"Sana Nagano, violonist: Ever since she moved in New York City (2010), violinist and composer Sana Nagano has been performing actively in NY jazz, classical and underground music scenes. Her latest collaborations include with Karl Berger, Adam Rudolph, William Parker, Daniel Carter, the Manhattan Symphonie, Nioka Workman, John Ehlis, Federico Ughi, Harvey Valdes, Marius Duboule, Brittany Anjou, Jeffrey Shurdut and others.

Nagano holds MA degree from Aaron Copland School of Music of Queens College, BA degree from Berklee College of Music, both in jazz performance/composition major. She had studied with Joe Lovano, George Garzone, Mat Maneri, Dave Fiuczynski, Mark Feldman, Antonio Hart, Chris Howes, Hal Crook, Darren Barrett, Jeff Galindo, Rob Thomas, Matt Glaser, David Berkman and others."

"Born in Berkeley, California in 1960, Peter Apfelbaum started playing drums at the age of three, taking up piano and saxophone in elementary school and forming his first band at age 11.

A product of the Berkeley Schools' pioneering Jazz Project, Apfelbaum began performing professionally while in his early teens and was a member of the award-winning Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble under the direction of Phil Hardymon. In 1977 - his senior year at Berkeley High - he formed the 17-piece Hieroglyphics Ensemble as a vehicle for composing and exploring non-traditional musical forms. The Ensemble was initially largely comprised of fellow BHS classmates, some of whom would later move to New York and achieve recognition in their own right. The band originally included pianist Benny Green, saxophonist Craig Handy and trumpeter Steven Bernstein and would later feature saxophonist Joshua Redman prior to his move to NY. The band released their self-produced debut album, Pillars, in 1979 and began to attract international attention for their unique mix of elements of world music with the aesthetic of the jazz avant-garde. Around this time Apfelbaum made his first sojourn to New York, where he worked with Carla Bley, David Amram and the late Eddie Jefferson. He toured Europe for the first time in the Fall of 1979 with Karl Berger's Woodstock Workshop Orchestra, an all-star band which included Lee Konitz, Oliver Lake, Don Cherry, Leroy Jenkins and Trilok Gurtu."

"Keisuke Matsuno is a Brooklyn based guitarist, sound artist, and composer. His aesthetics in music have been described as 'the salt of the earth' (Bird is the Worm) and 'most extravagant, mind-blowing, and unheard-within-the-unheard' (Blow Up). He is the founding member of the post-krautrock band Trio Schmetterling, core member of bands such as the Jim Black Guitar Quartet, John Zorn's Bagatelles, Briggan Krauss' The Need Trio, Vertessen / Tammen / Matsuno, and has further collaborated with artists such as Chris Speed, Thomas Morgan, Grey McMurray, Peter Apfelbaum, and Red Baraat. Besides having performed in over 30 countries on five continents and having released over 20 records internationally, he also stars in Misaki Matsui's 'mit Kenji und Keisuke,' a short film exploring identity, multiculturalism, and life in New York City. Born in Berlin, Keisuke grew up in the divided, then reunified city before moving to the United States in 2010. As an ERASMUS and DAAD scholar, he holds master's degrees from both Hochschule Luzern and New York University."

"Ken Filiano performs throughout the world, playing and recording with leading artists in jazz, spontaneous improvisation, classical, world/ethnic, and interdisciplinary performance, fusing the rich traditions of the double bass with his own seemingly limitless inventiveness. Ken's solo bass CD, subvenire (NineWinds), received widespread critical praise. For this and numerous other recordings, Ken has been called a creative virtuoso, a master of technique ... a paradigm of that type of artist... who can play anything in any context and make it work, simply because he puts the music first and leaves peripheral considerations behind.

Ken composes for his quartet with Michael Attias, Tony Malaby, and Michael T.A. Thomspon; a collective with Attias and Tomas Ulrich; and for his decades-long collaborations with Steve Adams and Vinny Golia. His prolific output also includes performances and/or recordings with artists including Bonnie Barnett, Rob Blakeslee, Bobby Bradford, Taylor Ho Bynum, Roy Campbell, John Carter, Nels Cline, Alex Cline, Connie Crothers, Mark Dresser, Ted Dunbar, Marty Ehrlich, Giora Feidman, Bob Feldman, Eddie Gale, Georgian Chamber Orchestra, Dennis Gonzalez, Lou Grassi, Phil Haynes, Fred Hess, Jason Hwang, Joseph Jarman, Sheila Jordan (with the Aardvark Orchestra), Raul Juarena, Joe Labarbera, Joelle Leandre, Frank London, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Tina Marsh, Warne Marsh, Dom Minasi, Hafez Modirzadeh, Butch Morris, Barre Phillips, Don Preston, Herb Robertson, Bob Rodriguez, Roswell Rudd, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Ursel Schlicht, Paul Smoker, Chris Sullivan, Peeter Uuskyla, Fay Victor, Biggi Vinkeloe, Kenny Wessel, Andrea Wolper, Pablo Ziegler. With Tomas Ulrich, Elliott Sharp, and Carlos Zingaro, he is a member of T.E.C.K. String Quartet.

Ken has been a guest lecturer, performer, and workshop leader at institutions in the United States and Europe. He earned a MM from Rutgers University and is currently on faculty at Mansfield University."- All About Jazz

"Joe Hertenstein is among the busiest and most versatile drummers and band leaders of the improvised-music scene of New York City. Trained at the Hochschule for Music and Dance in Cologne, Germany, he came to New York in 2007 to complete his Master of Arts studies at City University of New York. His mission was to learn from and explore music with many master musicians, some of which he calls friends and colleagues by now. He hopes to encourage and experience the dialogue with all cultures through music, through the abstract, through friendship and inspiration.

Joe has released five albums as a leader with the bands HNH, POLYLEMMA, Future Drone and TØRN and many more as a sideman on labels such as MoersMusic, Cleanfeed, Red Toucan, jazzwerkstatt Berlin, Creative Sources, 2nd Floor/Loft-Cologne, Skirl, Leo, Engine, and Konnex.

He has performed at the Philharmonic in Cologne, and at the Moers Festival in Germany, the Warsaw Jazz Summer Days, the Bush Hall London for BBC, the Opera House in Toronto, the World Trade Center in Dubai, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, as well as Carnegie Hall, Webster Hall, Roulette, Issue Project Room, Dizzy's Club, The Stone, Nublu and the Vision Festival in New York City among many others.

In 2005, the magazine AllAboutJazzNewYork hailed his drumming style as "...shaping the music from the bottom up." and for April 2011, the Managing Editor of TheNYCJazzRecord, Laurence Donohue-Greene, selected Joe's album Crespect by TØRN as "Recommended New Release". The same year, the website www.allaboutjazz.com praised his album POLYLEMMA as thus: "The soloists' focused interactions intimate a highly artistic game plan that supersedes the tried and true." POLYLEMMA won Belgian music critic Stef Gijssels' freejazzblog's Happy-New-Ears-Award 2011 for most innovative listening experience. Joe's latest album HNH2 made it on Gijssels' list of top 10 albums of 2015: "Fantastic trumpet, bass, drums trio redefining the format through inventive music."

Some of the international festivals Joe has performed at are the Hoeilaart Jazzfestival Brussels (BE), JekerJazz Maastricht (NL), the Leverkusener Jazztage, Moers New Jazz Festival, Triennale 2007, ViveLeJazz (GER), Portalegre Jazzfest (PGL), Warsaw Jazz Summer Days (P), Vision Festival, Red Hook Jazz Festival and Nublu Festival NYC, Clean Feed Festival at The Stone NYC, and many more.

The growing circle of international musicians he has worked with include Ravi Coltrane, Kenny Werner, Chris Potter, Tim Hagans, Rufus Reid, Steve Wilson, Jay Anderson, Butch Morris, Juini Booth, Kenny Wollesen, Graham Haynes, Brandon Ross, Matthew Shipp, Elliott Sharp, Alvin Fielder, Doug Wieselman, Ken Filiano, Anthony Coleman, Tristan Honsinger, Damon Choice, Damon Smith, Daniel Levin, Michael Attias, Daniel Carter, Mossa Bildner, Phil Gibbs, Sylvain Leroux, Steve Swell, Mat Maneri, Darius Jones, Jon Irabagon, Sean Conly, Todd Neufeld, Leo Genovese, Mikko Innanen, Achim Tang, Thomas Lehn, Frank Gratkowski, Scott Fields, Dieter Manderscheid, Matthias Schubert, Thomas Heberer, Achim Kaufmann, Sebastian Gramss, Thomas Helton, Damon Smith, Blaise Siwula, Carsten Radke, Terrence Ngassa, Adam Rudolph's GO:Organic Orchestra and Karl Berger's Improviser's Orchestra. He was a member of Butch Morris' ensembles Nublu Orchestra and LuckyCheng Orchestra as well as Cologne's The James Choice Orchestra.

Hertenstein is a member of the Tim Hagans Quintet with Steve Wilson, Luis Perdomo/Leo Genovese and Jay Anderson. He is also the drummer for Thomas Helton's The Core Trio with Seth Paynter, which will release its second album featuring pianist Matthew Shipp in the summer of 2016 on Berlin's EvilRabittRecords.

2015 Joe was artist in residence at The Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida. "