"Scott Amendola (born February 6, 1969) is an American drummer from the San Francisco Bay Area. His styles include jazz, blues, groove, rock and new music. He is considered central to the Bay Area music scene.

Amendola was originally from New Jersey and studied at Berklee School of Music in Boston. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area he came to popularity in the 1990s as a member of T.J. Kirk with Charlie Hunter, Will Bernard and John Schott. Their second album received a Grammy Award nomination. He has led his own bands and trios which have included Nels Cline, Jenny Scheinman, Jeff Parker and John Shifflett as well as Ben Goldberg and Devin Hoff. Often favoring guitarists he has toured with Bill Frisell and Kelly Joe Phelps and recorded with Pat Martino, Jim Campilongo, G.E. Stinson, Nels Cline and Tony Furtado. He is an original member of the Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core. He has been a session percussionist for Noe Venable, Carla Bozulich and Odessa Chen.

In 2011 Amendola will have his new orchestral work performed in conjunction with the Oakland East Bay Symphony as one the symphony's New Visions/New Vistas premieres. Amendola will be joined by Nels Cline and Trevor Dunn."

"Ben Goldberg is an American clarinet player and composer. Born August 8, 1959 (age 58) in Denver, Colorado.

He grew up in Denver, Colorado. Goldberg grew up playing clarinet, playing in school bands, and has an undergraduate music degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Master of Arts in composition from Mills College. He was a pupil of clarinetist Rosario Mazzeo, and studied with Steve Lacy and Joe Lovano. Interested in the intersection between jazz (the music) and clarinet (the instrument), Goldberg started exploring the rich clarinet traditions found in klezmer music.

After a stint with the Bay Area band The Klezmorim, he branched out and created his own band, the New Klezmer Trio, named after the New Tango Quintet,[citation needed] with Dan Seamans and Kenny Wollesen. This was the first of many ensembles that Goldberg would lead and/or participate in, primarily in and around the Bay Area. The New Klezmer Trio has produced three albums and the free improvisation on "Masks and Faces" was described as having "kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music." Goldberg's musicality is inspiring, to audiences and to his fellow musicians; "Sometimes the most influential musicians are the ones who don't call much attention to themselves. Take Berkeley clarinetist Ben Goldberg, who for the past two decades has quietly inspired some of the Bay Area's most creative musicians."

In addition to composing for and playing in the Ben Goldberg Quintet, he has performed in the groups Tin Hat, Plays Monk, Myra Melford's Be Bread, Nels Cline's New Monastery, Afterlife Music Radio, and Go Home. The eleven-piece Ben Goldberg's Brainchild performs his on-the-spot compositions.

Goldberg has played with Bill Frisell, Don Byron, Ellery Eskelin, Jenny Scheinman, John Zorn, Mark Dresser, Mark Feldman, Miya Masaoka, Roswell Rudd, Steven Bernstein, Vijay Iyer, Wayne Horvitz, and Zeena Parkins.

Goldberg is also the founder of the music label BAG Production.

Recently Goldberg has branched out into songwriting. His "Orphic Machine" project, largely commissioned by Chamber Music America, premiered at the Jewish Music Festival in March 2012 and was also performed in Los Angeles, California. The song-cycle is based on the writings of Allen Grossman and, for one critic, "the piece's thoughtful, sprawling compositions course through such a variety of styles and open-ended impulses that it would be tempting to dub this a new kind of world music." Regarding songwriting and composing, in a 2010 profile piece in All About Jazz, Goldberg said, "I don't just want to give people something that they can appreciate or understand, or that makes them think, or something like that. I used to kind of feel that that's what I wanted to do, but that's not what I want anymore. I want to give people something that they can love." "

"Devin Hoff is a double-bassist, bass guitarist, guitarist and songwriter. He began playing music seriously at age 15, and has continued to do so ever since, foregoing college as he was already working at his chosen profession. Torn between the visceral energies of punk and metal and the spiritual freedom of free jazz in his youth, he has spent the last 20-plus years exploring the resonance and dissonance of these musical tendencies. Devin has played and recorded with many musicians and bands over the years, including Carla Bozulich, Nels Cline, Vijay Iyer, Carla Kihlstedt, Joshua Redman, Kira Roessler, Mike Watt, and Xiu Xiu. His main creative vehicles of the past decade or so are the "crust jazz" bass/drums duo Good For Cows (with drummer Ches Smith) and his ongoing solo bass project, The Devin Hoff Platform. He also plays under a pseudonym in various crust punk and metal projects."