Maya Beiser is an American musician, cellist, performing artist and producer who lives in New York City. Beiser was raised on a kibbutz in Israel by her French mother and Argentine father, and graduated from Yale University School of Music. She has been described by the Boston Globe as "a force of nature", "a cello goddess" by The New Yorker and "the reigning queen of the avant-garde cello" by The Washington Post. Beiser is a 2015 United States Artists Distinguished Music Fellow and the Inaugural Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology.

Tan Dun is a Chinese-born American composer and conductor. A leading figure of contemporary classical music, he draws from a variety of Western and Chinese influences, a dichotomy which has shaped much of his life and music. Having collaborated with leading orchestras around the world, Tan is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Grawemeyer Award for his opera Marco Polo (1996) and both an Academy Award and Grammy Award for his film score in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). His oeuvre as a whole includes operas, orchestral, vocal, chamber, solo and film scores, as well as genres that Tan terms "organic music" and "music ritual."