Mena Ramos is an Oakland-based percussionist, medical doctor, and founder of the Global Ultrasound Institute.  She received her B.A. from Brown University in 2005 and her M.D. in Havana, Cuba in 2011.  During her time in Cuba, she studied percussion with the late Alfredo Benitez Gonzalez (Cuarteto d’Aida) and continues to study under the tutelage of Manley “Piri” Lopez (Los Chinitos).  She performs regularly in the Bay Area music scene with the CMC Charanga Ensemble, the Arenas Dance Company, and alongside other great percussionists Javier Navarrete and Annette Aguilar.   She has toured internationally with Amikaeyla Gaston and the Harmonic Rhythms performing a fusion Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms with African-American spirituals.  Mena Ramos founded the fusion duo Pairadocs with Dr. Laura Harris.  

Artist statement: Playing percussion is the unifying force behind the heartbeat and the rhythmic mind, translated by the limbs into a universal language of beat, meter, groove, pulse, and vibration.  I play to connect in a divided world.  To reach at the intersections of musical styles, inspired by the complexity and elegance of afrocuban folkloric drums and its connections with classical, hip hop, ragtime and jazz, is to experience the syntonic groove, the inner vibration that moves us to togetherness.

Elizabeth Sayre has been playing Afro-Cuban bata since 1994, and has studied with many masters of the form in the US and Cuba--her primary teachers were/are John Amira, Orlando Fiol, Lazaro Pedroso, and Amelia Pedroso. She has been accompanying Afro-Cuban folkloric dance class with master Cuban dancer and choreographers since 1999, and has worked in this capacity with former members of Yoruba Andabo, the Conjunto Folklorico Nacional de Cuba, Cutumba, Afro-Cuba de Matanzas, and Raices Profundas. She currently accompanies class and performs with Susana Arenas Pedroso in the Bay Area, and is a key force among women students and players of the Cuban bata drums in the U.S. In addition to the bata, she also plays congas and Brazilian percussion, and worked with Alo Brasil, a sensational Brazilian dance band in Philadelphia, for 11 years. Elizabeth has studied, played, taught, documented, written about, organized events around, and raised funds for traditional arts and artists since 1997.

Michaelle Goerlitz has been playing drums and percussion since she was eight years old. After attending college in the Midwest, she moved to San Francisco in 1980 to continue her studies, which have led to exploration of Brazilian, Afro Cuban, Venezuelan, and Middle Eastern rhythms (plus jazz, R & B & funk). She was a founding member of two renowned & long-term projects, the Blazing Redheads and Wild Mango. Both groups blended many different styles which showcased Michaelle’s versatile percussive skills. Among the list of people Michaelle has played with: VNote Ensemble, Venezuelan Music Project, ‘Chelle & Friends, Wayne Wallace, Mark Levine, Tom McDermott, Tammy Hall, Paul McCandless, Holly Near, Anthony Brown, The Brazilian Jazz Project, Ojala,  rhiannon, Yair Dalal, Naser Musa, Barbara Higbie, Jami Sieber, Tuck & Patti, Jai Uttal and Samba Rio. In 2007 she was named a “rising star” in Downbeat Magazine.

In addition, Michaelle has many years’ experience doing school presentations through the San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music program, as well as teaching – at numerous music camps as well as privately.