TRENT WALKER (librettist; USA) is a young scholar of Southeast Asian Buddhist music. Trained in jazz and Western classical music, he spent several years in Cambodia studying with vocal masters Prum Ut, Koet Ran, and Yan Borin while working with Cambodian Living Arts. A former Buddhist novice monk, he regularly performs and gives lectures on the Cambodian Dharma song (smot) tradition of Buddhist chant. At present he is a PhD student in Buddhist studies at the University of California, Berkeley where his research focuses on Southeast Asian Buddhist liturgies in Khmer, Lao, Pali, and Thai.