She will drown you in sweet misery with her sultry-singed voice, tease you with her eccentric & alluring melodious violin, and charm you into desiring her tales of market men romances, self-ruling existence, passionate weaknesses, soul mate encounters & light-hearted merriment.

Don’t be fooled by her golden hair, her centaur behavior, or her obsession with traveling unfamiliar territory – it’s all the more of her siren ways. With wine, dance & candlelight as her companions, Miss Moe sacrifices herself to bringing back the roaring 20s... back to the time of jook joints, secretive rendezvous & a life where artists came together to explore one another’s work... back... when it all made sense.

You can find sweet miss moe lurking the unforgotten city streets of new york, breathing the air of her southern roots, violin in hand, ready to lure her weary sailors into sea with her.

Patrick Porter

Gemini if it comes to that
Skeptic behind green eyes
Wishful eccentric so and so
Loves Truth and lusts for lies

An actor in the deepest soul
A poet in the heart
Who works the ho-hum hem-haw day
To help him play his part

Southern born and southern bred
Smile smirk thought twist and bend
Feet cock brain balls thighs butt chest hands
Arms face and loyal friend

Charlie Palmer

Drummer and Percussionist Charlie Palmer has performed and recorded with artists including RJD2, Syd Kitchen, Tony Sherr, Lucia Micarelli, Itaal Shur, The Exeter Popes, Dave Eggar, Semaj, Katie Costello, Earwig, Heather Holley, Gil Goldstein, Caitlin Moe, Arnett Howard, The City and Horses, Holly Brook, The Villa-Lobos Brothers and Amy Lee. He is a native of Ohio and a graduate of Capital University, where he studied percussion with Bob Breithaupt. An accomplished producer, song-writer, and programmer, Mr. Palmer also has over 6 years of experience in the financial industry where he worked as an Equity Trader for Legg Mason's ClearBridge Advisors (formally CAM North America).

Heather Holley

NYC Music Producer, Songwriter, Inspirer

It's Jazz Age New York and the roaring 20's are in full swing. Bootleggers and gangsters rub shoulders with Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith at the Cotton Club in Harlem or in speakeasies across the city. In this, the Golden Age of Songwriting and the height of Broadway, some of the 20th century's most influential voices have gathered in the city that never sleeps.

On any given night, in private living rooms across the city, you might find George Gershwin at the piano playing his latest song “Someone to Watch Over Me” for his friends Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers. At Gatsby-style gatherings on the shores of Long Island, Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astaire and Jascha Heifetz tested the limits of excess. Meanwhile, Dorothy Parker and her Vicious Circle of critics, writers and playwrights, such as Robert Sherwood and Marc Connelly, held court at the Algonquin, where the only sin was to be absent of wit, too slow with a refrain.

This is the era that strikes a chord, the music that inspires me. It drew me across the country from Los Angeles to New York a year and a half ago. And as I strive to create my own Vicious Circle in my SoHo loft, complete with musicians, writers, artists and eccentrics, this is the era to which I turn.

Come into my world, where you'll find me at the helm of my recording studio into the early morning hours, inspiring and being inspired by those around me, capturing the magic of a vocalist's melody or a cellist's bow. If I'm not there, by some off chance, stop by my local wine bar, a hidden little speakeasy of a joint, where you'll find me caught in a tide of artists and musicians and laughter — surrounded, you might say, by family.