Leanne Rees Bio | Classical Pianist

Leanne Rees is a classically trained pianist, composer and performer who has traveled the globe bringing women composers and new works to wider audiences. Leanne Rees, from California's Santa Clara Valley began her piano studies at the age of 4.  She soloed with the San Jose Symphony Orchestra with Gastone Usigli at the age of 9 and with conductor Sandor Salgo of the Bach Festival Orchestra at the age of 13, returning as an adult to perform with conductor George Cleve.  A graduate of Stanford University, she continued her piano study with pianist/composer Allen Ferguson and later with Sylvia Jenkins and Adolph Baller, and in Washington D.C. with Thomas Mastroianni.  She has performed extensively in California.  Since moving to the Washington D. C. area, Ms. Rees has performed with numerous chamber ensembles and was honored by Washingtonian Magazine as one of twenty-eight leading women performers.

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Elizabeth "Betsy" Cox | Author

Elizabeth Cox is the author of several collections of poetry, short stories, and three other novels: The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love, Night Talk (winner of the Lillian Smith Award and a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), The Slow Moon, and A Question of Mercy (from the University of South Carolina Press). She has been recognized with the Robert Penn Warren Award and the North Carolina Fiction Award and inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Cox has taught creative writing at Duke University, University of Michigan, University of Massachusetts–Lowell, Tufts University, Boston University, MIT, Bennington Writing Seminars, and most recently at Wofford College, where she shared the John Cobb Chair with her husband C. Michael Curtis, fiction editor for the Atlantic.

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Goh Beng Kwan Bio | Painter

Goh Beng Kwan (b. 1937) is a key Singapore artist widely recognised for his contributions to the Singapore art scene with his daring abstract collage works that utilise a myriad of found materials from his surroundings. His work has been featured in over 120 exhibitions across Asia, Europe and the United States, and is in private collections locally and throughout Asia.

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Goh Beng Kwan was taught by two of Singapore’s revered pioneer artists Chen Wen Hsi and Cheong Soo Pieng in his early days. He attended the prestigious Art Students’ League of New York in USA in 1962 and Provincetown Workshop in Massachusetts USA in 1964. During his time in NYC, Goh was awarded multiple art scholarships, as well as mentorship from acclaimed painter Sidney Gross and Leo Manso. For over half a century, Goh has been an influential artist in Singapore - contributing significantly to the development of local contemporary art. He was awarded first prize at the inaugural UOB Painting of the Year Competition in 1982 and received the Cultural Medallion for Visual Arts in 1989. His work has been featured in more than120 exhibitions across Asia, Europe and the United States, and is in private collections locally and throughout Asia.