Artist Profiles

Mazz Swift is a violinist, singer, composer, and conductor, weaving improvisation, classic African American musics, electronica, and mindfulness into their work. They have composed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Kronos Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Blaffer Foundation. Aside from enjoying a robust career as a performer, Swift is an educator. They have performed and taught free-improvisation workshops on six continents, most notably having traveled to Suriname, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Albania, and Siberia as “cultural diplomat” for the U.S. Department of State.

Mazz Swift is also a performing member and teaching artist with the acclaimed Silkroad Ensemble. As part of that group, they spearheaded and developed Project MUSIC (Music, Uniting Strangers Into Community), through which they seek to develop abolitionist-minded and antiracist programming alongside incarcerated people, designing our own liberation through presence and creativity.

Swift is a 2021 United States Artist, and 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, continually creating orchestral compositions that involve “Conduction” (conducted improvisation — a system for group improvisation pioneered and trademarked by the late, great Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris), small ensemble works, and solo works that are centered around protest and freedom songs, spirituals, and the Ghanaian concept of Sankofa: looking back to learn how to move forward.

Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist

Francesco Turrisi has been described as a “musical alchemist” and a “musical polyglot” by the press. He left his native Italy to study jazz piano and early music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

He moved to Ireland in 2004, where he’s currently based and where he is active as a freelance musician. He is equally at home playing with jazz veterans Dave Liebman and Bill Frisell as he is with Irish traditional sean-nós singer Roisin El Safty and with tarantella specialist Lucilla Galeazzi. Turrisi has toured with Bobby McFerrin, played baroque operas with ensemble L’Arpeggiata, toured with the Silkroad Ensemble, interpreted the music of Steve Reich with Bang on a Can All Stars, accompanied flamenco star Pepe El Habichuela and Greek singer Savina Yannatou.

He has released five critically acclaimed albums as a leader and two as co-leader (Tarab, a cross boundary innovative ensemble that blends Irish and Mediterranean traditional music, and Zahr, a project that looks at connections between southern Italian traditional music and Arabic music).

His latest piano solo album Northern Migrations was described as “delicate, wistful, and wholly engrossing” by the Irish Times Since 2018 he has been collaborating with American Grammy-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens, on a duo project that seamlessly combines music from the Mediterranean with music from the African diaspora in the Americas. In 2019 Giddens and Turrisi released their critically acclaimed duo album There Is No Other. The album single “I’m On My Way” was nominated for a 2020 Grammy. Their 2021 second duo album They’re Calling Me Home was nominated for two Grammy awards and won as best folk album at the 2022 Grammy Awards.

His long list of collaborators includes Bobby McFerrin, Dave Liebman, Gianluigi Trovesi, Bill Frisell, Rhiannon Giddens, the Silkoad Ensemble, Nils Landgren, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Gavin Bryars, Gabriele Mirabassi, Rolando Villazon, Lisa Hannigan, Savina Yannatou, Maria Pia de Vito, Theodosii Spassov, The King’s Singers, Veronique Gens, Philippe Jaroussky, Pepe el Habichuela, and Lucilla Galeazzi.