Neal Barnard  guitars, keyboards, vocals
Martha Roebuck  vocals
Ngọc Hoàng  vocals 
Mike Stetina  drums

with
Jon Best  bass
Bob Gray  saxophone
Việt (Bầu) Nguyễn  đàn tranh, đàn bầu, đàn cò, đàn nguyệt
Carter Melin  cello
Sam Dorsey  classical guitar

Neal Barnard’s recorded music began with Pop Maru, mutating into the rock/jazz/baroque, Quartet. His compositions incorporate odd meters, foreign languages, and other unusual elements.

Martha Roebuck is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist who released three CDs with Falstaff, a southern Virginia band. Her style hints at her mother’s operatic background, but has diverged toward Sheryl Crow, Patti Griffin, and Aimee Mann.

Ngọc Hoàng was born in Saigon, the daughter of movie director Hoàng Vinh Loc. She came to the U.S. in 1987 and, thirteen years later, released a beautiful debut album in Vietnamese, The Girl in the Painting. Ngọc also wrote the theme song for the audiobook, The Little Prince, translated into Vietnamese by The Story Teller group as a benefit for blind children in Vietnam, and was featured in a CD compilation from B-Flat, the Vietnamese Musician Association. Ngọc lives near Houston.

Mike Stetina first picked up drumsticks at age 10 and soon developed a taste for unusual meters in his teen years, listening to Genesis and Rush. Today, he draws on a wide range of classical and popular music. He plays and records with Rip Dizzy. 

Jon Best released several albums as the bassist for Falstaff, and is an audio engineer at Muddy Creek Audio in Virginia Beach, VA.

Bob Gray, a Baltimore-based saxophonist, has worked with Neal Barnard on musical projects for more than 20 years.

Việt (Bầu) Nguyễn was born in Saigon in a musical family. As a boy, he played the xylophone, Vietnamese flute, đàn cò (a bowed instrument), đàn bầu (a distinctive one-stringed plucked instrument), and, later, the đàn tranh (the Vietnamese equivalent of the Japanese koto), and the đàn nguyệt (banjo-like instrument). Moving to the United States in 1983, Bầu and his brothers formed the hardcore SYG, which recorded its first album in 2002 and its second, “Music for the Apathetic” in 2003. Bầu was also featured in "Memorial" with Lilitu in 2001 and "the delores lesion." in 2003. He lives near Atlanta.

Carter Melin is a cellist in the Virginia Symphony and teaches at Old Dominion University.

Sam Dorsey has studied guitar with Jesus Silva, Michael Lorimer and, in master classes, with Andrés Segovia. He has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America and has recently been heard in recital in the Teatro Nacional in San Jose, Costa Rica, and the Cento Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City, Mexico.

Photos by Emiko
Emikocreates.com, 757-422-3686.

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