"Nick Dunston is a Brooklyn-based composer, bassist, and scholar. An "indispensable player on the New York avant-garde" (New York Times), his performances have also spanned a variety of venues and festivals across North America and Europe. He's performed, toured, and recorded professionally with bands led by artists such as Tyshawn Sorey, Vijay Iyer, Marc Ribot, Ches Smith, Imani Uzuri, Ingrid Laubrock, Anthony Coleman, Roman Filiu, Jonathan Finlayson, Amirtha Kidambi, Moor Mother, Dave Douglas, Matt Wilson, Tomas Fujiwara, Allison Miller, Jeff Lederer, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Darius Jones. He's spent extensive time studying with bassists Linda May Han Oh, Ben Street, Harish Raghavan, as well as with composer Missy Mazzoli.

As a composer, Dunston has written for a wide range of artists of multiple genres and disciplines. He's written for entities such as the New York Public Library of Performing Arts, the Joffrey Ballet School, The Witches, violist Joanna Mattrey, and the ESMAE Jazz and Chamber Orchestras. In 2019 he was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship by Roulette Intermedium, which supported the world premieres of The Floor is Lava! (upright bass quintet), and La Operación (double saxophone trio + soprano voice), referred to as "a work so dramatic and large that is both a response to socio-historical truth as well as a reflection on his own identity..." (I Care If You Listen). As a writer, he's made monthly contributions to Hot House Jazz Magazine from 2016-2019."

"Christopher Otto studied composition at the Eastman School of Music with Martin Bresnick, David Liptak, and Robert Morris. As a violinist, Christopher has premiered many compositions and worked with such composers as Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann, and Steve Reich. Christopher has participated as composer and performer in such contemporary music festivals as the Lucerne Festival Academy, Internationale Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Karlheinz Stockhausen Courses, Institute and Festival for Contemporary Performance at the Mannes College of Music, June in Buffalo, and Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea de Michoacán."

"Praised as a "gifted, adventuresome violinist" by the Chicago Tribune and as a "remarkable, unbelievable violinist/violist extraordinaire" by the syndicated radio program Relevant Tones, Austin Wulliman has gained critical and audience attention through his "wide technical range and interpretive daring" (New Music Box) as a soloist and chamber musician. Through in-depth collaboration with performers and composers working in a panoply of aesthetic realms, Austin searches daily for the violin's voice in today's musical world.

He first forged his reputation in Chicago with the collective Ensemble Dal Niente, serving as the group's Program Director, and winning the Kranichstein Music Prize (the grand prize for interpretation) at the Darmstadt Summer Course in 2012. With Dal Niente he has collaborated with composers such as Brian Ferneyhough and James Dillon as well as recording projects with the band Deerhoof in music of Marcos Balter, and a portrait CD of sonic adventurer Aaron Einbond. Austin has performed with Dal Niente at such venues as Harvard University and Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, Chicago. As an ensemble player, Austin has also been a guest artist with groups such as Eighth Blackbird, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNow Ensemble, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

As soloist, he has performed Kaija Saariaho's concerto "Graal Theatre" with the Aspen Festival and Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensembles, as well as collaborating with the composer on the American Premiere of her "Calices" for violin and piano. He has also premiered violin concerti by Chris Fisher-Lochhead and Kirsten Broberg, as well as collaborating closely on solo pieces by composers Augusta Read Thomas and Lee Hyla, two essential mentoring voices in his early years in Chicago.

His debut solo release, "Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight" was released in 2014. The album is a concert-length collaboration with the composer-improviser Katherine Young, using 4 scordatura and prepared violins and a viola in conversation with 8-channel electronics and a chamber orchestra. Wulliman worked closely with Young from the creation of materials to the completion of the work, including traditional notation and improvised material.

Austin was also a founding member of Spektral Quartet, serving as Ensemble in Residence (as well as Adjunct Instructor of Violin) at the University of Chicago from 2011-2016. Exploring both the classical string quartet repertoire beginning with Haydn and organizing a robust commissioning program, he also explored contemporary jazz styles with artists such as Miguel Zenon, Billy Childs, and Julien Labro (recording on Azica Records) and free improvisation (forthcoming release on Room 40 in collaboration with Australian experimental artist Chris Cobilis, produced by the legendary Steve Albini). Other recording projects with Spektral Quartet have included new works by Hans Thomalla and a wide sampling of young Chicago-based composers (on the Sono Luminus and Parlour Tapes+ labels) as well as a collection of "Mobile Miniatures" by over 40 American composers designed as cellular ringtones (such as David Lang, Nico Muhly, Shulamit Ran and George Lewis). With Spektral Quartet, he has performed on series such as the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor and BargeMusic as well as performing educational residencies at the New World Symphony and Stanford University.

Austin begins new adventures in fall of 2016 as violinist in the trail-blazing JACK Quartet. JACK's coming season will include such major events as the World Premiere of a new string quartet by G.F. Haas at Wien Modern, the World Premiere of Roger Reynolds' multimedia FLiGHT at the Park Avenue Armory, and a performance the complete Xenakis string chamber music at Wigmore Hall among many other adventures in exploring the voices of today's music.

Austin received his Bachelor's Degree summa cum laude from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Aaron Berofsky. He was an endowed scholar and teaching assistant to Blair Milton at Northwestern University, where he earned his M.Mus. Further studies took Austin to the Lucerne Festival Academy (under the baton of Pierre Boulez) and the Aspen Music Festival Fellowship in Contemporary Music, where he also studied privately with Paul Kantor."

"Called "wholesome-looking" by the New York Times, violist John Pickford Richards has gained a reputation for performing new and unusual music throughout North America and Europe. He was a member of the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, working closely with such composers as John Adams, Meredith Monk, and Steve Reich at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Holland Festival. John is now the violist of the JACK Quartet, which works closely with composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, György Kurtág, and Wolfgang Rihm with appearances at the Library of Congress, Wigmore Hall, the Venice Biennale, and the Donaueschingen Festival. John has appeared with the All-American Rejects, Silversun Pickups, and Grizzly Bear and has performed as soloist with the Pasadena Symphony, Armenian Philharmonic, Wordless Music Orchestra, Ossia New Music, and with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra performing the solo part to Luciano Berio's Chemins II under the direction of Pierre Boulez. He holds degrees from the Interlochen Arts Academy and Eastman School of Music where his primary teachers were David Holland and John Graham."

"Cellist Jay Campbell has been recognized around the world for approaching both old and new works with equally probing curiosity and emotional commitment. His performances have been described as "brilliant and insatiably inquisitive", "electrifying", and "prodigious" by the New York Times, and "gentle, poignant, and deeply moving" by the Washington Post. A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Jay performed with the New York Philharmonic in 2013 and was a curator for the New York Philharmonic's 2016 Biennale. He has soloed in major venues around the globe including Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium, Avery Fisher Hall, and Lucerne's KKL and performed recitals in Carnegie's Weill Hall, the Kennedy, Mondavi, and Krannert centers. Dedicated to introducing audiences to the music of our time, Jay has worked closely with some of the most creative minds of the 20th/21st centuries including Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, Matthias Pintscher, Kaija Saariaho, and countless others from his own generation. His close association with John Zorn has resulted in over a dozen works written for him including The Aristos, a Pulitzer Prize runner up ­­resulting in the release of Hen to Pan (Tzadik), listed in the New York Times Best Recordings of 2015. Forthcoming discs in '16/17 include George Perle's cello concerto with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot, a disc of Beethoven, Debussy, Stravinsky and Pintscher (Victor Elmaleh Collection), and a disc of works commissioned for Jay by David Fulmer (Tzadik). Also beginning in 2017, Jay will be the cellist of a new piano trio with violinist Stefan Jackiw and pianist Conrad Tao. He has been a guest at the Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, Moab, Heidelberger­Fruhling, DITTO, and Lincoln Center festivals."

"Cansu Tanrıkulu is an internationally recognized vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and an improviser based in Berlin. She collaborates with exceptional creatives and likes making shape-shifting music mostly based on topics that are hard to imagine as musical entities at first glance. She is one of the busiest young voices in the European Creative Music Scene leading/co-leading multiple international composition and performance projects.

With her elastic singing, wide stylistic vocabulary and far reaching approach to melody and text-based improvisation Tanrıkulu became an in-demand vocalist in countless collaborations, actively performing in renowned platforms of Europe and USA with her bands next to projects she's been supporting. In most of her bands she also plays synth, guitar an works with electronics as a part of her unique vocal language.

Her projects include: PILED UP by Tanrikulu (w. Lukas König, Nick Dunston & Simon Jermyn), Melez (w. Jim Black & Elias Stemeseder), MeoW (w. Jim Black, Liz Kosack & Dan Peter Sunderland) & Tanrıkulu feat. Greg Cohen & Tobias Delius, Pep Talk (w. Korhan Erel), Aşa (w. David August) and multiple other duo collaborations including clarinetist Carol McGonnell, guitarist & composer Jessica Ackerley and composer & multi-instrumentalist Nick Dunston.

- She was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1991 and moved to Berlin in 2015 after finishing her degree in cognitive psychology and a Master's Degree in Jazz Performance. In Berlin she graduated from Universität der Künste Berlin (Jazz Institut Berlin).

- Her voice was sampled to be in an audio library of pioneer experimental vocals next to Phil Minton, Audrey Chen and Lea Bertucci by Spitfire Audio in 2022.

- She had her theatre composition debut in 2021 for "Krampus" in Maxim Gorki Theater/Berlin as a co-composer with Korhan Erel.

- She made music on a scope of topics including televangelists, porn, neural structures, James Gandolfini & cats.

- Her album "Kantoj de Fermiteco" with the trio (w Greg Cohen and Tobias Delius), inspired from the tableaux art of Edward Kienholz, was released on LowSwing Records in November 2021 premiered w. Marc Ribot as guest in Jazzfest Berlin 2021 and reached out to Taiwan, USA, Japan and all over Europe with reviews including the MINT Magazin, BR Klassik. The album was presented with a 60-minute long film made by Tanrıkulu and Daniela Imhoff.

- She is a recipient of Jazz-Preis der Karl Hofer Gesellschaft for Soloist (2019), Elsa Neumann Stipendium - UdK (2021) and her projects are regularly supported by prestigious international institutions & residencies (Mutual Mentorship for Musicians 2022 founded by Jen Shyu & Sara Serpa).

- She is always expanding her scope of projects as well as working as a recording artist/performer for established international artists (incl. Nate Wooley's Seven Storey Mountain VI 2021 Anthony Braxton's Sonic Genome in 2019). Her collaborations include bands like Nick Dunston's SKULTURA, Max Andrzejewski's Hütte & Guests Playing Robert Wyatt's Music, James Banner's USINE & Stine Janvin's Chords for Calling and other outstanding creatives including Trevor Dunn, Sofia Jernberg, Matt Mitchell, Cenk Ergün, Lucy Railton, Weston Olencki, Dan Nicholls, Otis Sandsjö, Sofia Borges, Kaan Bıyıkoglu, Zeynep Toraman, Julia Hülsmann & Tomomi Adachi."

"Sofia Jernberg (born 5 July 1983, Ethiopia) is a Swedish experimental singer and composer.

Between 2002 and 2004, Jernberg studied jazz at Fridhems Folk High School. Later she studied for Per Mårtensson and Henrik Strindberg at The Gotland School of Music Composition. In 2008, she received the Royal Swedish Academy of Music's jazz award.

Jernberg is the leader (together with the pianist Cecilia Persson) of the chamber jazz group Paavo. The group received the "jazz group of the year" award from Swedish Radio.

Jernberg is also working on the contemporary classical music scene, in which she serves as both singer and composer. As a singer she has premiered pieces by composers such as Lars Bröndum. She was a soloist with Norrbotten NEO when they performed Arnold Schönberg's Pierrot Lunaire. Jernberg has composed for several established ensembles such as Duo ego and Norrbotten NEO."

"Isabel Crespo Pardo (they/them) is a NYC-based latinx vocalist, improviser-composer, and interdisciplinary artist. Their work actively entangles music, visual art, text and performance, always evolving to reflect the intra/interpersonal spaces they inhabit. Reveling in soft chaos, they embrace openness and specificity to create poetic work(s).

For Crespo, art is a place to gather, to exercise intuition, rigor and delight. They are deeply invested in building generative structures and intentionally inviting others into focused explorations. Crespo's main compositional vehicle is sinonó, a poemsong trio featuring themself (voice), Lester St. Louis (cello), Henry Fraser (bass). Their affinity for melody, metaphor and abstraction draws them into familiar yet surprising environments, crackling with aliveness. sinonó released their debut album, la espalda y su punto radiante (Subtext Recordings) on March 1, 2024. [...]"

Friede Merz is a Berlin vocalist, songwriter, pedagogue and activist.

"Maria I.J. Reich is an improvising violinist, violist, vocalist, composer and author. She grew up in Berlin, Germany, and went to Paris, Lake Constance, Peru and back to Berlin for her studies. She was supported by German Academic Scholarship Foundation and LMN Berlin e.V.. She is a graduate from the Jazz-Institut of University of the Arts Berlin and Hanns Eisler HfM Berlin and Zeppelin Universität Friedrichshafen. She gives workshops on improvisation, writes music for film productions, for chamber music and her own bands. She has been performing as a musician also in multidiscplinary contexts in many places all over Europe, South and Middle America and Africa. Maria also writes poetry and creates lyrics for her own songs."

"Anil Eraslan-cellist, composer, improviser

Born in Turkey in 1981, was formed in Ankara before settling in France and studying classical, new music, jazz and improvisation in Conservatoire de Strasbourg. After the studies, he founded his quartet 'Auditive Connection'. They got the AJC JazzMigration Selection and they performed in many festivals in France, Germany, Ireland, Turkey, Italy and Portugal. Between 2012-2015, he was the artist in residency in Illiade Concert Hall where he created the trio 'Balboura', playing the music from South-West of Turkey and also trio Skaner with Sylvain Kassap and Eric Groleau, playing his arrangements and compositions as a tribute project to the Woodstock's free jazz scene 'Creative Music Studio'.

In 2009, he started collaborating with many bands in Istanbul.

He met the singer Sumru Ağıryürüyen and they started their duo 'Sert Sessizler'. The album is released by Baykus Music in 2012.

He collaborates with his musicians friends from Istanbul such as Tolga Tüzün, Ayse Tütüncü, Cenk Erdoğan, Oğuz Büyükberber, Korhan Erel, Şevket Akıncı and Alper Maral.

In 2010, he started to play a duo with John Lindberg. Their LP record 'Juggling Kukla' is released by the Lithuanian label 'NoBusiness' in 2015.

In 2012, he was artist in residency in Berlin for the CEAAC program to develop his project on improvisation & pinhole photography. In 2014,

he was artist in residency in OMI Art Center in New York.

In 2013, he co-founded the P.I.L.S. Collective to organize and curate improvised music concerts in Strasbourg.

He has a string trio; 'Kemik' with Ruben Tenenbaum and Vincent Posty had several concerts in Europe and Turkey.

They played their own music, improvisations and they composed for the legendary movie from 1922 'Häxan'.

He recorded his first solo album 'Absorb' and it is released by A.K. Müzik in 2015 in Istanbul.

He played his solo in the festivals such as; Jazz d'Or, Météo, Superflux, Jazz à l'Etage, Baignade Interdite, Sunnyside, Contemp-Micro and

MIRR Jazz Days.

Since 2016, he's living between Berlin and Strasbourg, multiplying the projects and experiences between Strasbourg, Paris, Istanbul, Berlin and Tokyo.

He collaborates with the figures of the experimental music scene such as Axel Dörner, Tobias Delius, Tristan Honsinger, Michael Moore, Liz Kozack, Antonio Borghini, Marcello Busato, Antonis Anissegos, Ketan Bhatti, Cymin Samawati and Philippe Lemoine. He is currently playing with bands such as Trickster Orchestra in Berlin, duo with Eric Groleau in Paris, duo with Yuki Saga in Tokyo (release of the album at the end of 2018) and Trio 'H' dedicated to the French nuclear tests of the 60s in the Algerian Sahara with Grégory Dargent and Wassim Halal in Paris and the Rembetiko music band 'Sousta Politiki' in Strasbourg. He's collaborating in theater and story telling projects with Matthieu Epp and also the composer, baglama player Taner Akyol since many years.

A new quartet is born in november 2018 with Fred Frith, Clara Weil and Tom Malmendier. They are preparing the album.

Besides, he's working on photography and video projects."

"Traveling the borders of genre and style, guitarist and composer Tal Yahalom seeks to weave a wide spectrum of aesthetic elements into a distinct musical language - committed to engaging storytelling and attentive interplay.

Born in Israel and based in New York City since 2014, Yahalom has been exploring and fusing the worlds of hard bop, alternative rock, free improvisation and impressionistic classical music. Looking to expand the sonic and textural vocabulary of the guitar, he pursues unconventional, creative ways of instrumental playing - both acoustically and through a flexible array of effects. He is drawn to the elusive balance between composition and improvisation, clarity and mystery, the subtle and the intense.

Yahalom is the co-leader of KADAWA, a collective trio with bassist Almog Sharvit and drummer Ben Silashi, rooted in powerful grooves, distinct moods and adventurous improvisations. Founded in Tel Aviv in 2013 and working together dedicatedly to this day in Brooklyn, the band performs original compositions as well as new arrangements of music by the likes of David Bowie, Bjork and Nick Drake. The three create song-like instrumental pieces as commentary to various bizarre incidents, disappointing films and the weather, among other things...KADAWA performs regularly at many of NYC's finest venues, and has toured internationally across Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Holland, UK and Israel. The band released its debut album in October 2017, and since then collaborated with John Escreet, Jon Irabagon and Adam O'Farrill, while working on the production of their 2nd album, to be released in summer 2019.

Tal leads various trios as part of an ongoing performance residency at New York's 'Bar Next Door', which featured musicians such as Caroline Davis, Dan Weiss, Eivind Opsvik, John Hebert and Tom Rainey. The trios perform his original compositions alongside loose interpretations of tunes by Paul Motian and Thelonious Monk.

Additionally, he is currently developing a new solo program which integrates sampling and prerecorded material into the spontaneous live performance - unexpectedly combining multiple parts and soundscapes to maximize the element of surprise. A debut solo EP is set to be released early 2019.

Yahalom is the winner of the 2015 Detroit Jazz Festival National Guitar Competition, 3rd prize winner of the 2016 Montreux Jazz Festival International Guitar Competition, scholarship recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and the Siena Jazz Foundation (IT), and has performed at notable music events such as the 2016 Bern Jazz Festival (CH) and the 2015 Alternative Guitar Summit 'New Generation' concert in Brooklyn.

Besides his own projects, he is thankful to be a part of fruitful collaborations with Nick Dunston, Gaya Feldheim Schorr, Lisa Hoppe, Sagi Kaufman, Assaf Salhov and Gabriel Zucker, and to have studied with highly influential and inspiring teachers such as Richard Boukas, Shai Chen, Hal Galper, Tony Malaby, Bill McHenry, Andy Milne, Miles Okazaki, Gilad Ronen, Robert Sadin and Dan Weiss."