"Jesse, aka Eugene Heasly, makes ambient music, improvises, tours with bands, teaches private lessons, throws pots, and plays upright and electric bass. Jesse is based in Bath, Maine."

"Billy Martin was born in NYC in 1963 to a Radio City Rockette and a concert violinist. At age 17, he devoted himself to music and dove into Manhattan's thriving, eclectic musical landscape. In the years to follow, he honed his craft everywhere from Broadway orchestra pits to Brazilian nightclubs and burgeoning underground performance spaces.

From the roots of the downtown scene he emerged with Medeski Martin and Wood, bridging the harmonic complexity of jazz, the conversational fluency of free improvisation, and the groove and swagger of classic R&B and funk. A series of albums and high-profile collaborations with John Scofield, John Zorn, iggy Pop, Natalie Merchant, and others, brought the band international acclaim.

Martin has relentlessly pursued diverse musical contexts, from free improvisation to chamber compositions to film scores. Much of his work is available via his Amulet Records label, which recently released the Road to Jajouka-a series of collaborations (produced by Martin) between the Master Musicians of Jajouka and such artists as Ornette Coleman, Flea, Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Lee Ranaldo, Bill Laswell, Mickey Hart, MMW and more.

Martin is also an accomplished filmmaker and visual artist, whose work has been exhibited in solo and group installations around the world including 2014's Cartegena de indias Bienal in Colombia and the Drawing Sound series at The Drawing Center in NYC (2015)

What began for Martin as tireless enthusiasm for music, percussion, and improvisation evolved into a wide ranging search for the roots of inspiration. Among the most valuable undertakings in this ongoing exploration is teaching. "When I teach," he explains, "I learn and discover methods to build my vocabulary and style, and I love to help others do the same"

His experiences as a teacher, student, and musician led him to create and direct Life on Drums, a cinematic exploration of percussion and the creative process with his childhood drum instructor, Allen Herman.

Billy is currently Executive Artistic Director and CEO of the legendary Creative Music Studio

He also owns and manages his own record label Amulet Records."

"Kevin Newton is a New York based horn player and educator. As a chamber musician he has performed with Imani Winds, Orchestra of St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, Metropolitan Horn Authority, Roomful of Teeth and Tredici Bacci. A proponent of new music, Kevin has performed in several premieres including, most recently, Nathalie Joachim's Seen, written for Imani Winds with whom he appeared as guest hornist. Other recent premieres include Untethered, a solo piece written for him by Erin Busch as a part of the 2020 Composers Conference. His horn quartet, Metropolitan Horn Authority will premiere several new commissioned works in 2021. Kevin is on the horn faculty of Manhattan School of Music's Precollege division and MSM Summer."

"Selendis Sebastian Alexander Johnson is a vibraphonist, trombonist, and composer working across musical styles, though primarily rooting herself in the black experimental tradition. Born in 2000 in Dallas, Johnson's family moved to Marin County, California in the San Francisco Bay Area a few months after she was born, where she would spend her whole youth until moving to New York City to attend the New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music in 2018. Having grown up loving jazz, being immersed in it through her family, she began to feel disillusioned with the music after being confronted with it in the way it exists in college pedagogy, and stopped playing for most of 2020, until returning by developing a solo improvisatory practice that forced her to find and express sounds that she truly loved and expand from there. This practice remains the root of all of her work and she often performs solo improvised sets around New York, primarily in unconventional DIY spaces.

Aside from her solo practice, Selendis also works regularly with flutist Samantha Kochis for their duo project Antivoid, and plays in bands such as TJ Milan-Bombara's Filipino jazz-fusion project Angalo, and Simon Hanes' surf-rock band Tsons of Tsunami. She also has a passion for big band/large ensemble work, returning to The New School as guest faculty in 2023 to run a student big band performing Cal Massey's 1969 Black Liberation Movement Suite, Fred Ho's 2006 Struggle for a New World Suite, and premiere her own more improvisatory work Unity & Struggle (for Amílcar Cabral and Fred Ho), and also took on curating the historic Creative Music Studio's Improvisers Orchestra the same year."

"Jonathan Starks is a drummer, producer, and pianist originally from Phoenix, AZ. He received his Master's degree from New England Conservatory in 2020, and now lives in New York City. He stays busy playing drums in several bands, producing records, DJ'ing, and teaching music lessons."

Simon Hanes is a bassist, a graduate from New England Conservatory and has played in the then-Boston-based No(ise) Wave unit Guerilla Toss, adopting the "Luxardo" persona as an arranger, composer, conductor, and guitarist, and went on to assemble the band Tredici Bacci. He also is a member of the Zorn influenced band Trigger.