• Award winning Italian vocalist, songwriter and dancer Carmen Marsico hails from the mountainous and wild region of Basilicata, a dramatic landscape that also inhabits her heart and can be heard in her music. She has immersed herself in the traditions of the south of Italy and tirelessly delved deeper into researching the origins of these sounds. On that journey she has followed paths that led her to other cultures and musical traditions; as she's spun this web wider and wider, patterns have emerged and grown bolder. Apart from being a performer she is also an Associate Professor of Voice at Berklee College of Music.

  • Björn Wennås’ roles as a musician range from performer, composer and arranger to educator, author and music director. He is equally at home playing in a rock club, exploring mediterranean music in a performing arts center, or performing Schubert in a chamber music setting. He was the music director for Newpoli, an Italian world/folk ensemble. He also co-leads Zafarán as well as playing guitar in the Irish group ISHNA. He is one of only a handful of people outside of Italy who play the 10-stringed chitarra battente.

  • Dan Meyers is a multi-instrumentalist who is equally at home in the classical and folk music worlds. A specialist in music of the Medieval and Renaissance eras, he also can frequently be found playing traditional music from Ireland, southern Italy, and other cultures on an eclectic variety of wind instruments. He enjoys blurring the artificial lines that modern culture often draws between folk music and "art" music, and has performed at the Kennedy Center, on Broadway, at the Newport Folk Festival, and in bars and clubs all over the US, Ireland, the British Isles, and Italy. He has a particular interest in the intersection of music with theater, dance, and the visual arts, and frequently performs new works that incorporate diverse media. He is a former faculty member of the Five Colleges Early Music Program in Massachusetts, and has also taught at Tufts University, Dartmouth College, and workshops throughout the Northeast.

  • Davide Roberto is an innovative Italian percussionist and singer originally from Puglia, currently based in Rome. He holds a degree in Musicology and wrote his graduate thesis on the history and techniques of traditional Italian frame drums (tamburello and tammorra). Self-taught from an early age, he has also studied with notable Italian percussionist Massimo Carrano. He is dedicated to performing and teaching diverse styles of world music, folk music, and jazz; his broad repertoire has seen him featured in many venues throughout Italy, including helping to organize the prestigious "Suoni del Mediterraneo" Festival in Andria, a UNESCO-sponsored event. In addition to Zafarán he is a founding member of the band Progetto Migala, which focuses on the diverse influences that make up the traditional music of southern Italy; their album World 'n' Folk Music (2014) won the "Battle of the Bands" contest at the World Music Network in the UK. An avid freelancer in Italy's capital city, he frequently performs with a number of ensembles as well as teaching private percussion lessons and leading drum circles.