"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."

"Composer/performer Kyle Bruckmann's work extends from a Western classical foundation into genre-bending gray areas encompassing free jazz, electronic music and post-punk rock. A busy and varied performance schedule and appearances on more than 60 recordings have led to his recognition as "an excellent composer, striking the right balance between form and freedom" (Signal to Noise), "a modern day renaissance musician" (Dusted) and "a seasoned improviser with impressive extended technique and peculiar artistic flair" (All Music Guide).

Shortly after moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2003, he joined forces with acclaimed new music collective sfSound and with Quinteto Latino (a woodwind quintet specializing in Latin American composers). He is now also a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Eco Ensemble, and Splinter Reeds. He has worked with the San Francisco Symphony and most of the area's regional orchestras remaining active in an international community of improvisers and sound artists. Current local improvising working groups include Addleds, Shudder, and mchtnchts.

From 1996 until his westward relocation, he was a fixture in Chicago's experimental music underground, with frequent collaborators Jason Ajemian, Jim Baker, Jeb Bishop, Olivia Block, Guillermo Gregorio, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Robbie Hunsinger, Bob Marsh, Weasel Walter, and Michael Zerang. Long-term affiliations include the electro-acoustic duo EKG, the "rock" monstrosity Lozenge, and the Creative Music quintet Wrack (recipient of a 2012 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works award).

Bruckmann earned undergraduate degrees in music and psychology at Rice University in Houston, studying oboe with Robert Atherholt, serving as music director of campus radio station KTRU, and achieving academic distinction as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He completed his Masters degree in 1996 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied oboe performance with Harry Sargous and contemporary improvisation with Ed Sarath."

Mark Clifford is a Percussionist and Vibraphonist, known for his work with Bells Atlas, Gold Age, Lisa Mezzacappa Six, Steven John Taylor, The Dirty Snacks Ensemble, &c.

"Brett Carson explores the dynamic intersection of materials and the excavation of myth through his compositions, at once volatile and highly structured. Using architectural elements borrowed from composers such as Braxton, Cage, and Messiaen, and deriving inspiration from such fields as mysticism, science, and archaeology, his work aims toward the deconstruction of a musical reality, to be reassembled in a way that is fragmented though still recognizable.

A native of Georgia, Brett became active in Atlanta's experimental music scene while working in more conventional contexts, particularly as a jazz pianist. In 2012, he released two independent recordings with his group Alembic Circle. He moved to Oakland the same year, and is currently involved with his project Quattuor Elephantis in addition to several Bay Area groups including the Medium-Sized Band and Noertker's Moxie. As a performer he has worked with a wide variety of musicians, including Bill Baird, Nicolas Collins, George Lewis, Rent Romus, Wolter Wierbos, and William Winant. He holds an MA in Composition from Mills College, where he studied with Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, Fred Frith, Les Stuck, Joan Jeanrenaud, and Robert Schwartz."

"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."

"Jordan Glenn is a drummer, percussionist, composer, band leader, conductor, video maker, and general craftsman who lives in Oakland, California.

Jordan Glenn spent his formative years in Oregon drawing cartoons, taking dance classes from his aunt, and putting on plays with his sisters. As he got older he began making movies with his friends and studying jazz, classical, and rock music. In 2003 Glenn received a bachelor's degree in Jazz Studies from the University of Oregon.

In 2006 he relocated to the Bay Area, received a masters degree from Mills College and since has worked closely with Fred Frith (FF Trio and Gravity Band), William Winant, Zeena Parkins (The Adorables), Roscoe Mitchell, ROVA Sax Quartet, Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, John Schott, Dominique Leone, Aaron Novik, Darren Johnston, Aram Shelton, Cory Wright, Lisa Mezzacappa, Karl Evangelista, Michael Coleman, Matthew Welch, Rhys Chatham and the bands Jack O' The Clock, Arts & Sciences, Young Nudist, 20 Minute Loop, Beep!, tUnE-yArDs, and the Oakland Active Orchestra. He also leads and conducts the project Mindless Thing, a collaboration with poet/free-jazzer/sage Jim Ryan, as well as the long standing trio Wiener Kids and the ten piece expansion, The Wiener Kids Family Band."

"Though the point of reference for many remains the iconic band Henry Cow, which he co-founded in 1968 and which broke up more than 30 years ago, Fred Frith has never really stood still for an instant.

In bands such as Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, Keep the Dog, Tense Serenity, the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, Eye to Ear, and most recently Cosa Brava, he has always held true to his roots in rock and folk music, while exploring influences that range from the literary works of Eduardo Galeano to the art installations of Cornelia Parker.

The release of the seminal Guitar Solos in 1974 enabled him to simultaneously carve out a place for himself in the international improvised music scene, not only as an acclaimed solo performer but in the company of artists as diverse as Han Bennink, Chris Cutler, Jean-Pierre Drouet, Evelyn Glennie, Ikue Mori, Louis Sclavis, Stevie Wishart, Wu Fei, Camel Zekri, John Zorn, and scores of others.

He has also developed a personal compositional language in works written for Arditti Quartet, Asko Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ensemble Modern, Concerto Köln, and ROVA Sax Quartet, for example. Fred has been active as a composer for dance since the early 1980s, working with choreographers Bebe Miller, François Verret, and especially long-time collaborator and friend Amanda Miller, with whom he has created a compelling body of work over the last twenty years.

His film soundtracks (for award-winning films like Thomas Riedelsheimer's Rivers and Tides and Touch the Sound, Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods, and LSD, and Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow's Thirst, to name a few) won him a lifetime achievement award from Prague's "Music on Film, Film on Music" Festival (MOFFOM) in 2007. The following year he received Italy's Demetrio Stratos Prize (previously given to Diamanda Galas and Meredith Monk) for his life's work in experimental music, and in 2010 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in his home county of Yorkshire.

Fred currently teaches in the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California (renowned for over fifty years as the epicenter of the American experimental tradition), and in the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland."