Gigi Gamble is an Oakland native of Chilean and U. S. descent. She studied voice production privately from avant garde violinist and vocalist Candace English (Natvig). Gigi's performance experience includes choral, sound track, radio, jazz and musical theater. She has listened to tango since the late eighties, working her way from Piazzola to "Pacho" and back again.

Gigi has performed with Tango #9, Trio Garufa, Conjunto Berretin, Marcelo Puig, Bocha, Seth Asarnow and Odile Lavault, at venues including the Noe Valley Ministry, Claremont Hotel, Portland's Tiffany Ballroom, Amnesia, Mama Art Cafe, Cafe Van Kleef, Cafe Du Nord & The Metronome Ballroom. She made her tango recording debut in 2005 with Conjunto Berretin's second release, "Tango a la Parilla Para Bailar", and is a featured guest on Tango #9's "Radio Valencia", released in 2006.

Spring Opara is a graduate of the University of California , Berkeley holding a BS degree in Political Science. She served 5+ years in the US Air Force and has traveled extensively. Spring is a published, lesbian of color writer of erotic fiction and has a short story, Sex and Chocolate in the anthology Ultimate Lesbian Erotica 2005 published by Alyson Publishing.

She was also a cast member of Liquid Fire Productions' 2005 production, Legacies Untied, Lust Unleashed , which opened the National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco in 2005. Spring also performed an excerpt from the production with other cast members at San Francisco Pride 2005.

Spring considers herself to be an intelligent; sexy-cute; creative, gender-fluid, woman who enjoys writing erotic fiction; dancing; languages; intense eyes; laughing; talking dirty; shape shifting vixens; toys; cooking, strong hands; the Arts; moon-gazing; and girl-watchin'. She feels that the erotic power of the feminine form has not be realized by many and wishes to express it in herself as a beckon to those thinking of taking the dive and embracing their own erotic power.

Leslie Hassberg is a versatile singer, instrumentalist and producer. Recent projects include a series of self-produced shows showcasing her broad range: "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley" (Broadway and jazz), "An Introduction to Opera for Lesbians (and friends)" (for which she also wrote the script) and "Women Singer-Songwriters of the 60s and 70s" (folk and folk-rock). Ms. Hassberg's opera credits include the title role in Carmen, Azucena in Il Trovatore, and numerous smaller roles with many of the Bay Area's opera companies. She has sung with the SF Opera and Symphony Choruses, and with the SF Choral Artists, a top-notch a cappella chamber choir. Ms. Hassberg has also worked as a soloist and ringer with community and religious choruses and orchestras, in composers' workshops, and on several recordings. She has a degree in voice performance from SFSU, where she also studied conducting and composition. Ms. Hassberg directed and sang with The Choral Majority, conducted the SF Lesbian Chorus, arranged many works for voices and instruments, and wrote a song cycle on selected poems from Judy Grahn's "Confrontations with the Devil in the Form of Love." She plays piano, guitar, flute, recorder, bass and Latin percussion, and has many production credits to her name.

Upcoming performances include a Choral Majority reunion at SF MCC on 8/18, a cabaret show at the Octavia Lounge on 8/19, and a solo with the SF Lesbian & Gay Freedom Day Band at the end of September. LHMezzo@aol.com for more info.

Alena Odrene Cawthorne is a native of Portland, Oregon, but has made her home performing, choreographing and teaching here in the Bay Area. She graduated with a BFA in Dance from California Institute of the Arts and was selected to study abroad on exchange at The London Contemporary Dance School where she studied Graham technique. She has studied ballet, modern and West African dance for over 20 years as well as Japanese, Balinese and hula dance.

She has performed her own choreography at The Herbst Theater celebrating Rhythm & Motion Dance Center's 25th Anniversary in 2005 and the east bay at The Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts as a part of the 2006 Black Choreographers Festival's Next Wave Showcase. She was an artist in residence teaching intermediate modern jazz at School of the Arts and has started teaching an absolute beginning contemporary class at ODC commons. Alena has also had the pleasure of bringing the joy of dance to all as a Rhythm & Motion dance workout instructor for the last 8 years.

Alena has a passion for sharing modern dance with people of all walks of life and especially those that may not initiate going to experience modern dance. Following that passion, she has also performed in unconventional venues such as business conference rooms, college classrooms, friends' living rooms and even night clubs.

Hypnotic melodies, ancient rhythms, soulful funk, and a voice that will melt you out of your skin, is the music of Allegra Bandy. A native of San Francisco, CA, Allegra Bandy has been performing mostly jazz, classical, Latin and soul music for the past twelve years in the San Francisco Bay Area and the California Coast, and New York City at various venues such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SFC), Yoshi's (Oakland, CA), The Black Cat (SFC), Jazz at Pearls (SFC), Nectar Stage - Pride Celebration 2005 (SFC), The Blue Note (New York), Cleopatra's Needle (NYC), The Up/Over (NYC), Zellerbach Hall (Berkeley, CA), The Starry Plough (Berkeley, CA) and Half Moon Bay Brewing Co. (Half Moon Bay, CA). She has performed with some of the best musicians in the Bay Area and New York including Jazz Sawyer, John Handy, Dee Spencer, Wayne Wallace, Marcus Shelby, Riley Bandy III, David Ewell, John Calloway, John Santos, Matt Clark, Daryl Green, Howard Wiley, Jameo Brown, and Copper Wimmin.

Some of her musical influences are Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Abby Lincoln, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, Billy Holiday, James Brown, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sheila Chandra, Ben Harper, Jimmy Hendrix, Cassandra Wilson, Duke Ellington, Claude Debussy, Hildegard Von Bingen, Poncho Sanchez, Nancy Wilson, Louis Armstrong, Julian “Cannonball” Adderly, Frederick Chopin, Giuseppe Verdi, Maria Callas and Jesse Norman, just to name a few.

Within the last few years, Allegra has been writing and performing music that challenges social stereotypes, racism, inequality and oppression, as well as music that inspires self-expression and self-preservation. In 1997, she began a long list of collaborations with Veronica Combs and Liquid Fire Productions, both performing and vocal coaching. In 2005's show she was the vocal director and vocal composer for the Liquid Fire Project, “Legacies Untied, Lust Unleashed,” a performing arts piece incorporating music, dance, and spoken word.

She recently started her own record label, ODDUA RECORDS, with her business partner, keyboardist Heather Licini, in January, 2006. ODDUA RECORDS is an independent label which supports and produces Bay Area talents of exclusively World, Jazz, Soul, Hip Hop, and Fusion musical genres. She is also the lead vocalist, song writer, and manager of the band, Oddua, which will release its new album, “Sunday Juice,” (World Soul) in April, 2006.

Allegra is also a member and a guest conductor of the International Orange Choral, an independent professional chamber choir. The choir rehearses at the San Francisco Opera House in San Francisco and performs throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Today, Allegra Bandy continues to perform as a bandleader, composer, conductor, movie/play score composer, vocalist, actress, voice over actress and music educator in Oakland , CA and is one of the most exciting voices on the scene!