Bruce Crossman is an Australian composer with wide interests across visual arts, East Asian architecture, poetry and music (classical, traditional world and improvisatory musics) with a focus on Asian-Pacific musical identity. He lives in Sydney and works as an Associate Professor of Music, Music and Music Therapy at Western Sydney University. He contributes to the Asia-Pacific region through invitations as a Collaborator, Aichi University of the Arts, Japan in 2015, Composer, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan in 2019, Scholar/Artist-in-Residence, Seoul National University, South Korea in 2022, and advisory work for the Rockefeller Foundation in New York (USA).

Kate Fagan is Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at WSU. She is a widely published writer, scholar and musician whose fourth volume, Song in the Grass, is forthcoming in 2024 with Giramondo. She is also Chair of the Sydney Review of Books Advisory Board, an award-winning songwriter, and Project Director of The Writing Zone, a mentoring program for emerging writers and arts workers from Greater Western Sydney, for which she won the 2022 Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Award for Engagement and Sustainability and the 2022 SoHCA Dean’s Award for Research Leadership.

Hyelim Kim (taegum) is a world-renown traditional Korean taegum performer and intercultural improviser, who is a Visiting Research Fellow, Bath Spa University (UK). She has worked with Australia’s leading intercultural improvisers including Simon Barker (drums) and Peter Knight (trumpet) and collaborates with leading musicians all over the world, recently performing on BBC Radio 3 with Nils Frahm and Ghostpoet as part of Late Junction Sessions. She has also graced the stage at the London Jazz Festival and Omi World Music Concert (New York) using her instrument to promote exchange with a wide variety of musical cultures.

Yi Ji-young (gayageum) is considered one of the most important Korean gayageum players of our time with a legacy stretching from traditional sanjo to contemporary avant-garde repertoire. Her level of excellence is attested to by performances across the world at the highest levels, including the National Gugak Centre (Korea), Edinburgh Festival, France’s MIDEM (key industry event), and important orchestras such as Shanghai Orchestra, Kyoto Orchestra, Jerusalem Philharmonic Orchestra, KNM Ensemble Berlin and leader of the CMEK (Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea). She is currently a professor of Gayageum Performance at Seoul National University, Korea.

Pedro Velasco is a London-based filmmaker and jazz musician of Portuguese heritage, who specialises in music videos, including clients with ECM, and is a regular guitarist improviser in the London free jazz scene with appearances at EFG London Jazz Festival, drawing on rich multicultural traditions. Through his production company Freeze Productions, he creates films which are distinctive for their musical rhythms visually and abstraction of instrumental sonic painterly qualities into visual materiality and light. Velasco was the director of photography for the Gyeonggye: Border music video featured above.