Sam Mickens, aka Ecstatic Showband & Revue, is an American rock guitarist and vocalists, known for the groups Parenthetical Girls, The Dead Science, and Xiu Xiu.

"Mike Pride: Percussionist • Composer • Vocalist • Visual Artist

Born and raised in Southern Maine, but based out of New York City since 2000, Mike Pride currently performs solo, leads modern-jazz quartet From Bacteria To Boys, the 7-drummer installation-band Drummer's Corpse, and the MDC piano trio I Hate Work. He also co-leads the ensembles Pulverize The Sound (w/ Peter Evans and Tim Dahl), and Period (w/ Charlie Looker and Chuck Bettis). Pride is renowned for his ability to excel in a wide range of genres and ensembles. He has worked with everyone from improvised music icon Anthony Braxton to punk legends Millions Of Dead Cops, toured extensively on four continents, appeared on more than 100 recordings, and is currently touring the world opening for comedian Amy Schumer with Jason Stein's Locksmith Isidore.

A short list of his collaborators includes Mick Barr, Tim Berne, Boredoms, Eugene Chadbourne, Nels Cline, Andrew D'Angelo, Trevor Dunn, Dynamite Club, Peter Evans, Charles Gayle, Milford Graves, Drew Gress, Mary Halvorson, Curtis Hasselbring, Nona Hendryx, Jon Irabagon, Brad Jones, Haino Keiji, Kirk Knuffke, George Lewis, Frank Lowe, Bill McHenry, Tony Malaby, Sam Mickens, Butch Morris, Joe Morris, William Parker, Marc Ribot, Matana Roberts, Herb Robertson, Jamie Saft, Sonny Simmons, Craig Wedren, Nate Wooley, Otomo Yoshihide and John Zorn.

Pride's versatility doesn't end with his eclectic résumé as a popular sideman and leader/co-leader of many active ensembles spanning the worlds of modern-jazz, avant-rock, noise and doom metal improv. He is also a busy educator and clinician, a soundtrack composer for TV shows, video games, podcasts, independent films, and websites, and an experienced and exhibited visual artist.

Mike proudly uses Yamaha Drums & hardware, Vic Firth striking implements, and Humes & Berg Cases."

"Shahzad Ismaily was born to Pakistani immigrant parents and grew up in a wholly bicultural household. While he holds a masters degree in biochemistry from Arizona State University, he is a largely self-taught composer and musician, having mastered the electric and double bass, guitar, banjo, accordion, flute, drums, various percussion instruments and various analog synthesizers and drum machines. Ismaily has recorded or performed with an incredibly diverse assemblage of musicians, including Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Jolie Holland, Laura Veirs, Bonnie Prince Billy, Faun Fables, Secret Chiefs 3, John Zorn, Elysian Fields, Shelley Hirsch, Niobe, Will Oldham, Nels Cline, Mike Doughty (of Soul Coughing), Graham Haynes, David Krakauer, Billy Martin (of Medeski Martin and Wood), Carla Kihlstedt's Two Foot Yard, the Tin Hat Trio, Raz Mesinai and Burnt Sugar. He has also composed regularly for dance and theater, including for Min Tanaka, the Frankfurt Ballet and the East River Commedia. Recently he composed the score for the critically acclaimed movie Frozen River, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. He was also an Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA in 2008. Currently based in New York , Ismaily has studied music extensively in Pakistan, India, Turkey, Mexico, Santiago, Japan, Indonesia, Morocco and Iceland."

"Jesse Stacken, "one of the most impressive pianists and composers of his generation," (NYC Jazz Record) is an artist of true integrity and imagination.

The Jesse Stacken Trio, with bassist Eivind Opsvik and drummer Jeff Davis, released three critically acclaimed recordings on the Fresh Sound New Talent label, including Bagatelles for Trio (2012) of which Peter Margasak wrote in Downbeat Magazine, "The trio brings an oblique but real heat and emotion to the performances, and as a whole the album coheres brilliantly."

The following Stacken release on Fresh Sound New Talent, Helleborus (2014) features a stellar working quartet with saxophonist Tony Malaby, bassist Sean Conly, drummer Tom Rainey, masterfully performing nine original compositions. Nate Chinen writes in the New York Times, "At every turn on "Helleborus," the ensemble plays with gusto, coherence and license, heeding the framework without ever sounding hemmed in."

Stacken has a long time partnership with cornetist Kirk Knuffke. Together they have released five critically acclaimed records on the Steeplechase label, the first four featuring compositions by the great jazz performer composers such as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Carla Bley, Bill Evans, and more. Their latest release, Satie (2016) is a cornet and piano duo adaptation of the music of classical composer Erik Satie. "A collection of piano studies opened up for improvisation and approached with a combination of lyric ecstasy and intellectual rigor (the proper way to take on the most eccentric of the Big Three fin-de-siècle French impressionist composers)." -Francis Davis, Village Voice

Since 2010, Stacken has been a pioneer in the art of conceptual home-recording blogging projects, utilizing the internet as a means for sharing his creative process with the people all over the world. The first five projects, each a year in duration, consisted of 1.) a daily improvisation, 2.) 52 extended improvisations that were required to be over an hour in length completed and uploaded once a week, 3.) 52 original compositions recorded and uploaded weekly, 4.) 52 original compositions that utilized the techniques of the French composer Olivier Messiaen, and 5.) 12 self-made films with music uploaded once a month. Stacken's current project is titled 24 Standards and entails him writing solo piano arrangements of 24 Standard American Songbook tunes, and recording and sharing them.

Stacken grew up in Hopkins, MN, earned his bachelors degree in Music Education from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, and then earned his masters degree in Jazz Piano from the Manhattan School of Music, studying under Garry Dial. Stacken lives in Beacon, New York with his wife Akiko Sasaki, their dog Minnie, and a flock of backyard hens. He and Sasaki run Forte Piano Studio, passing on the tradition and joy of piano playing to youth and adults.

Biography "Joe Moffett" http://www.neithernorrecords.com/neithernorrecords/artists.htmlNew York-based trumpeter, improviser, and composer Joe Moffett approaches his work with a keen interest in unconventional sounds and forms, collective composition, and the intersection of words and music. He is co-founder of a number of ensembles such as Earth Tongues, with percussionist Carlo Costa and tubist Dan Peck; the Kaplan/Merega/Moffett Trio, which released its debut, Crows and Motives, in 2014 on Underwolf Records; and Trismegistus with bassist Sean Ali, trombonist Ben Gerstein, percussionist Devin Gray. Moffett's explorations into text and music are evident in his work with the experimental art song duo Twins of El Dorado, with vocalist Kristin Slipp. The ensemble's debut, Portend the End, was released on Prom Night Records in 2013."

"Amirtha Kidambi "takes a holistic approach to singing, which can mean treating every element as unfixed: Words can be opened up, rendered nonspecific. Melody can be repeated and frozen and stuck in place. Markings of rhythm can become utterly abstract, freed from cadence." (New York Times). Kidambi is the bandleader of Elder Ones and a soloist and collaborator in groups including Mary Halvorson's newest quintet Code Girl, Charlie Looker's early music inspired dark folk band Seaven Teares, Darius Jones' vocal quartet Elizabeth-Caroline Unit and Samesoul Maker and Pat Spadine's analog percussion and light ensemble Ashcan Orchestra. As Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times, "the aggressive and sublime first album by the band Elder Ones, Holy Science, is a kind of gauge for how strong and flexible the scene of young musicians in New York's improvised and experimental music world can be. At the center of it are drones and phonemes. The group's leader, the composer and singer Amirtha Kidambi, holds forth behind a harmonium, the small keyboard instrument with hand-pumped bellows; it's commonly used in bhajan, the Indian devotional-singing tradition that was central to her musical experience while growing up in a South Indian family." Kidambi formally trained in classical music, singing works by experimental composers including Robert Ashley and Luigi Nono, but the pull of free jazz and Alice Coltrane drew her toward a different path. The influence of both Alice and John Coltrane is especially apparent on the , as is her work with composer and saxophonist Darius Jones, and her study of Carnatic music. Kidambi formally trained in classical music, singing works by avant-gardists including Nono and Stockhausen, but the pull of free jazz and Alice Coltrane drew her toward a different path. The influence of both Alice and John Coltrane is especially apparent on the new album, as is her work with composer and saxophonist Darius Jones, and her study of Carnatic music. Elder Ones performed extensively nationally and internationally, on tours and at festivals such as NYC Winter Jazzfest, Berliner Festspiele in Germany and Festiwal Jazz Jantar in Poland, among other.

Kidambi is invested in the performance creative music, from free improvisation and jazz, to experimental bands, and new music. As an improviser, she has played with Matana Roberts, Tyshawn Sorey, Daniel Carter, Ava Mendoza, Sam Newsome, Peter Evans, Trevor Dunn, and many innovators in the New York scene. A life changing decision to create her own artistic work came from a collaboration with the late AACM founder, composer-pianist Muhal Richard Abrams', performing his Dialogue Social. Kidambi has also premiered Darius Jones' The Oversoul Manual at Carnegie Hall, Samesoul Maker at Roulette, LawNOrder at Winter Jazzfest, a premiere of electronic composer Ben Vida's work Slipping Control for voice and electronics with Tyondai Braxton at the Borderline Festival in Athens, Greece, the premiere of the late Robert Ashley's final opera CRASH at the Whitney Biennial, a Jazz Gallery commission for Mary Halvorson's Code Girl, the premiere of William Parker's Soul of Light and forthcoming recording project Voices Fall From the Sky and a commission from the Jerome Foundation for her quartet Elder Ones at Roulette and artist residency at EMPAC to record the group's debut album.

Amirtha earned a B.F.A. in Voice from Loyola Marymount University and an M.M. in Voice and Musicology from CUNY Brooklyn College, where she served as adjunct faculty. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University."