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Louis Cato is a GRAMMY Award-nominated and internationally acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter. He has worked with an array of artists including Bobby McFerrin, Snarky Puppy, Jon Batiste, Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest.

His love of music started at age 2 when the purchase of his first drum set evolved into an appreciation of the southern gospel from his native North Carolina and continued into his education at the Berklee College of Music.

Cato has an undeniable ability to craft sonic landscapes into timeless masterpieces. After two decades of lending his talents to other projects, Cato released his first solo record STARTING NOW (2017), which he also mixed and produced entirely by himself. He is currently in post production on his newest album which is due out in the coming year.

After playing in the house band for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert since the show’s 2015 inception, Cato was recently named bandleader for the newly renamed “The Late Show Band.”

Selected by The Washington Post as “one of the 21 composers/performers who sound like tomorrow,” JIJI is renowned for her virtuosic performances that encompass a wide variety of musical styles, ranging from traditional and contemporary classical to free improvisation, played on both acoustic and electric guitars.

In 2016, she won First Prize at the Concert Artists Guild competition, becoming the first guitarist to be awarded this honor in thirty years. She recently signed on with Kirshbaum Associates in New York City to be represented by the agency worldwide.

JIJI’s performances have been featured on PBS (WHYY’s On Stage at Curtis series), NPR’s From the Top, WHYY-TV, FOX 4-TV, Munchies (the Vice Channel), The Not So Late Show (Channel 6, Kansas), and Hong Kong broadcast station RTHK’s The Works.

Spotted in a store window at this year’s Big Ears Festival: a sign reading “Steve Gunn marry me.”  Perhaps the writer was a fan of Steve Gunn’s solo acoustic work, influenced by the drones of Eastern music and the Western avant-garde; or the unbridled improvising freedom of his duo work with drummer John Truscinski; or his work with psych-folk band Hiss Golden Messenger or indie rocker Kurt Vile.  Gunn’s appearance at Big Ears playing trad folk songs with Jake Xerxes Fussell was just one side of this multifaceted guitarslinger.

Brazilian singer/songwriter Sessa (born Sergio Sayeg in Sao Paolo) is heir to the great tradition of MPB – Brazilian popular music, in the vein of Gilberto Gil or Caetano Veloso.  But he favors a stripped down approach that reflects his own love of the German minimalist group Cluster, and his lyrics – often about love, heartbreak, and the power of music – echo themes in Leonard Cohen’s songs and Sun Ra’s cosmic jazz.  His latest album is Estrela Acesa, or “Burning Star.”