Michel Pastore works to rehabilitate the musical patrimony silenced by totalitarian regimes. Since 2006, he has been the director of the Festival of Forbidden Music in Marseille.

Brian Chikwava is a London-based Zimbabwean writer and musician.

Anthony Barilla is a musician and performance artist based in Houston, Texas.

Howard Fishman is a culture writer, musician, theatre-maker, and composer based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, where his essays earned him the 2019 First Place award for “Arts & Entertainment Portfolio” from the Society for Features Journalism. He has also written for The Washington Post Magazine, Vanity Fair, The San Francisco Chronicle, ArtForum, The Village Voice, No Depression, and Jazziz. Fishman has released eleven albums of music, and has toured as an international headliner. His original play A Star Has Burnt My Eye had its world premiere at The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) as part of the Next Wave Festival, and he is currently at work on completing the first biography of Connie Converse, to be published next year by Dutton Books.

Composer Richard Festinger has garnered international recognition for his extensive catalogue of vocal and instrumental compositions.  Writing for the Tanglewood Music Festival, Frank J. Oteri describes Festinger’s music as “notable for its combination of propulsive energy with an impeccable sense of poise and balance,” and WQXR Radio in New York has dubbed him “an American master.”  Festinger is a professor emeritus of San Francisco State University. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in composition from the University of California, Berkeley, and in the mid 1980’s co-founded the acclaimed San Francisco based modern music ensemble Earplay. The recipient of numerous major awards and commissions, he has been honored with both the Walter Hinrichsen Award and an Academy Recording Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.