"Originally from Lincoln, Nebraska, I played piano and sang in boys' choir before picking up my first pair of drumsticks in 5th grade. Late nights spent improvising in friends' parents' basements eventually revealed to me the wisdom of moving to the Bay Area, where I studied percussion with William Winant, Peter Magadini, George Marsh and lately with the Haitian master drummer Daniel Brevil. Recently relocated to Brooklyn, NY, I play drums in Beep, Naytronix, Timosaurus, Passwords (duo with Lorin Benedict), CavityFang, Young Nudist, Enablers and my solo project PIKI. I was lucky to play with Cecil Taylor, Leo Smith, and Maryanne Amacher at Mills College, where I received my MFA in percussion performance. Since then I've worked with Tuneyards, William Winant, The SF Contemporary Music Players, Aram Shelton, Ches Smith, members of Rova Saxophone Quartet, Bill McHenry, Angelica Sanchez, Phillip Greenlief, and Ava Mendoza."

"Tim Dahl is a professional electric and double bass player, vocalist, keyboardist and composer living in New York City. He is best known as the bass player of the noise-rock band Child Abuse and Lydia Lunch's Retrovirus. He also writes and performs for the jazz ensemble Pulverize The Sound.

Dahl has toured extensively throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. He has performed with many notable musicians, composers and performers including Yusef Lateef, Archie Shepp, Eugene Chadbourne, Tatsuya Yoshida, Von Freeman, Stanley Jordan, Mary Halvorson, Malcolm Mooney, Marc Ribot, Brian Chase, Hamid Drake, Elliott Sharp, Weasel Walter, Marni Nixon, Peter Evans, Kevin Shea, Mick Barr, Lydia Lunch, Jan Terri, The Bureau of Atomic Tourism, Ava Mendoza etc.

As a bass player he is notable for unique style and technical savviness. Clifford Allen of Tiny Mixtapes' wrote "Tim Dahl [...] approaches his well-worn axe with a battery of pedals and loops, combining determinate speed with murkier sonics to create a landscape not unlike a harsh, speed-freak variant on Hugh Hopper."

Dahl currently lives in Brooklyn and is an active member in the music scene there."

"Matt Mitchell is a pianist and composer interested in the intersections of various strains of acoustic, electric, composed, and improvised new music. He currently composes for and leads several ensembles featuring many of the current foremost musicians and improvisers, including Tim Berne, Kim Cass, Caroline Davis, Kate Gentile, Ben Gerstein, Sylvaine Hélary, Jon Irabagon, Travis Laplante, Ava Mendoza, Miles Okazaki, Ches Smith, Chris Speed, Tyshawn Sorey, Chris Tordini, Anna Webber, Dan Weiss, and Katie Young.

He is an anchor member of several significant creative music ensembles which integrate composed and improvised music, including Tim Berne's Snakeoil, the Dave Douglas Quintet, John Hollenbeck's Large Ensemble, Rudresh Mahanthappa's Bird Calls, Jonathan Finlayson's Sicilian Defense, Dan Weiss's Large Ensemble, Steve Coleman's Natal Eclipse, the Darius Jones Quartet, Kate Gentile's Mannequins, Mario Pavone's Blue Dialect Trio, Anna Webber's Simple Trio, Ches Smith's We All Break, Michael Attias' Spun Tree, Ohad Talmor's Grand Ensemble, and Quinsin Nachoff's Flux. He is also among the core performers of John Zorn's Bagatelles.

Musicians with whom he performs and has performed include Jon Irabagon, Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth, John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet + 1, JD Allen, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green's Apex, Rez Abbasi's Invocation, Lee Konitz, Kenny Wheeler, Ralph Alessi's Baida Quartet, Dave King's Indelicate duo, Amir ElSaffar, Marc Ducret, David Torn, Vernon Reid, Clarence Penn and Penn Station, Linda Oh, Rudy Royston, Allison Miller, Donny McCaslin, Brad Shepik, and Darcy James Argue's Secret Society.

He has taught extensively with the Brooklyn-based School for Improvisational Music, as well as at the New School, NYU, and the Siena Jazz Workshop. He is also a 2015 receipient of a Doris Duke Impact Award and a 2012 recipient of a Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage."

"Olli Hirvonen is a Finnish guitarist currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Fluent in various styles from jazz to rock to more experimental sounds, he has formed a highly unique style combining these different influences. As the winner of the 2016 Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition, Hirvonen is definitely one of the most accomplished Nordic musicians of his generation.

Born in the city of Lappeenranta, a lakeside town in southeast Finland, he began his musical studies at the age of nine at the local music institute with classical guitar and piano. After finishing high school in 2008, Hirvonen began his studies at the prestigious jazz department of Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where he got to study with Tim Hagans, Raoul Björkenheim and Teemu Viinikainen. He finished his Bachelor's degree in June 2011.

In August 2011 he relocated to New York City to pursue his Master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music, where he had a chance to study with such jazz luminaries as Rodney Jones, Dave Liebman, Jim McNeely, John Riley and Phil Markowitz. His curriculum there also included composing classical and electro-acoustic music. He graduated in the spring of 2013.

After finishing school Hirvonen started to work full time as a freelancer in the NYC scene, playing as a sideman as many as eight gigs a week in various configurations from solo to big band, while simultaneously starting to build a presence as a leader in his own right. He released his debut album Detachment in 2014, and the same year toured the US as the Performer of the Year of the Finlandia Foundation, which allowed him to perform solo and trio concerts around the country. At the same time he was starting to play regularly with the bassist Marty Kenney and the drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell, a jazz trio that eventually morphed into a avant-metal-jazz group RED REITER. After some touring and the release of an EP featuring the NYC avant-garde scene shredder Brandon Seabrook, Hirvonen decided to return back to his jazz roots and formed the group New Helsinki with the same rhythm section plus the pianist Luke Marantz.

In the summer of 2016 Hirvonen won the Montreux Jazz Electric Guitar Competition. The jury, presided over by John McLaughlin, ended up choosing him as the winner after an exceptionally high level competition. He was also nominated as the Artist of the Year of the Pori Jazz 2011 festival, which is used to be one of the highest and the most visible recognitions in the Finnish jazz scene.

Hirvonen has been performing with his own ensembles all around the world since 2008. These performances include festivals in the US, Finland and abroad, including the main stage of Pori Jazz, Kennedy Center Nordic Cool 2013 Festival, UCLA European Jazz Festival, DC Nordic Jazz 2015, Sounds NEW Contemporary Music festival in UK and Tudengijazz in Estonia, and numerous clubs in New York and around, such as the Jazz Gallery, Cornelia St. Cafe, Bar Next Door, Bitter End, Stone Pony, and Rockwood Music Hall.

In a supporting role, Hirvonen's contributions include major roles in acclaimed bandleader Brian Krock's ensembles Big Heart Machine and Liddle, in which he provides "blistering guitar blasts" as described by Downbeat Magazine. He also plays and tours in Tarun Balani's Dharma, and maintains a busy freelance schedule in New York City, being one of the first call guitarists for new and challenging jazz and contemporary music."

"Born in Los Angeles in 1956, Björkenheim has spent much of his life shuttling between New York and Helsinki, developing a bold approach to playing electric guitar and composing for big bands, symphony orchestras, films, modern dance companies and his own groups.

Having served an apprenticeship with Edward Vesala for several years, three recordings for ECM brought Björkenheim to the attention of the international community, leading to encounters with musicians such as Bill Laswell, Anthony Braxton, Reggie Workman, Henry Kaiser, and Elliot Sharp.

Björkenheim has been a soloist with the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra, the Avanti Chamber Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra, the UMO big band and the Tampere philharmonic, and has composed for them all.

Today Björkenheim's main performing energies are brought into focus through his quartet Ecstasy, Triad, Blixt with Bill Laswell and Morgan Ågren, Scorch quartet, and solo guitar.

Björkenheim has been awarded the Georgie Prize for best jazz musician of the year, the Young Finland Award, the Emma prize for best jazz recording of the year, and been nominated three times for the Nordic Music Award."

"Saxophonist Matt Nelson regularly performs in a far-reaching, motley assortment of musical projects. Described as "one of the more unpredictable virtuosos in New York's underground" by Pitchfork, and "genre-bending" by Tiny Mix Tapes, his output often lies in the gray corners beyond categorization.

Upon graduating from the Oberlin Conservatory, where he studied with Gary Bartz and Paul Cohen, Matt moved back to his native Bay Area where he became an active member of the music community. He performed regularly with several bands, among them experimental pop outfit tUnE-yArDs, with whom he recorded and toured extensively in support of their acclaimed album w h o k i l l.

In 2010 Matt relocated to Brooklyn, New York. During his time there he has performed and toured as a member of Battle Trance, GRID, Elder Ones, Premature Burial, Skeletons, and the Weasel Walter Large Ensemble. He also performs as a solo act, where he often utilizes electronics and amplified feedback along with his saxophone, as heard on his record Lower Bottoms. "

"Alto Saxophonist Nick Lyons has been called "one of the most important and original alto saxophonists on the improvisation scene" (Manhattan Users Guide, 2015) and "a young jazzer to watch" (Time Out-NY). His collaborations, based around spontaneously improvised music, have included performing with guitarist Adam Caine, pianists Connie Crothers and Carol Liebowitz. Lyons leads various trios which have included drummers Roger Mancuso and John Wagner and bassists Adam Lane, Hilliard Greene, and Ratzo Harris. Of his 2009 solo performance at The Stone (a pick in Time Out-NY), Mark Weber commented on "his ability to go inside himself and find meaningful lyric inventions, curling out line upon line," adding that the concert was "magnificent."

In 2015 Nick was a featured guest on WKCR's "Out to Lunch," performed in Berlin at clubs A-Trane and B-Flat and appeared on Cheryl Richards's CD "If Not For You" on New Artists Records.

He has been a regular performer in concert series presented by Arts for Art, the NYC fixture which produces the annual Vision Festival.

He has recently performed in groups led by tenor saxophonist Jimmy Halperin (who cited Lyons as one of his favorite young musicians in New York City, JazzTokyo.org), Connie Crothers (The Stone), pianist Harvey Diamond (Boston area), and Aaron Johnson (Dizzy's Club); and he has led groups with pianist Kazzrie Jaxen and bassist Ken Filiano, and pianist Virg Dzurinko, trumpeter Ryan Messina, and drummer Federico Ughi.

Originally from New York City and raised in Northern New Jersey, he has now lived in Brooklyn since 2005.

He was associated with Connie Crothers from 2005-2016 as a student and musical collaborator. They performed

He received a Bachelor's of Music from Oberlin Conservatory where he performed under the direction of Donald Byrd, Marcus Belgrave, Frank Foster, George Lewis, Wendell Logan, and where his teachers included Donald Walden, Gary Bartz, Paul Cohen (saxophone) and Peter Dominguez (double bass)."

"Since moving to Brooklyn from Detroit in 2017, Davy Lazar has carved out a formidable reputation as a trumpet player, composer and improvisor. Lazar's compositions are filled with intricate details that encompass a wide array of expression. Lazar has participated at the 2018 Festival of New Trumpet Music, NYC, and performed at venues such as The Jazz Gallery and Cornelia Street Cafe. Lazar is active in three ensembles: Trio with Matt Mitchell and Kate Gentile, Pluto's Lawyer(duo with Kate), and Hematorsion(duo with Anna Webber)."