Alan Williams is a Bay Area trombonist, vocalist and improviser active in creative jazz, experimental music and interdisciplinary performance. Known for his warm tone and expressive flexibility, he moves fluidly between composed material and open improvisation, often integrating voice into his brass-centered practice.

"Beth Custer is an Emmy Award winning, San Francisco based composer, performer, recording artist, bandleader, and the proprietor of BC Records. She has numerous recordings out with ensembles The Beth Custer Ensemble, Eighty Mile Beach, Clarinet Thing, Trance Mission and Club Foot Orchestra. She performs Bb, alto, bass, contrabass clarinets, flute, tenor sax, voice, piano, percussion, and toys.

Beth has composed for the contemporary chamber ensembles Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Zeitgeist, Earplay, Turtle Island and Kronos String Quartets; for the theatre productions of Campo Santo Theatre, Berkeley and San Diego Repertory Theatres, Magic Theatre, California Shakespeare, Overtone Industries, and Cornerstone Theatre; for the dance troupes AXIS Dance Company, Joe Goode Performance Group, ROCO Dance, Flyaway Productions, Ledoh, Harupin Ha, and Osseus Labyrinth; for the films of William Farley, Judith Ehrlich, Brad Coley, Cathy Lee Crane, Melinda Stone, George Spies, Koohan Paik, KQED's Independent View and Deep Look, and for the silent films of Club Foot Orchestra including for a season of CBS/Film Roman's Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat.

Beth created four musicals with writer Octavio Solis produced by Campo Santo Theatre and Overtone Industries. Her collaborative scores with inventor and MacArthur Fellow Trimpin led her to compose Vinculum Symphony, a site-specific, large-scale work that unites chamber musicians with experimental instrument builders.

Her numerous awards include artist residencies at Blue Mountain Center, Montalvo Arts Center, Civitella Ranieri Center, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Wild Acres. Other awards include a McKnight Fellowship in Minneapolis, University of Wyoming residency, Meet The Composer New Residency award, American Composers Forum Commissioning grants, San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist grants, Zellerbach Family Fund awards, Gerbode award, Argosy Foundation recording grant, and an Aaron Copland Recording Fund award for her silent film score My Grandmother."

Keith Lawrence is a violist and multidisciplinary artist working across jazz, contemporary chamber music and improvised forms. His playing combines classical training with exploratory string textures, contributing both lyrical lines and timbral nuance in collaborative settings.

"David James is a San Francisco-born composer, guitarist, vocalist and bandleader who draws from his years of experience in hip-hop, film and theater scores, afrobeat, and more, bringing these influences to bear in his " ... thoughtfully composed, boundary-blurring new music." (All About Jazz)

James's compositions join a sometimes sing-song-y melodicism to his explorations of rhythms and textures from across the African diaspora and beyond. This can be heard in the political instrumentals and songs of his long-running rhythm-horns-and-strings sextet GPS, which features clarinet, trombone, viola, electric guitar, acoustic bass, and drums.

After a youth of ambient/noise and rock rock groups, became recording and touring guitarist of Spearhead. Later, while beginning to develop his own compositional voice, he toured and recorded as a member of the Coup, the Beth Custer Ensemble and Afrofunk Experience. He has performed chamber jazz at the community-level salon Red Poppy Art House (SF); live scores to silent films in the screening rooms of MoMA and SFMOMA, as well as in Prague, Tbilisi, and Cork (Ireland); and hip-hop at the Glastonbury Festival (UK) and the Fillmore (San Francisco).

September 2023 brought the premiere of "Mission Rebel No. 1: Looking for Rev. Jesse James", a musical contemplation of David James's father, a San Francisco activist. The 12-part song cycle for GPS and additional vocalists was performed at the historic BRAVA Theater in San Francisco's Mission District.

Along with the mostly acoustic GPS, David James currently co-leads the electric sextet Russian Telegraph and performs with Jordan Glenn's BEAK, the Moe Staiano Ensemble, and Richard Marriott's band."

"Lisa Mezzacappa is a San Francisco Bay Area-based bassist, bandleader, composer, curator and producer. An active collaborator in the Bay Area music community for more than a dozen years, she leads her own groups Bait & Switch, the Interlopers, Nightshade, Eartheaters and the Lisa Mezzacappa Trio, and co-leads the ensembles BODABODA, duo B., Cylinder, the Mezzacappa-Phillips Duo, and the Caribbean folk band Les Gwan Jupons. Lisa has released her music on the Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo, NotTwo, Evander, Odd Shaped Case and Edgetone record labels, and has recorded as a sideperson for the Tzadik, Kadima and Porto Franco labels. She collaborates frequently on cross-disciplinary projects in sound installation, film/video, sculpture and public music/art.

As curator, she programs the annual JazzPOP concert seres at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, now in its 10th year; and a live cinema series, Mission Eye and Ear, at Artists' Television Access. She founded the Monday Makeout creative music series in the Mission District of San Francisco, and programs the Best Coast Jazz Composers series as a member of the artistic committee San Francisco's Center for New Music. In 2012 she started the "Festival-of-Us," a semi-annual festival celebrating Bay Area creative jazz and improvised music. Recent projects include an avant-folk string band, the Interlopers; Eartheaters, a trio with Brooklyn vocalist Fay Victor; and BODABODA, a cross-planetary collaboration with Venice reed player/composer Piero Bittolo Bon. In fall 2015 she premieres Glorious Ravage, a multi-media song cycle for large ensemble with commissioned films, inspired by the writings of Victorian lady adventurers.

Lisa has been artist-in-residence at Djerassi Resident Artists Program (2008, 2013), Headlands Center for the Arts (2006, 2015), the Banff International Jazz Workshop (2000), and the Painted Bride Arts Center (2000). She holds an MA in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley (2003), and a BA in music from the University of Virginia (1997). She has performed at countless Bay Area venues including Intersection for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, Yoshi's, the Jazzschool, and the de Young Museum, San Francisco; as well as the Earshot Jazz Festival, Seattle; the Montreal Jazz Festival and Victoriaville Festival de Musique Actuelle, Canada; the Monterey Jazz Festival, CA; Moers Festival, Germany; and Novara Jazz Festival, Italy.

Lisa has been awarded grants by the MAP Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, American Composers Forum, the City of Oakland, Meet the Composer and Southern Exposure/the Andy Warhol Foundation. She performs as a sideperson in original jazz, improv and chamber ensembles led by estemmed bandleaders and West Coast musical visionaries, like Phillip Greenlief, Aaron Novik, Beth Custer, Randy McKean, Marco Eneidi, Vijay Anderson, Aaron Bennett, Myles Boisen, Steve Adams, Graham Connah, Jon Raskin, Cory Wright and Ross Hammond, and collaborates often with Darren Johnston, Vinny Golia, Katy Stephan, Aram Shelton, Kjell Nordeson, Murray Campbell, Jason Levis, Dina Maccabee, Noah Phillips, Rob Ewing, Kasey Knudsen, Myles Boisen, Sam Ospovat, John Hanes, and many many others."

John Hanes is a drummer active in the Bay Area's creative music community, known for his responsive ensemble playing and dynamic range. His work spans jazz, experimental and interdisciplinary projects, emphasizing rhythmic clarity alongside textural sensitivity.

Allegra Bandy is a vocalist and interdisciplinary performer whose work engages contemporary composition, improvisation and socially conscious themes. She brings a flexible vocal approach that ranges from lyrical delivery to extended techniques, often collaborating in ensemble and multimedia contexts.

Solas Burke-Lalgee is a vocalist and creative musician participating in Bay Area experimental and community-rooted performance projects. Their work emphasizes collective expression, narrative engagement and the integration of voice within ensemble improvisation.