Born 1974, Yunnan, China, Liu Fang was a child prodigy on the pipa lute and the guzheng zither. A Shanghai Conservatory of Music graduate, winner of top prizes, Liu left China in 1993 for Berlin, then Montreal.
Of the Armenian diaspora, Arto Tuncboyaciyan grew up outside Istanbul. His music celebrates Armenian sorrow + loneliness, also in African-American jazz and blues; it's melancholic, joyous, loving, consoling...