Aki Onda is an electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project – works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch.
Shelley Hirsch who has been called “A Woman of 1000 Voices” (New York Times) is an award winning, critically acclaimed vocalist, composer, “storyteller”, performance artist, whose work for concert, stage, exhibition, recording, film, television and radio has been presented on 5 continents.
Most recent grants/awards include a music commission for a surround sound choral work from NYSCA, a Harvestworks Artist in Residence grant (her 5th!) and The Alpert /Ucross Residency prize. She is a recipient of a grant from Creative Capital, 3 from NYFA and ones from the NEA, Mary Flagler Cary Trust and more.
Aside from her mostly solo staged performance works, Hirsch has performed 100’s of concerts of improvised music worldwide with Aki Onda, Anthony Coleman, Uchihashi Kasuhisa, Ned Rothenberg,Tony Buck, Okkyung Lee, Ikue Mori, Shahzad Ismaily and has collaborated with visual artists Zoe Beloff, Jim Hodges, Christian Marclay and Barbara Bloom. Hirsch can be heard on over 60 CDs.