"George Cremaschi works with a variety of approaches and strategies in the areas overlapping music, sound art and noise. In thirty years as a composer and performer he has worked with a long and diverse list of distinguished musicians, dancers and choreographers, filmmakers, installation artists, and writers. Some of his current projects include the groups KRK (w/Matthew Ostrowski), Rohr Rohr (w/dieb13 and Gino Robair) and Lambs Gamble (w/Fritz Welch and Eric Boros). He is also the founder (w/Petr Vrba) and director of Pražský Improvizační Orchestr (PIO), a 15-member group working with conducted and free improvisation and graphic scores.

As an interpreter, he has performed works by many composers including Adamčiak, Andriessen, Braxton, Cage, Cardew, Feldman, Mingus, Oliveros, Penderecki, Tenney, Xenakis, etc and has appeared on over 40 recordings on Apestaartje, Beak Doctor, Black Saint, Emanem, Evander, Evolving Ear, Leo, Music & Arts, Nine Winds, Rastascan and other labels. Born in New York where he studied music and composition, he later lived for many years in California and currently lives in Prague, Czech Republic."

"Carla Kihlstedt (born 1971) is an American composer, violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and currently working from a home studio on Cape Cod.

She is a founding member of Tin Hat Trio (1997, renamed Tin Hat), Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Book of Knots, Causing a Tiger and Rabbit Rabbit. Other musical projects include 2 Foot Yard, Charming Hostess and Minamo (Carla Kihlstedt & Satoko Fujii). She is a recognized classical composer who has performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), has worked occasionally on projects with Tom Waits and Fred Frith, and recorded numerous albums as a guest or session musician. Kihlstedt has studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

In February 2012 she founded Rabbit Rabbit with her husband (and former Sleepytime Gorilla Museum drummer) Matthias Bossi. Rabbit Rabbit released their debut album, Rabbit Rabbit Radio - Vol. 1 in 2013. The band revolves around a song-a-month subscription website called Rabbit Rabbit Radio."

"Marika Hughes is a cellist, singer, composer, song-writer and teacher. A native of NYC, Marika was exposed to a varied creative life from an early age. Her parents owned a jazz club on the Upper West Side and she was fortunate to enjoy an exciting classical music life as the granddaughter of the great cellist, Emanuel Feuermann. She was a regular on Sesame Street, was a member of New York Youth Symphony, spent summers at the chamber music camp, Greenwood, was a student at festivals in Europe and busked in NYC with her high-school string quartet. Marika received her B.A. from Barnard College in political science and cello performance at the Juilliard School, where she studied with Ardyth Alton.

Shortly after completing her studies, Marika left NYC and moved to San Francisco, CA. It is there that she began to explore a musical life outside of the western classical tradition of her childhood training. In addition to playing in the Berkeley and Santa Rosa Symphonies, she joined Quartet San Francisco and enjoyed performing and recording for a host of artists and films including, Tom Waits, Mr. Bungle, Xiu Xiu, Santana and Finding Nemo.

Marika joined Carla Kihlstedt and Shahzad Ismaily in 2 Foot Yard. The band released two CDs; 2 Foot Yard (Tzadik, 2005) and Borrowed Arms (Yard Work, 2008). She founded the band Red Pocket with Jewlia Eisenberg and they released their CD, Thick, on Tzadik's Oracle Series. She also joined Jewlia's a cappella trio, Charming Hostess. She is a featured singer on that band's release, Sarajevo Blues (Tzadik 2005). Marika began her compositional work here, writing string arrangements and songs for all of these groups.

In 2006, Marika moved back to NYC. She has enjoyed playing with many local musicians she has long admired as well as some superstars. She has performed and/or recorded with D'Angelo, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Sean Lennon, Valerie June, David Byrne, Lou Reed, Ani DiFranco, Imani Uzuri, Charlie Burnham, Anthony Braxton, Toshi Reagon, Adele, Aruan Ortiz, Nasheet Waits and Henry Threadgill. She has appeared on The David Letterman Show, The Jimmy Fallon Late Night Show as well as Saturday Night Live.

Upon returning to NYC, Marika began to write for her own groups. She has written songs steeped in instrumental composition and lyrical content. In the last few years she has enjoyed writing entirely instrumental tunes for her new string quartet of cello, upright bass, violin and acoustic guitar (with Rashaan Carter, Charlie Burnham and Marvin Sewell respectively). She has released three records of original music under her own name; Afterlife Music Radio (2011) with pieces written specifically for her solo cello by artists including Nasheet Waits, Carla Kihlstedt and Eyvind Kang, The Simplest Thing (2011) an album of original songs and most recently, New York Nostalgia (2016) with her band, Bottom Heavy.

Marika has worked with Triad Trust, a Boston based NGO for 10 years. The ImprovED program which Marika helped to create (in rural South Africa and Haiti) utilizes a unique improvisation technique that provides students a stage to rehearse critical moments in their young lives. Thru original song and dramatic sketches, the local ImprovED troupe teaches ideas and practices related to self care and HIV?/AIDS testing/prevention/ treatment in the communities where they live.

In addition to her cello duties, Marika enjoyed being a guest host for Terrance McKnight's radio show, All Ears on WQXR, she has been a featured storyteller on The Moth and was a cast member of Stew's play, Family Album produced by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Marika lives in Brooklyn, NY."

"I currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I grew up in Long Beach CA. Mother was an artist, father a labor organizer.

On heavy rotation at home as a youngster was Dave Brubeck, Ramsey Lewis, Paul Desmond, the Beatles and Rolling stones..

As a teenager I was listening to alot of speed metal, punk rock, heavy metal and jazz.

I decided to dedicate my life to music after hearing John Coltrane. I hoped to one day give others the feeling I felt when hearing his music, perhaps an impossible goal, but a journey worth making as far as I can tell.

I earned a BA in music at Cal State Long Beach with an emphasis on classical saxophone performance where I had the pleasure of studying with Leo Potts, John Prince and many other great musicians.

I then earned an MFA at California Institute of the Arts in Jazz performance where I studied with many masters including Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Novros, Larry Koonse, Joe Labarbera, Charlie Haden and Pedro Eustache. At Cal Arts I also had the fortune to study music from Bali, Java, Ghana, and India. I have more recently studied and performed Japanese Gagaku music as well.

Since graduating from Cal Arts, I have had the pleasure of making music with a wide variety of amazing musicians including Wadada Leo Smith, Peter Kowald, John Butcher, Donald Robinson, Marco Eneidi, Weasel Walter, Adam Lane, Aphrodesia, Lagos-Roots, Mykal Rose, The Rova Saxophone Quartet, William Hooker and many others. I lead my own groups Go-Go-Fightmaster, electro-magnetic trans-personal orchestra and I currently perform in the Oakland Active Orchestra , Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & Switch, Vijay Anderson Quartet, Guerilla Hi-Fi Black Water Gold, and Touch and Go Sextet I have been very fortunate to have performed in many great clubs and festivals across the U.S. and abroad including recent appearances at the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Novarra Jazz Festival in Italy. I have composed for large ensembles, chamber groups, plays, films, dance performances, wind quintet, saxophone quartets and trios as well as pieces for solo instruments."

"Peter Valsamis is a Los Angeles-based drummer/percussionist/composer/sound designer. His unique approach to drumming synthesizes a variety of musical styles into his own unique sound. He has performed with Trance Mission, Emeline Michel, Martine St. Clair, Mitsou, Cecil Taylor, Don Preston, Walter Aziz, Dana Reason, Steve Lacy, and many others. Peter is also an accomplished composer and sound designer, working on titles such as Transformers, Star Trek, Battleship, The Price is Right, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune. Peter received his M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College."

"Born in San Diego, CA and raised in Sacramento, Ches Smith came up in a scene of punks and metal musicians who were listening to and experimenting with jazz and free improvisation. He studied philosophy at the University of Oregon before relocating to the San Francisco Bay area in 1995. After a few years of playing with obscure bands and intensive study with drummer / educator Peter Magadini, he enrolled in the graduate program at Mills College in Oakland at the suggestion of percussionist William Winant. There he studied percussion, improvisation, and composition with Winant, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Curran. One of Winant's first "assignments" for Ches was to sub in his touring gig at the time, Mr. Bungle (here he met bassist / composer Trevor Dunn who would later hire him for the second incarnation of his Trio-Convulsant). During his time at Mills, Ches co-founded two bands: Theory of Ruin (with Fudgetunnel / Nailbomb frontman Alex Newport), and Good for Cows (w/ Nels Cline Singers' Devin Hoff). He currently performs and records with Xiu Xiu, and Secret Chiefs 3. He has also performed with Ben Goldberg, Annie Gosfield, Wadada Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Fred Frith, and Trevor Dunn. In addition to Ceramic Dog, he also leads his two of his own projects, Congs for Brums and These Arches. He currently spends his time between Los Angeles, San Francisco and Brooklyn."

"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."

"Since settling in San Francisco in 1997, Canada-born trumpeter/improviser/composer/songwriter Darren Johnston has collaborated and recorded with an extremely diverse cross-section of artists. His interests rotate around composing instrumental music, writing songs, and performing all styles of jazz, experimental and purely improvised music, as well as traditional music of the Balkans, Greece, and Macedonia.

He has performed and/or recorded with luminaries such as ROVA Sax Quartet, Fred Frith, Myra Melford, Ben Goldberg, Matt Wilson, Mark Dresser, Marshall Allen, and many others.

As a composer, he has written for jazz and/or non-idiomatic improvising groups, big bands, string quartet, and even a multi-generational choir, with songs based on a collection of immigrant letters. He has written for dance companies such as Amy SeiwertÕs Imagery, Deborah Slater, Axis Dance, Robert MosesÕ Kin, Liss Fain, and others, as well as for dance films."

"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."

"Ph.D. and M.A. in Composition, UC Berkeley; B.A. in Music, Naropa University. Two-time Meet the Composer award recipient; Eisner Prize for Music winner; Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (UC Berkeley); Interaktion Festival finalist (Berlin), drummer and composer JASON LEVIS has led and been a collaborator in numerous jazz, improvised music, and chamber ensembles in the San Francisco Bay Area and Berlin, Germany. These include Joseph's Bones; duo B.; Junior Reggae; the Lost Shapes; the Berlin Boom Orchestra; the Nathan Clevenger Group, and many more. Through these avenues he has been a part of over two-dozen record releases, bridging a multitude of musical styles. He is an active performer on the drum set in both art and popular music settings and has extensive national and international performance experience. He is currently a professor at the California Jazz Conservatory, as well as gives private lessons throughout the bay area."