"Daniel Carter (born December 28, 1945, in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania) is an American experimental saxophone, flute, clarinet, and trumpet player active mainly in New York City since the early 1970s.

Carter is a prolific performer and has recorded or performed with William Parker, Federico Ughi, DJ Logic, Thurston Moore, Yo La Tengo, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Sonic Youth, scientist/musician Matthew Putman, Cooper-Moore, Sam Rivers, David S. Ware, Yoko Ono, Living Colour, Medensky Martin and Wood and Jaco Pastorius among others. He is a member of the cooperative free jazz groups TEST and Other Dimensions In Music."

"Luisa Muhr is a multi-lingual, multi- and interdisciplinary performer, improvisor, director, installation artist, sound artist, and theater maker, originally from Vienna (Austria), lives and works in New York, and is at home in the experimental/avant-garde.

As a performer she specializes in performance, vocal, movement, installation, sound, and theater arts. Luisa is also the creator and curator of New York's leading interdisciplinary womxn/non-binary artists series Women Between Arts at The New School (College of Performing Arts) and the co-founder/artistic director of the performing arts company FENGARI Works.

Her primary focus is composing and improvising with voice, sound, and movement in space, often working with musicians in a theatrical, ritualesque setting, exploring the relationship between sonic and physical movement (what she refers to as "field work").

Luisa was an Artist in Residence at Pioneer Works (April 2019), the Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Estate with Arturo O'Farrill (June 2019), and has been a commissioned artist by Roulette Intermedium and the Austrian Cultural Forum NY.

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ABOUT THE WORK, COLLABORATIONS & MORE

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Luisa's performance background varies from experimental/avant-garde, movement-based, classical, Yiddish, puppet, devised, and music theater, to performance, vocal, sound, and installation art. She has worked with artists such as Iva Bittová, Claire Chase, Ashley Fure, Kenneth Goldsmith, Sarah Hennies, Shelley Hirsch, Frank London, Arturo O'Farrill, Jenny Romaine, Peter Schumann, Sxip Shirey, John Zorn, and many more.

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Venues she performed at include: Lincoln Center, Pioneer Works, Rockefeller Center, The Kitchen, National Sawdust, Roulette Intermedium, The Jewish Museum, Queens Museum, Museum of the Moving Image, The Stone, Park Avenue Armory, Judson Memorial Church, The Austrian Cultural Forum, The New School, Queenslab, the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, and various other experimental venues in NYC and Brooklyn. During the COVID-19 pandemic Luisa has been actively performing online and has been commissioned by various venues and institutions, such as Roulette Intermedium, Collar Works art gallery, Austrian Cultural Forum NY/Undercurrent NYC art gallery, to create new work.

As part of the band PlayField, with Daniel Carter (Horns and Reeds), Luisa Muhr (Voice), Ayumi Ishito (Sax), Eric Plaks (Nord piano), Aron Namenwirth (Guitar), Yutaka Takahashi (Guitar), Zach Swanson (Bass), Jon Panikkar (Drums), their debut album "Vol. 1: Sonar", the first out of a trilogy, will be released by label 577 Records on March 20, 2021.

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"Ayumi Ishito was born and raised in Ishikawa, Japan. At the age of 19, she began playing tenor saxophone in a college big band at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.

In 2007, Ayumi received a scholarship to attend Berkee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She spent three years there studying performance and composition. At Berklee, she studied with George Garzone, Hal Crook, and Frank Tiberi.

After graduating from Berklee, Ayumi moved to New York in 2010. Currently, Ayumi is a regular member of The Jazz Thieves, GADADU, The Eighty-pound Pug, Platypus Revenge and Big Squid performing and recording for numerous projects. As a member of the Jazz Thieves, she performed at renowned music festivals around east coast such as Burlington Discover Jazz Festival (VT '18), River Jazz Festival (PA '17, '19), and Sowebo Arts and Music Festival (MD '17).

In 2017, Ayumi joined Marc Edwards & Slipstream Time Travel led by Marc Edwards, former drummer of the Cecil Taylor's band. She has also worked with several renowned musicians and artists in New York's creative music scene such as Daniel Carter, Dave Sewelson, Elliott Levin and Steve Dalachinsky.

Ayumi has been leading her own group since 2011. She released two albums, "View From A Little Cave" (2016) and "Midnite Cinema" (2019), that consist of all her original compositions. The albums are receiving a lot of attention from home and abroad and have been featured on national and international music blogs including Jazz Trail, Bandcamp Daily, Divide and Conquer, The Family Review, Left Bank Magazine, Odd Creative, and Disk Union, just to name a few. In December 2019, Ayumi was invited to WFMU-FM's radio program "Give the Drummer Radio" as a guest musician and talked about her music and performed live with the host saxophonist Dave Sewelson."

"Pianist Eric Plaks was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and attended Harvard College. A student of the entire history of jazz, from the most traditional forms to the most modern styles of creative improvisation, Eric began his performing and recording career when he moved to Harlem in 1996. He has appeared in various formats around New York City and the wider world, including gigs and steady engagements in venues such as Small's, Joe's Pub, Little Branch, ShapeShifter Lab, Mirror Tea House, Silvana, The Shrine, Pete's Candy Store, Bushwick Public House, The I-Beam, ABC No Rio, The Firehouse Space, and Cornelia Street Cafe, as well as appearances in London, Paris, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. In 2010, after a successful decade-and-a-half of performing and recording with small groups, Eric and his long-time associate, drummer Jon Panikkar, created the 15-piece Shrine Big Band, one of the city's top collectives of improvisers, composers, and arrangers. This ensemble appears monthly as the house band at The Shrine in Harlem, and was recently hailed in The New York City Jazz Record as a "dynamic and pleasing blast to the ear" (CD Review of The Shrine Big Band, Swamp Music, by Donald Elfman, October 2015). In recent years, Eric has also performed frequently with small improvising groups, often in duo or trio format, as he continues to explore the sonic possibilities of the piano and the outer limits of improvised music."

"Aron Namenwirth is a guitarist based in Brooklyn. Groups include a quartet with Eric Plaks, Sean Conly, and John Panikkar They have a recent release called Hurricane out on Culture of Waste Records. He is also playing with a trio that includes Zach Swanson on bass and Joe Hertenstein on drums. They have a new album out on gaucimusic and are joined by Daniel Carter called Where Truth lies."

Yutaka Takahashi is a NY-based guitarist known for his work with pianist Erik Plaks.

"Zachary Swanson is a versatile bassist performing music in an array of styles, with focus on improvised, experimental, original and folk music. Using gut strings and a personalized technique, Zachary has developed a conception of the double bass that heightens the integrity of various musical environments; from playing adventurous improvised music to backing singer-songwriters.

In the summer of 2018, Swanson toured Italy and appeared at the Sile Jazz Festival with guitarist Nico Soffiato for their duo project, Dogwood, promoting their album 'Hecate's Hounds' on the Italian label nusica.org. Dogwood features an introspective approach to composition and improvised music with focus on exploring space and timbre. In March of 2019, the band Harbinger with Jarvis Earnshaw and Daniel Carter released their self-titled debut album. The music occupies a unique realm, with Earnshaw on sitar, tape-delay, and voice, Carter on a rotating cast of wind instruments, and Swanson on double bass. He has also appeared on Gaucimusic records as part of the 'Live At The Bushwick Series' releases. In March of 2020, 577 Records will be releasing 'Astroturf Noise', a trio with Sam Day Harmet on mandolin and Sana Nagano on violin. This group explores the intersection between free improvisation and bluegrass. In January of 2020, The Nick Horner Family self-released the album 'Sans Sebastienne' with Swanson on electric bass.

Zachary is currently working on a forthcoming duo album with violinist Tom Swafford, and an improvised trio record with saxophonist Derrick Michaels and drummer Dalius Naujo, among being active in many other projects in the greater New York area.

Swanson has appeared on albums released by 577 Records (Astroturf Noise, Federico Ughi Quartet's Heart Talk and The Listening Group), pfMentum (Sanctuary by Trumpets and Basses), Gaucimusic (Live At The Bushwick Series with Aron Namenwirth, Daniel Carter and Joe Hertenstein) and nusica.org (Dogwood's Hecate's Hounds). As an independent artist, he has been a part of many self-released albums over the years including Ghost Narratives, a duo with Tomchess, Harbinger (2019), Chamber Music (2016), a duo release with guitarist Stelios Mihas, Antenna (2015), the Movement Trio's Back of the Room (2012) among others.17883923_275106216282135_1898542423907972316_n-1Photo by Douglas Lowinger

Zachary has performed at series' and festivals such as the Red Hook Jazz Festival with Tomchess' Moonship Quartet, the Inside Out music series at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, the 577 Forward Festival, AE Randolph Presents, and is a regular performer at the Bushwick Improvised Music Series. He has also appeared at the Great Eastern Music Festival in Montauk, Falcon Ridge, Take me to the River, and Charm City Folk and Bluegrass Festival backing folk and Americana artists such as Letitia VanSant, He-Bird She-Bird, Greg Cornell, and Pluck & Rail.

As an educator, Zachary has visited McDaniel College and Towson University to give a improvisation workshops with Derrick Michaels, Stelios Mihas and Jon Seligman. He has also given performances and hosted Q&A's at Marlboro College in duo with vocalist Amanda Bloom, a duo with Rodney "Godfather Don" Champman, and again with the ensemble No Land Bands, a project that combines jazz and Syrian music to promote awareness of the Syrian refugee crisis.

Zachary began his bass studies at the age of 6 in his home state of Massachusetts, and is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University. He can be seen performing regularly throughout New York City and beyond."

Jon Panikkar is a NY jazz drummer know for the group Eric Plaks Quintet.