Annie Chen is a vocalist originally from Beijing, China, based in New York since 2013. Her music draws on many different stylistic vocabularies ranging from jazz and blues to East Asian and Middle Eastern music, with a goal of creating vivid imagery and storytelling through music. While she likes to explore different instrumentations and orchestrations in her various projects, her practice is based on long-term collaborative relationships with performers, whose ability to express their own unique improvisational voices is central to her work. Annie Chen Guardians is a project born in 2022, a septet of jazz and improvised music featuring some of New York's finest musicians. The band is an explosive combination of nationalities and cultural backgrounds (Chinese, Brazilian, Japanese, Swiss, French, American and Malaysian) brought together with a focus on orchestration, sound texture, energy and improvisation. With a thematic and theatrical approach, the band explores the drama of modern society through a multiethnic lens.