As a winner of the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Composition program, she
performed her original music on the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage.
She has been interviewed and performed on Los Angeles radio station
KJZZ -FM, and was featured in a documentary on KCET-TV focusing
on the L.A. Music Center’s Spotlight Award winners. Her original songs
have been featured on televisions shows including Girlfriends and
Sci-Fi Channel’s smash hit Battlestar Galactica.

Raya received a Bachelor of Music degree from the Thornton School of
Music at The University of Southern California. During her college years,
she won The Quincy Jones Award and The Herb Alpert Scholarship.
She joins the Telarc label with her self-titled debut album produced by
Steve Bartek (Danny Elfman / Oingo Boingo), scheduled for release in
February 2008.

www.rayayarbrough.com

A Manhattan-based family man and internationally acclaimed pianist-
composer-bandleader who returns to his roots with the release of his
eleventh album, jazz, JAZZ, jazz. This soulful, instrumental collection
is everything fans have come to embrace in Wolff’s virtuoso jazz piano
playing.
www.michaelwolff.com

DavidKershenbaum
Producer

DAVID KERSHENBAUM is a legendary producer. He has earned over 75 international gold and
platinum albums and his work has yielded multiple Grammys and an Academy Award nomination.

Kershenbaum's career spans over two and a half decades. He has had senior executive roles
in three major record companies. David was the creative force and man in charge at A&M
Records during one of the most successful periods of the label's history.

During his tenure, A&M yielded many superstar artists
including Janet Jackson, Joe Jackson, Peter Frampton,
Bryan Adams, The Police, Squeeze, Cat Stevens and
Supertramp, just to name a few.

Kershenbaum is best known for his artistic productions of unknown artists, building many of
them into superstars. He is a "song man" with a great talent for new artist development and
music presentation. Many artists who have worked with him say that he knows exactly how
to focus an artist and bring the best out of their work

www.davidkershenbaum.com

If it weren't for the snow, Mellowdrone
might never have happened.

During his three years of exile in Boston as a scholarship student at the Berklee School of
Music, far from his Florida home, Jonathan Bates pulled further and further away from all that
the city represented. "There wasn't much to do except get drunk, do drugs, or get into fights,"
he remembers. "And it always seemed to be snowing. So I started to write music."

Beginning with …Boredom Never Sounded So Sweet, a home brewed EP that he produced in
1999 and gave away to strangers on the street, Bates put together a body of work under the
name Mellowdrone. "I didn't want to use my own name because people might come to expect
me to do only one kind of music," he explains. "With another name, I felt that I could do anything."
www.mellowdrone.com / www.eightfiftyseven           


                                 

In a career that spans three decades and a discography that includes more than a dozen eclectic
and innovative recordings, four time GRAMMY nominee Mike Stern has established himself as one
of the premier jazz and jazz-fusion guitarists and composers of his generation.

Stern joins the Heads Up label with the August 2006 release of Who Let the Cats Out? Regardless
of who let them out, the cats are indeed loose on this album, and making a serious noise. Included
on the guest roster are bassists Richard Bona (who handles vocals on two tracks), Anthony
Jackson, Meshell Ndegeocello, Chris Minh Doky and Victor Wooten, trumpeter Roy Hargrove,
saxophonists Bob Franceschini and Bob Malach, drummers Dave Weckl and Kim Thompson,
harmonica player Gregoire Maret, and keyboardist/producer Jim Beard.
www.mikestern.org & www.headsup.com