2004/2005 FELLOWS

The following bios were current as of the Master Musician award date, but have not been updated.

Ho Chan plays every instrument of the pin peat ensemble, a form of percussive Cambodian classical music. He began study at age 16 with his grandfather. In 1975, under the Khmer Rouge regime, Chan was forced into slave labor camps; he fled to Thailand in 1979 where he joined a pin peat ensemble headed by master musician Yinn Ponn. In 1986, he resettled in the U.S. and moved to California in 2000, where he joined the Arts of Apsara Ensemble, led by master dancer and singer Sophiline Cheam Shapiro. He has received awards from the California Arts Council, the Public Corporation for the Arts, and the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

Hospicio Dulnuan was born in the Ifugao Province of the Cordillera Mountains in the northern Philippines. For 45 years, he has performed the traditional Cordillera instruments including sagay-po (bamboo pan flute), kolasing/kulitong (nose flute), gangha (set of 4 and 6 brass gongs), solibao (elongated drum), libbit (short drum), tambi (zither), patang-gok (stringed bamboo zither), ungngiyong (bamboo jaw harp), takik (metal percussion bars), patang-ug (bamboo bladed percussion tube), and others. He is also a practitioner of Ifugao oral and dance traditions. Dulnuan moved to Los Angeles in 1980, and co-founded the BIBAK Dance Ensemble in 1989.

Aziz Faye was raised in the village of Medina, the nguewel (griot) suburb of Dakar, Senegal. Nguewels are oral historians, musicians, dancers, singers and storytellers. Faye is the son of Sabar (drumming) master Sing Sing Faye and protégé of percussion virtuoso Doudou N'Daye Rose. He has been playing the sabar, djembe and djun-djun drums since the age of six. Faye has performed with Le Ballet du Senegal, toured with such artists as Youssou N'Dour and Baaba Maal, and recorded with Peter Gabriel and Ismael Lo. In Los Angeles, he founded the dance and drum ensemble Khaley Nguewel (Young Griots).

Felipe Garcia-Villamil was born in Matanzas, Cuba into a well-known family of musicians and spiritual leaders. He is the master of a set of three drums called bata that are central to the Santeria cultural and spiritual traditions brought to Cuba from the Yoruba people of West Africa, synthesizing song, drumming and dance. Garcia has been described as completo, a complete percussionist, as he is also a master in the Matanzas style of rumba and comparsa. In addition, he is a singer, beadworker and maker of ceremonial objects. In Cuba, Garcia founded the ensemble Emikeke in the 1970s, and moved to the U.S. in 1980. In 2000 he received the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Pejman Hadadi is a virtuoso Iranian tombak and daf (frame drum) player who has been hailed as "the finest Iranian percussionist living in the West" (KPFA Radio, Berkeley, CA). Hadadi began playing tombak at the age of ten under the masters of the instrument Asadollah Hejazi and Bahman Rajabi. In 1990, upon immigrating to the U.S., he began his professional career as a performing and recording artist with ensembles of Persian classical music as well as Indian, Turkish and American musicians. In 1995, Hadadi joined Dastan, a West Coast-based ensemble of Iranian musicians, which has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Europe and Iran.

Ciro Hurtado is a Peruvian guitarist/composer who has been actively performing since the early 1970s as a soloist and as a member of various groups in Peru, Mexico, Cuba, Europe and the United States. He studied in Peru with guitar master Augusto Portugal. Hurtado is currently the musical director and has produced several albums for the group Huayucaltia, which performs contemporary music from Latin America. He has also recorded three solo albums, and created scores for both television and films. He has been conducting workshops on Latin American guitar in the Los Angeles area for the past several years.

Radha Prasad was born and raised in India and taught himself to play the bamboo flute at an early age. He studied for 18 years as an apprentice to Pandit Hariprasad Chaurais, India's foremost flutist. He has toured extensively throughout India, Europe and the United States. He moved to the U.S. in 1992, and has resided in Los Angeles as a teacher and performer since 1995. Because of the difficulty of obtaining high quality bamboo flutes, Prasad has become a master craftsman of the instrument, making and tuning flutes for musicians in Southern California.

Katsuko Teruya began studying kutuu (Okinawan koto, a stringed instrument), at the age of 18 under master Nae Kochi of the Naha Koyokai in Japan. Katsuko moved to Hawai'i in the mid-1950s, and earned a Senior Teaching Certificate in 1965. In 1975 she established the Hawai'i chapter of the Teruya Shokyoku Kenkyukai. She has served as lead kutuu player in concert for some of the most respected ensembles and schools in Okinawa, Hawai'i and California, including Yoshino Majikina Dance and Music Festival, Nakasone Seifu-Kai, and Kaneshiro Okinawan Dance School. She received a Certificate of Commendation from Nomura-ryu Ongaku Koyokai in 1984. Now based in Los Angeles, Teruya has been teaching kutuu for more than 20 years.

Mai Lee Vue was born in Laos. She is a master of kwv txhiaj (pronounced "kew tsee ya"), the sung poetry of the Lao-Hmong, and also performs on the hmoob raj or Hmong flute. Vue learned the flute at age eleven from her mother. Both her grandmother and mother were famous in their village for their excellent voices and songs. Vue is a major figure in the cultural life of the Hmong community in Long Beach. She works with many students in Hmong culture classes at the Homeland Neighborhood Cultural Center, and has received awards from the Public Corporation for the Arts and the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

Ian Whitelaw plays the Great Highland Bagpipe, an instrument deeply embedded in Scottish culture. His teachers include Andrew Wright, president of the Piobaireachd Society, and Robert Nicol, former piper to King George VI. Whitelaw has performed for many film and television programs, and has performed with the Chieftains at the Hollywood Bowl, at the Mormon Tabernacle, and at King Albert Hall in Glasgow, Scotland, among many others. He has received top awards at numerous piping championships including the Western United States Piping Association Championship and the Spokane Piper's Society Banner of the Mountains. He is the musical director of the Los Angeles Scots Pipe Band, and is also a senior judge for piping competitions.