Ishmael Ali is a first generation Filipino-Arab-American cellist, guitarist, improviser, composer, and electronic artist currently residing in Chicago. His work centers on exploring sound through improvisation, experimentation, collaboration, as well as a wide array of idiomatic approaches in an ever-changing, always-growing list of projects with diverse focuses and influences.Though varying drastically from group to group, a common thread in his work is the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate elements to create something new: both foreign and familiar.
Shane Simpson (https://www.shanesimpsonpiano.com) is a pianist and keyboardist of jazz and experimental music and a devoted music educator. His eccentric solo EP My Digital Wife (2021) highlights his digitally processed “cyborg piano music” alongside novel acoustic piano performances. Shane’s piano playing can also be heard on the soundtrack to popular virtual reality game I Expect You to Die 2…
Andres Abenante is a guitarist and recording engineer based in New York City. He was born in Venezuela and studied at the New England Conservatory, where he received a Masters in Jazz Performance. He is concerned with finding novel ways to play the guitar, interested especially in the physical limitations of the instrument…
Travis Bliss is a Brooklyn based saxophonist, improvisor, and composer from Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. As an avid historian of 1920’s jazz, Travis has developed a unique saxophone style, re-purposing the wide vibrato, rhythmic sensibility and timbral nuances of the 20’s, re-contextualized for 21st century musical situations….
Priya Carlberg (www.priyacarlberg.com) is a New York City and Helsinki based vocalist/composer working mainly within the free improvising, rock and jazz scenes. Her unique sound is shaped by her exposition to a variety of genres from her classical piano studies, jazz-centric childhood to her active involvement in the rock and experimental underground scenes…
Michael Shekwoaga Ode is a student of the game. Forever. Starting at a young age behind the kit, he quickly excelled and eventually landed a scholarship to the Oberlin Observatory, where he studied under the legend Billy Hart. With focus on musicality and a dedication to serving the music, Ode has created quite the name for himself in the Jazz World and created quite the resume…
Aidan Lombard, trumpet, was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Chicago. He began playing trumpet at age 10. Lombard attended the University of Miami as a Stamps Scholar and received a Bachelor of Music degree. He later received his master’s degree from the Berklee College of Music, where he performed with the Berklee Global Jazz Institute…
Georgia Heers is a vocalist and composer residing in Harlem. She recently moved to New York City from Greenville, South Carolina, to pursue her graduate studies at The Juilliard School. She aims to dedicate her life exploring the depths of music spanning across the African Diaspora. Georgia believes deeply in the healing components of music and artistic creation to cultivate community and healing.
The Wire magazine places Sara in the "tiny club of bassoon pioneers" at work in contemporary music today and the New York Times has called her "riveting, mixing textural experiments with a big, confident sound.” Originally from California now a Brooklyn resident, Sara focuses on the intersections between texture, melody and the ever-expanding notion of what the bassoon is capable of in both notated and improvised music…
Chris Ryan Williams (https://www.chriswilliamssound.com) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based between NYC and LA and most at home collaborating with contemporary improvisers and experimentalists. He has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. His work explores the dyad of ancestral trauma and power existing in all Black Americans. Investigating this has led to the creation of the modular piece I Ain’t Got No Spare (2019) which interweaves performance, homemade electronics, sound and projection; presented at Clockshop with a second installation iteration at Shatto Gallery through CultureHub. Selected recent and upcoming projects include: mehahn a theatrical meditation on grief and hereditary dissonance created alongside director Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Sans Soleil a duo with Patrick Shiroishi out on Astral Spirits (2021), On The Platform (2020) a collaboration with percussionist Booker Stardrum and animator Miranda Javid which premiered in the Netherlands at West Den Haag. Williams has received grants and/or been in residence with BANFF Centre for the Arts, Foundation of Contemporary Arts, CultureHub, Atlantic Center for the Arts, WasteLAnd, and others. Williams has collaborated with creators Eyvind Kang, Joanna Mattrey, Miriam Parker, Patrick Shiroishi, Bennie Maupin, Nicole Mitchell, Fay Victor, Wendy Eisenberg, Luke Stewart, Amanda Beech, Marjani Forte-Saunders, Eric Revis.
Hailed as “A fiery alto saxophonist and prolific composer” by the Star Tribune (Minneapolis), Aakash Mittal is sculpting a dynamic voice that mines the intersection of improvisation, composition, sonified movement, and noise. Mittal’s work explores universal designs while being rooted in both South Asian and American musical traditions…
Ananya Ganesh is a pianist, improviser, and composer from Madras. They are currently based in Brooklyn and working to decolonize sound curating and material change-making.
Originally from Costa Rica, Kenneth Jimenez is a bass player and composer currently based in New York City. He’s performed with artists Francisco Mela, Michael Attias, Tom Rainey, Satoshi Takeishi, Angelica Sanchez, Gerald Cleaver, Ingrid Laubrock, Stephen Scott, Brian Lynch, Gary Campbell, Roxana Amed, Martin Bejerano, Jose Luis de la Paz and Emilio Solla.
Sam Wenc (b. 1990; Western Massachusetts) is a composer and interdisciplinary artist working with sound, text, and video. As a multi-instrumentalist, he utilizes guitar, pedal steel guitar, vibraphone, electronics, field recordings, and found objects to compose modal, process-based works that seek to challenge and blur concepts of what constitutes “folk music”…
Bassist and composer Ben Tiberio has spent his twenties lending a crucial voice to the upper echelons of New York City’s vibrant jazz scene. Ben’s bass playing has been a fixture in the bands of his generation’s biggest torchbearers: Joel Ross, María Grand, Veronica Swift and Immanuel Wilkins to name a few. He’s also been called upon by acclaimed leaders like Ari Hoenig, Shai Maestro, Ben Wendel and Aaron Goldberg, and performed alongside an exhaustive list of notable jazz artists including Kenny Barron, Herlin Riley, Gretchen Parlato, Jazzmeia Horn, Will Vinson, Jonathan Blake, Godwin Louis, Fabian Almazan and Terrell Stafford. Ben’s emergence as a formidable bandleader and writer is now established as well, with the release of his debut “Rare Peace” in September 2021.
Tyrone Allen is a recent graduate of Berklee College of Music’s Global Jazz Masters Program, led by Artistic Director Danilo Perez. While at Berklee, he was fortunate enough to study, and preform with some of the leading jazz artist of our time. Tyrone plays in two of drummer Ralph Peterson’s bands; the Fo-tet and Aggregate Prime, and also plays in saxophonist George Garzone’s quartet occasionally. Tyrone and Tyson Jackson met at Berklee in the fall of 2017, and have been playing together ever since.
Marina Kifferstein (she/they) is a violinist and generative artist based in NYC. Equally comfortable in major international venues and DIY performance spaces, Marina enjoys a diverse career that encompasses contemporary chamber music, improvisation, composition, and classical performance…
