Mark Wood/Laura Kaye, and Mia Asano
THE MARK WOOD EXPERIENCE
Recording artist, performer, producer, inventor, Emmy award-winning composer and music education advocate MARK WOOD has spent the past four decades electrifying the orchestra industry – literally. Dubbed ‘The Les Paul and Jimi Hendrix of The Violin World’ by PBS, Wood is the premier electric violinist of his generation who pioneered the entire genre. Wood rose to fame as string master and original member of the internationally acclaimed Trans-Siberian Orchestra, selling over 10 million albums. LAURA KAYE has a lyricism and musicality all her own, and is a rock and roll chanteuse whose take-no-prisoners voice invokes the likes of Steven Tyler and Aretha Franklin. Laura has worked with legendary musicians such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Lenny Kravitz and Sean Lennon and her voice has been featured on countless television shows and advertisements. In addition to her solo work, Laura is the featured vocalist on many of Mark’s recordings. The true passion of this power couple is music education. Their groundbreaking music education program Electrify Your Symphony (EYS) celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2020. EYS is an immersive rock and roll workshop and concert series for school music departments that boosts student self-esteem and helps raise much-needed funds.
MIA ASANO
Mia Asano is an electric violinist from Denver, Colorado. Classically trained from the age of five, she developed a love for alternative styles of music early on and plays a variety of music styles including rock, pop, jazz, classical, bluegrass and celtic music. After graduating from the Denver School of the Arts she went on to attend the Berklee College of Music as a dual major in Performance and Professional Music. During her junior year, she began posting short videos on TikTok and Instagram to practice her recording/mixing and video editing skills. One of the early videos went viral, gaining 10 million collective views in less than a week on multiple social media platforms and resulting in over half a million followers on TikTok. Since then, she has had success with other videos as well, including an arrangement of Nathan Evans’ Wellerman Sea Shanty which gained Global recognition on networks such as the BBC, NBC, Washington post, and more.