Catherine Lee and Aaron Price

Aaron Price is one of Asheville, NC’s most recognized and respected musicians. Known as a performer, producer, free-lance multi-instrumentalist for-hire, and composer of theater scores, few musicians anywhere boast the breadth of expertise, talent, and mojo as the man Asheville’s Mountain Express has named “the man behind the Asheville Sound.” Aaron has produced and collaborated on more than 30 albums released by local and regional acts. He has written musical scores for theater productions by two local theater companies and worked as musical director on several musicals, including The Who’s Tommy in 2004. He has toured internationally with cabaret singer Vendetta Creme, tap-dancer Ira Bernstein, and under his own name as a multi-instrumentalist, showing equal expertise on piano or guitar. He has composed music featured on local roots radio station WNCW.

Catherine Lee specializes in writing poetry with heavily jazz-inflected meters and pivotal word choices. Lee reads solo and performs with improvising musicians “on poem,” including joint gigs with her mentor, beat poet/hipster Ted Joans in 1986–87. Lee began exploring poetry as a percussive voice with musicians at Studio Red Top, Inc., a loft space, later nonprofit presenting organization she founded in Boston, MA in 1978. Lee relocated to San Antonio, TX in 2006 and spent creative summers in the Asheville, NC metro area between 2014-2017. Lee creates collaborative multimedia, and is grateful that online hyperlinking has caught up to her music-saturated artistic vision. When her words are coupled with links to the music that inspires it—or to her readings with musicians—unfamiliar listeners can educate themselves about the vast catalog of African American classical music.