When the personality precedes the music, who knows what you'll get on stage? Andrew W.K. has built himself as a living phenomenon - an artist who has made his work and music, a public evolution of personal expression, backed up with a celebratory, charged soundtrack of his own making. He's toured internationally, opened a mainstay music club in New York, produced releases from top artists, started his own record label, collaborated on a raucous sound and film collage called WHO KNOWS?, and recorded four full-length albums including his most recent release, 00 Cadillac. As a speaker, Andrew W.K. has transformed traditional lectures at institutions such as Yale, Carnegie Mellon and the Cooper Union into multi-platform "happenings,"
John Scher, co-CEO, Metropolitan Talent, is one of the most highly respected veterans in live entertainment. Metropolitan Talent has emerged as a multi-faceted industry leader encompassing artist management, the independent record label Hybrid Recordings, and the concert division, Metropolitan Talent Presents. Throughout the years, John Scher and Metropolitan created, produced or co-produced many critically acclaimed national tours concert events for home video, pay-per-view and broadcast television. In 2007 alone, Metropolitan Talent Presents produced over 350 events with total attendance over half a million and in December 2008, produced Liza's at The Palace, a Broadway theatrical event, which earned Scher and Metropolitan a 2009 Tony Award.
Fresh from recording his third album, WARchild, Sudanese hip-hop artist Emmanuel Jal will share his first-hand experience of being a child soldier for a rebel army in Sudan and how he imparts messages of social justice in music. He will discuss his heroic navigation of the injustices in Darfur and how he has learned to rap for freedom.