"LJOVA (Lev Zhurbin) was born in 1978 in Moscow, Russia, and moved to New York with his parents, composer Alexander Zhurbin and writer Irena Ginzburg, in 1990. He divides his time between composing for the concert stage, contemporary dance & film, leading his own ensemble LJOVA AND THE KONTRABAND, as well as a busy career as a freelance violist, violinist & musical arranger. Among recent projects are commissions from the City of London Sinfonia, The Louisville Orchestra, a new work for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a string quartet for Brooklyn Rider, a clarinet quintet for Art of Élan, and works for The Knights, Sybarite5 and A Far Cry, as well arrangements for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, tenor Javier Camarena, conductors Gustavo Dudamel and Alondra de la Parra, the Mexican songwriter Natalia Lafourcade, Argentine composer/guitarist Gustavo Santaolalla. Ljova frequently collaborates with choreographers Aszure Barton, Damian Woetzel, Christopher Wheeldon, Katarzyna Skarpetowska (with Parsons Dance). In 2018, he was a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University's Atelier program, co-teaching a course on collaboration with puppeteer Basil Twist.

Ljova is the author of more than 120 compositions for classical, jazz, and folk ensembles, as well as scores to four feature and over a dozen short films. He is an alum of the Sundance Institute's Film Composers Lab. His music has been licensed by HBO, PBS, BBC, CNBC, and NHK networks, among many other independent projects.

Ljova has taught as visiting guest faculty at The Banff Centre in Canada focusing equally on composition, arranging, and viola performance. He has also guest-lectured on film music at New York University, performance and composition at the Berklee College of Music, Mark O'Connor Method Camp, and has taught viola and chamber music at the Special Music School in New York City. He has appeared as violist on Saturday Night Live (with Sia), The Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

His album MELTING RIVER, focuses on music Ljova created for "Project XII", on commission from Canadian choreographer (and Baryshnikov's protege), Aszure Barton. LOST IN KINO, his third album, focuses on recent film music, and features cues from films by Francis Ford Coppola, James Marsh, Basia Winograd, Lev Polyakov, Roman Khrushch, as well as performances by the Gypsy band Romashka, the Tall Tall Trees and the pipa virtuoso Wu Man.

With his main performing ensemble, LJOVA AND THE KONTRABAND, Ljova has appeared at New York's Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (as part of the Sundance Film Festival), New York's Museum of Modern Art, Joe's Pub and other venues. The Ensemble has toured to the United Kingdom, Canada, and around the United States. The Kontraband released its second album, "NO REFUND ON FLOWERS", raising over $21,000 in a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Their acclaimed debut CD, "MNEMOSYNE" and is the featured ensemble on "Cupcake", a short film which debuted at Tribeca Film Festival and was performed live at Lincoln Center.

Ljova released his acclaimed solo debut recording, VJOLA: WORLD ON FOUR STRINGS, on Kapustnik Records, in 2006. Previously, he has recorded with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble on the bestselling Sony Classical CD "Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon", and with The Andalucian Dogs on the Deutsche Grammophon CD "Ayre", featuring the music of Luciano Berio and Osvaldo Golijov. (Both CDs were nominated for several Grammy awards.) He has performed on tour with Savion Glover, and recorded with composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, producer Guy Sigsworth, Nina Nastasia, Amy Correia, and the Electric Light Orchestra.

As an arranger, Ljova has completed dozens of musical arrangements for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, the Kronos Quartet, Bond, Matmos, and others. He has also collaborated with composers Osvaldo Golijov and Gustavo Santaolalla, as well as the conductor Alondra de la Parra. Resulting from these collaborations are arrangements of musics from Argentina, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Tanzania, Uruguay, as well as gypsy music from Romania and France.

Ljova grew up in a household filled with music, books and an unquenchable hunger for culture. His father, Alexander Zhurbin, is Russia's foremost composer for film and musical theatre; his mother, Irena Ginzburg, is a distinguished poet, writer and journalist. He began violin lessons at age four with Galina Turchaninova, a celebrated pedagogue who also taught violinists Maxim Vengerov and Vadim Repin. When not practicing, the pre-teen Ljova regularly overran his record player and played street hockey.

Ljova is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he was a pupil of Samuel Rhodes (violist of the Juilliard String Quartet). He has won numerous prizes as a composer, and appeared several times as soloist with orchestras, including as a winner of the Menschenkinderpreis from RTL TV (Germany). He performs on a viola made by Alexander Tulchinsky, and a six-string "fadolín" made by Eric Aceto.

Ljova lives on the Upper West Side of New York City with his wife, vocalist and attorney Inna Barmash, and their sons, Benjamin and Yosif."

"Jessica Pavone (composer, viola, violin, el.bass) has performed in countless improvisation, avant jazz, experimental, folk, soul, and chamber ensembles since moving to NYC in 2000. She currently plays with Normal Love, in a duo with guitarist Mary Halvorson, with Anthony Braxton's ensembles and as a solo violist. As a composer, The Wire magazine praised her "ability to transform a naked tonal gesture into something special," and The New York Times described her music as "distinct and beguiling...its core is steely, and its execution clear."

Pavone's recent works for solo viola and voice stem from years of concentrated long tone practice and an interest in repetition, song form, and sympathetic vibration. She combines her long tone rituals with delay, understated melodies and sparse lyrical content while continuously experimenting with new forms. She is interested in the physicality of performing her somewhat larger-than-comfortable instrument and believes that cultivating physical bodies as a strong container for her thoughts is part of the creative process.

As an instrumentalist, she has personally worked with and interpreted new music by; Aaron Seigel, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Elliott Sharp, Glenn Branca, Henry Threadgill, Leo Smith, Jason Ajemian, Jason Cady, Jeremiah Cymerman, John King, Matana Roberts, Matthew Welch, Tristan Perich, Tyondai Braxton and William Parker; and, has played strings in bands such as Christy and Emily, Pure Horsehair, White Blue Yellow and Clouds, Joy Mega, and The Artificials.

Pavone has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe, performing in venues ranging from international music festivals, universities, and art galleries, to community centers and basements. Her music has premiered in venues in New York City such as, Roulette, Issue Project Room, and The Kitchen, and at the Klangbad Festival in Sheer, Germany. In 2011 she was featured in NPR's "The Mix: 100 Composers Under 40." She has received grants and commissions from the Aaron Copland Recording Fund, the American Music Center, New Music USA for her collaboration with choreographer, Anna Sperber, The Kitchen, MATA, The Jerome Foundation, The Tri-Centric Foundation, Experiments in Opera, and the chamber music collective, Till By Turning."

"Audrey Chen is a 2nd generation Chinese/Taiwanese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest aesthetic.

Since then, using the cello, voice and occasional analog electronics, Chen's work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of the homemade analog synthesizer, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic personal language.

**Over the past decade plus, her predominant focus has been her solo work with the cello, voice and electronics, but she has more recently begun to shift back towards the exploration of the voice as a primary instrument.

"Audrey Chen has created an uncompromising and idiosyncratic music, tightly disciplined yet acoustically wild and heavy with implication. Her ultra-verbal vocalising, often reminiscent of the visceral and emotionally charged sound poetry of François Dufréne or Henri Chopin, exposes physiological aspects of utterance that are concealed within standardised articulation and day to day speech. Fleshy, breath-driven and flecked with spittle, Chen's voice emanates not just from her mouth but from an ensemble of upper body surfaces, channels, passages, and cavities." - Julien Cowley THE WIRE

Recent projects, aside from performing solo, include her long running voices duo with Phil Minton, duos HISS & VISCERA with modular synth player Richard Scott, BEAM SPLITTER with Norwegian trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, and the "romantic noise duo" AFTERBURNER with Doron Sadja (electronics/light projection). Past projects include work with German conceptual artist John Bock, a duo with NYC abstract turntablist Maria Chavez, and a quartet with Nate Wooley, C. Spencer Yeh, and Todd Carter. Her new projects include a double duo/quartet with BEAM SPLITTER and STREIFENJUNKO's, Eivind Lønning and Espen Reinersten and MOPCUT with Lukas König and Julien Desprez.

Among her more recent album releases include, "By the Stream" with Phil Minton - Subrosa (Brussels), "Hiss & Viscera" with Richard Scott - Sound Anatomy (Berlin), "Rough Tongue", BEAM SPLITTER'S debut LP - Corvo Records (Berlin) and her long awaited new solo album "Runt Vigor" - Karl Records (Berlin).

Chen has performed across Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Canada and the USA.

Some festival appearances include: Festival Beyond Innocence (Osaka, JP), Maerzmusik (Berlin, DE), Klangspuren Festival (Schwaz, AT), NUMA Circuit (Tenerife, ES), Sound of Stockholm (Stockholm, SE), Kongsberg Jazz Festival (Kongsberg, NO), Jazz Saalfelden (Saalfelden, AT), Plateaux Festival (Torun, PL), Color Out of Space (Brighton, UK), Wels Music Unlimited (Wels, AT), 2PI Festival (Hangzhou, CN), Jazz a Luz (Luz-Saint-Saveur, FR), Festival Muzzix (Lille, FR), La Voix est Libre (Toulouse/Paris, FR), Total Meeting (Tours, FR), NowNow Festival (Sydney, AU), Uncool Festival (Poschiavo, CH), the Next Festival (Bratislava, SK), Colour Out of Space (Brighton, UK), Donau Festival (Krems, AT), Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville/FIMAV (CA), Festival Ecuatoriano de Música Contemporánea (Quito,Ecuador) and Wien Modern (Vienna, AT).

And venues such as: Covent Garden (London, UK), Radialsystem (Berlin, DE), Zacheta National Gallery (Warsaw, PL), Museé du quai Branly (Paris, FR), Radio France (Paris, FR), Theatre Bouffes du Nord (Paris, FR), Auditorio de Tenerife (Tenerife, ES), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires, AR), Bimhuis, (Amsterdam, NL), Rote Fabrik (Zurich, CH), Teatro Fondamenta Nuove (Venice, IT), DOM (Moscow, RU), Anton Kern Gallery (NYC, US), Wiener Konzerthaus (Vienna, AT) and Robert Wilson's Watermill Center (Water Mill, NY, US).

In 2011, in addition to her performances, she was awarded the prestigious Mary Sawyers Baker Prize, an award that was established to support individual artists living, and working in Maryland. Since 2011, she relocated to Berlin, Germany from Baltimore, MD USA and continues to maintain an active international touring schedule.

David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet has described her work as "fascinating and gripping" and "possessing something extremely vital and vivid...." "

"Bassist and composer Todd Nicholson has performed with Billy Bang, Peter Brotzmann, Roy Campbell, Eddie Gale, Frank Lowe, Tatsuya Nakatani, William Parker, Alan Silva, James Spaulding, and Steve Swell among others. He recently relocated to Tokyo, Japan and has become active in the jazz and improvised music scenes, establishing working relationships with koto player Michiyo Yagi and violinist Keisuke Ohta. He has appeared in a variety of settings throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan, including the Vision Festival (NYC), the Rochester Jazz Festival, the Other Minds Festival (San Francisco), Tampere Jazz Happening (Tampere, Finland), Sons d'Hiver (Paris), the Ottawa Jazz Festival and the Full Moon Festival (Mangetsu sai) in Miyajima, Japan (the island off the coast of Hiroshima). He has collaborated with numerous dancers, most recently Carmen deLavallade and Gus Solomons jr. at Symphony Space. He also leads his own group, the Otic Band/Ensemble. Recent recorded appearances include "Long Hidden: The Olmec Series" by William Parker (AUM Fidelity), "First, Keep Quiet" by the Gauci Trio (CIMP Records), "A Prayer For Peace" by the Billy Bang Quintet (TUM Records, to be released this fall), a live recording by the Billy Bang Quintet (Justin Time)."

"Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. His time in Oregon, a place of relative quiet and slow time reference, instilled in Nate a musical aesthetic that has informed all of his music making for the past 20 years, but in no situation more than his solo trumpet performances.

Nate moved to New York in 2001, and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.

Wooley's solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet. Along with Peter Evans and Greg Kelley, Wooley is considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, as well as demolishing the way trumpet is perceived in a historical context still overshadowed by Louis Armstrong. A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback, and compositional rigor has led one reviewer to call his solo recordings "exquisitely hostile".

In the past three years, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Time Out New York has called him "an iconoclastic trumpeter", and Downbeat's Jazz Musician of the Year, Dave Douglas has said, "Nate Wooley is one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today, and that is without hyperbole". His work has been featured at the SWR JazzNow stage at Donaueschingen, the WRO Media Arts Biennial in Poland, Kongsberg, North Sea, Music Unlimited, and Copenhagen Jazz Festivals, and the New York New Darmstadt Festivals. In 2011 he was an artist in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY and Cafe Oto in London, England. In 2013 he performed at the Walker Art Center as a featured solo artist.

Nate is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (www.dramonline.org) and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American (www.soundamerican.org) both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. He also runs Pleasure of the Text which releases music by composers of experimental music at the beginnings of their careers in rough and ready mediums."

"Leah began her music career in Brooklyn, NY in 2002 after studying flute performance at the University of Michigan.

As a flutist, Leah has played a vital role in NYC's new music and downtown scenes. She has been a longtime member of Matthew Welch's Blarvuster, recently performing his new opera Borges and the Other at Roulette, as well as playing on his Tzadik release Blarvuster. In 2010 Leah recorded with Anthony Braxton's Triilium E Orchestra as a soloist, the first-ever Braxton opera studio recording, Leah is also featured on his upcoming release of Trillium J recorded in the spring of 2014.Leah has also recorded and performed with countless bands and ensembles such as TV on the Radio, the Dirty Projectors, Milagres, Michael Leonhart, Aaron Seigel and City Center.

Leah's upcoming release 'We Will Do the Worrying' is being met with high praise from high places. We Will Do The Worrying is an extension of the rich chamber writing Leah has honed on her previous albums, this time bringing in lushly layered vocals, alluring string quartet arrangements and percussive elements to create vignettes of other-worldly landscapes and experiences. Leah's gift for weaving harmonically textural motifs, playful rhythmic counterpoint and sparse yet meaningful lyrics allow the ten pieces on this album to soar, sparking imaginative daydreams in the minds-eye of the listener.

Leah Paul's album Trenza is unlike any chamber music you've heard. Featuring genre-busting musicians such as Chris Speed and Sara Schoenbeck, every piece takes on an identity in the way your favorite rock song might, unraveling complex counterpoint and harmonic shifts at breakneck pace. Leah's work as a flutist with artists such as Anthony Braxton and the Dirty Projectors informs her compositions as they are simultaneously unexpected and catchy. California Quintet was written during her first year in Los Angeles after relocating from Brooklyn. Each of the six movements chronicles an exploration and shift in perspective that one experiences when completely changing one's surroundings. Steps to Stairs employs lower strings mixed with winds to create an ensemble that blossoms into full orchestral timbres while maintaining an intimate backdrop for sparse melodic textures to emerge. Trenza beautifully braids the nuances of classical, jazz and contemporary music into a singular voice and a joyful listening experience. This is Leah's second release on Brooklyn's Skirl Records.

Leah Paul's 2011 release of her works for quartet Bike Lane, on Brooklyn's Improvisation/new music label Skirl Records has been met with enthusiasm and praise. Bike Lane is a collection of composed music for flute, clarinet, bassoon and viola. The inspiration for this album is the ever-merging scenes of classical, improvised, and rock music that are unique to New York City. It is composed chamber music channeling pop structure, with an improvisational spirit and feel. Peter Margasak of eMusic says "...while operating like a sophisticated chamber ensemble, the quartet reveals a wonderfully fluid, graceful pop sensibility. There's nothing cheap or shallow about the music, but the themes lodge in the memory like radio hits."

Leah's earlier projects include the Bridesmaids, a chamber pop group which received acclaim from TimeOutNY, the Big Takeover and Venuszine.

Currently Leah is currently living in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles, in addition to her career as a composer and flutist, she is also an active teacher working for the Harmony Project of Los Angeles, YoungArts, as well as a guest lecturer at the Longy School of Music and a presenter at the Los Angeles Composer's Salon."

"One of improvised music's most in-demand guitarists, Mary Halvorson has been active in New York since 2002, following jazz studies at Wesleyan University and the New School. Critics have called her "a singular talent" (Lloyd Sachs, JazzTimes), "NYC's least-predictable improviser" (Howard Mandel, City Arts), "one of the most exciting and original guitarists in jazz-or otherwise" (Steve Dollar, Wall Street Journal), and "one of today's most formidable bandleaders" (Francis Davis, Village Voice). The Philadelphia City Paper's Shaun Brady adds, "Halvorson has been steadily reshaping the sound of jazz guitar in recent years with her elastic, sometimes-fluid, sometimes-shredding, wholly unique style."

After three years of study with visionary composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, Ms. Halvorson became an active member of several of his bands, including his trio, septet and 12+1tet. To date, she appears on six of Mr. Braxton's recordings. Ms. Halvorson has also performed alongside iconic guitarist Marc Ribot, in his bands Sun Ship and The Young Philadelphians, and with the bassist Trevor Dunn in his Trio-Convulsant. Over the past decade she has worked with such diverse bandleaders as Tim Berne, Taylor Ho Bynum, Tomas Fujiwara, Ingrid Laubrock, Myra Melford, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey and Mike Reed.

As a bandleader and composer, one of Ms. Halvorson's primary outlets is her longstanding trio, featuring bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith. Since their 2008 debut album, Dragon's Head, the band has been recognized as a rising star jazz band by Downbeat Magazine for five consecutive years. Ms. Halvorson's quintet, which adds trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon to the trio, has released two critically acclaimed albums on the Firehouse 12 label: Saturn Sings and Bending Bridges. Most recently she has added two additional band members-tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and trombonist Jacob Garchik-to form a septet, featured on her 2013 release Illusionary Sea. Ms. Halvorson also co-leads a longstanding chamber-jazz duo with violist Jessica Pavone, the avant-rock band People and the collective ensembles Thumbscrew and Secret Keeper."

"Tatsuya Nakatani. Acoustic Sound Artist, Master Percussionist. b. 1970, Osaka Japan

Tatsuya Nakatani is an acoustic sound artist and master percussionist originally from Osaka, Japan. He has released over eighty recordings in North America and Europe. Residing in the USA since the mid-nineties, he has performed countless solo percussion concerts and has collaborated with hundreds of artists in international music festivals, university concert halls, art museums and independent venues. Infamous for his constant touring, Nakatani criss-crosses the country every year inspiring audiences with his pioneering sound. In addition to his solo performances, he conducts the Nakatani Gong Orchestra (NGO), a mobile community engagement project which organizes local ensembles performing on multiple bowed gongs.Nakatani teaches master classes and workshops at universities, giving students an opportunity to share his unique musical approach and philosophy for creating visceral, non-linear music.

He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. Utilizing drums, gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, wooden sticks, metal objects, and the bows and mallets he handcrafts in his Kobo; he creates an intense, intuitively primitive, expressive music that defies genre. His work references improvised-experimental music, free jazz, and noise, while still retaining the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music."