Cleek Schrey is fiddler, improviser, and composer from Virginia, now based in NYC. Recent engagements include the Big Ears Festival (TN), the Kilkenny Arts Festival (IR), SuperSense Festival of the Ecstatic (Aus) and the Issue Project Room (NYC) with electronic music pioneer David Behrman. He collaborates with musicians from a wide spectrum of scenes and styles. Frequent collaborators include David Behrman, the viol da gamba player Liam Byrne, traditional fiddle icon Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and the New Perplexity collective of composer-performers. The journal Sound Post has noted that Cleek “possesses a rare combination of traits: deep respect for traditional music and the people who make it, and an unbounded curiosity about new directions for sound”. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Music Composition at Princeton University.
Afua Ansong is Ghanaian American writer and artist who teaches contemporary and traditional West African dance. She recently completed her MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook University. Her work interrogates the challenges of the African immigrant in the United States, exploring themes of transition, citizenship, and blackness. Her chapbook American Mercy is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press and her other works can be seen in Prairie Schooner, Frontier, Newfound and elsewhere.
