"I currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I grew up in Long Beach CA. Mother was an artist, father a labor organizer.

On heavy rotation at home as a youngster was Dave Brubeck, Ramsey Lewis, Paul Desmond, the Beatles and Rolling stones..

As a teenager I was listening to alot of speed metal, punk rock, heavy metal and jazz.

I decided to dedicate my life to music after hearing John Coltrane. I hoped to one day give others the feeling I felt when hearing his music, perhaps an impossible goal, but a journey worth making as far as I can tell.

I earned a BA in music at Cal State Long Beach with an emphasis on classical saxophone performance where I had the pleasure of studying with Leo Potts, John Prince and many other great musicians.

I then earned an MFA at California Institute of the Arts in Jazz performance where I studied with many masters including Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Novros, Larry Koonse, Joe Labarbera, Charlie Haden and Pedro Eustache. At Cal Arts I also had the fortune to study music from Bali, Java, Ghana, and India. I have more recently studied and performed Japanese Gagaku music as well.

Since graduating from Cal Arts, I have had the pleasure of making music with a wide variety of amazing musicians including Wadada Leo Smith, Peter Kowald, John Butcher, Donald Robinson, Marco Eneidi, Weasel Walter, Adam Lane, Aphrodesia, Lagos-Roots, Mykal Rose, The Rova Saxophone Quartet, William Hooker and many others. I lead my own groups Go-Go-Fightmaster, electro-magnetic trans-personal orchestra and I currently perform in the Oakland Active Orchestra , Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & Switch, Vijay Anderson Quartet, Guerilla Hi-Fi Black Water Gold, and Touch and Go Sextet I have been very fortunate to have performed in many great clubs and festivals across the U.S. and abroad including recent appearances at the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Novarra Jazz Festival in Italy. I have composed for large ensembles, chamber groups, plays, films, dance performances, wind quintet, saxophone quartets and trios as well as pieces for solo instruments."

"Since settling in San Francisco in 1997, Canada-born trumpeter/improviser/composer/songwriter Darren Johnston has collaborated and recorded with an extremely diverse cross-section of artists. His interests rotate around composing instrumental music, writing songs, and performing all styles of jazz, experimental and purely improvised music, as well as traditional music of the Balkans, Greece, and Macedonia.

He has performed and/or recorded with luminaries such as ROVA Sax Quartet, Fred Frith, Myra Melford, Ben Goldberg, Matt Wilson, Mark Dresser, Marshall Allen, and many others.

As a composer, he has written for jazz and/or non-idiomatic improvising groups, big bands, string quartet, and even a multi-generational choir, with songs based on a collection of immigrant letters. He has written for dance companies such as Amy SeiwertÕs Imagery, Deborah Slater, Axis Dance, Robert MosesÕ Kin, Liss Fain, and others, as well as for dance films."

"Lisa Mezzacappa is a San Francisco Bay Area-based bassist, bandleader, composer, curator and producer. An active collaborator in the Bay Area music community for more than a dozen years, she leads her own groups Bait & Switch, the Interlopers, Nightshade, Eartheaters and the Lisa Mezzacappa Trio, and co-leads the ensembles BODABODA, duo B., Cylinder, the Mezzacappa-Phillips Duo, and the Caribbean folk band Les Gwan Jupons. Lisa has released her music on the Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo, NotTwo, Evander, Odd Shaped Case and Edgetone record labels, and has recorded as a sideperson for the Tzadik, Kadima and Porto Franco labels. She collaborates frequently on cross-disciplinary projects in sound installation, film/video, sculpture and public music/art.

As curator, she programs the annual JazzPOP concert seres at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, now in its 10th year; and a live cinema series, Mission Eye and Ear, at Artists' Television Access. She founded the Monday Makeout creative music series in the Mission District of San Francisco, and programs the Best Coast Jazz Composers series as a member of the artistic committee San Francisco's Center for New Music. In 2012 she started the "Festival-of-Us," a semi-annual festival celebrating Bay Area creative jazz and improvised music. Recent projects include an avant-folk string band, the Interlopers; Eartheaters, a trio with Brooklyn vocalist Fay Victor; and BODABODA, a cross-planetary collaboration with Venice reed player/composer Piero Bittolo Bon. In fall 2015 she premieres Glorious Ravage, a multi-media song cycle for large ensemble with commissioned films, inspired by the writings of Victorian lady adventurers.

Lisa has been artist-in-residence at Djerassi Resident Artists Program (2008, 2013), Headlands Center for the Arts (2006, 2015), the Banff International Jazz Workshop (2000), and the Painted Bride Arts Center (2000). She holds an MA in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley (2003), and a BA in music from the University of Virginia (1997). She has performed at countless Bay Area venues including Intersection for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, Yoshi's, the Jazzschool, and the de Young Museum, San Francisco; as well as the Earshot Jazz Festival, Seattle; the Montreal Jazz Festival and Victoriaville Festival de Musique Actuelle, Canada; the Monterey Jazz Festival, CA; Moers Festival, Germany; and Novara Jazz Festival, Italy.

Lisa has been awarded grants by the MAP Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, American Composers Forum, the City of Oakland, Meet the Composer and Southern Exposure/the Andy Warhol Foundation. She performs as a sideperson in original jazz, improv and chamber ensembles led by estemmed bandleaders and West Coast musical visionaries, like Phillip Greenlief, Aaron Novik, Beth Custer, Randy McKean, Marco Eneidi, Vijay Anderson, Aaron Bennett, Myles Boisen, Steve Adams, Graham Connah, Jon Raskin, Cory Wright and Ross Hammond, and collaborates often with Darren Johnston, Vinny Golia, Katy Stephan, Aram Shelton, Kjell Nordeson, Murray Campbell, Jason Levis, Dina Maccabee, Noah Phillips, Rob Ewing, Kasey Knudsen, Myles Boisen, Sam Ospovat, John Hanes, and many many others."

"Frank Rosaly (Francisco Javier Rosaly Amoros Rosello - b. 5/30/74 Phoenix, AZ) is a drummer and composer living in Chicago. He has been involved in the improvised and experimental music community since 2001 where he has become an integral part of Chicago's musical fabric, navigating a fine line between the vibrant improvised music, experimental, rock and jazz communities. He contributes much of his time to performing, composing, teaching, as well as organizing musical events, while also touring regularly domestically and internationally.

Frank is currently active in many projects throughout Chicago as well as New York and in Europe. Some groups include Bobby Bradford/Frode Gjerstad Quartet, Matana Robert's Chicago Project, Rob Mazurek's Mandarin Movie, The Rempis Percussion Quartet, Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten Quintet, Scorch Trio, Nicole Mitchell Ice Crystal Quartet, Jason Stein Quartet, Jeff Parker/Nels Cline Quartet, Josh Abrams' Natural Information Society, Fred Lonberg-Holm's Valentine Trio, Keefe Jackson's Project Project, The Fast Citizens, The Jeb Bishop Trio, Jason Adasievicz's Rolldown, Jorrit Dijkstra's Flatlands Collective, Chicago Lucern Exchange, Hearts and Minds, Slow Cycle, Outskirts, Darren Johnston's Chicago Quintet, Anchor and others."