Zoh Amba is a composer, saxophonist, and flutist from Tennessee. Her music blends avant-garde, noise, and devotional hymns. Before studying music at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, New England Conservatory and studying with David Murray in New York, she spent most of her time writing and practicing saxophone in the forest near her home. Today, her powerfully unique avant-garde music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, and repeated incantations. Amba released two records in 2022, her debut record O, Sun which was produced by John Zorn and released on the prestigious label Tzadik. Zoh Amba’s second record, Bhakti features Micah Thomas, Tyshawn Sorey, and Matt Hollenberg. She has collaborated with a variety of high profile musicians such as Jim White (Dirty Three), legendary jazz bassist William Parker, Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), etc. Amba has also performed at well respected venues and festivals Roulette (NY), Ars Nova Presents (Philadelphia), Vision Festival (NY), and Angel City Jazz Festival (LA) along with a 2023 Big Ears Festival’s performance.

zohamba.com

photo credit: Phillip Van Vlerken

CK Barlow turns real-time and field recordings into performable solo pieces using a variety of hardware instruments, laptops, and mobile devices. As an ensemble player, CK loves live-sampling her stage-mates, having spent 14 years using a custom live-sampling setup with the acclaimed Santa Fe avant-orchestral conduction-improv group Out of Context (conducted by sampling legend JA Dino Deane). Other New Mexico bands included Useless Eaters (w/Deane and DJ Ultraviolet), and mJane with Molly Sturges — along with a variety of rock, metal and salsa bands. She has scored two feature-length films and dozens of short films, theater productions and choreographic works; and has had music used in more than 2,000 television episodes.

Linktr.ee | Bandcamp

photo credit: Stewart Mostofsky

Simone Baron is a polyglot pianist, accordionist, improviser and composer whose work “ego-less, genre agnostic and without expectations” (JazzTimes) engages curiously and charismatically with a broad spectrum of idioms. Educated at Oberlin and Tel Aviv University and joyfully de-educated at festivals and performances across Europe and the Americas, Simone has won grants, fellowships and residencies from Chamber Music America, South Arts, Maryland State Arts Council, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Hambidge Center, Sacatar Foundation, iPark, Strathmore Foundation, ArtOMI, UMD, Avaloch Farm, the Banff Centre, and Spectrum Toronto. In 2016 Simone founded Arco Belo, a diasporic chamber music ensemble, and has shared the stage with luminaries such as Susan Alcorn, Tyshawn Sorey, Hermeto Pascoal, and the Conserere ensemble (Milan). Simone is a Victoria Artist and plays a Poeta XB Accordion, and is a founding member of the Boulanger Initiative.

simonebaron.com | Instagram | Bandcamp

Emily Rach Beisel is a Chicago-based improviser, composer, educator, curator and woodwind specialist. Beisel is known for visceral performances blending extended vocal and instrumental techniques with analogue electronics and rich bass clarinet tone. Their solo album Particle of Organs has been described as "Operatic, wild and dark. It showcases the raw, unadulterated power of the body and the instrument, weaving together sounds that are both corrosive and tender."

As a curator, Beisel seeks to increase the visibility and involvement of women and nonbinary artists in the creative music community. They founded the Pleiades Series at Elastic Arts, presenting monthly performances along with a community-based free improvisation jam for femme and nonbinary performers.

Beisel is a member of the contemporary ensemble Fonema Consort, touring most recently in Brazil, Mexico, Minneapolis and New York and premiering works of living composers including James Dillon, Richard Barrett and Julio Estrada. Beisel holds a Master of Music degree from Northwestern University and is a member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 10-208.

emilybeisel.com | Instagram | merchandise

photo credit: Peter Gannushkin

Baltimore-born Borax took an early interest in sound, improvisation and electronics, beginning at age 4. At this young age he was able to see the potential of the modular synthesizer in improvised settings. He met many of his current collaborators while still in kindergarten and helped found the High Zero Festival in that atmosphere of intense creativity. He acquired his first harpsichord at age 9 and began experimenting with unique tunings and intonations based on numerology, the writings of Kepler and Pythagoras, as well as the 22 shrutis.

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Nicolas discovered drum kit and the instrument's potential at the age of 12. He studied percussion and sonology in Holland following Joël Ryan and Richard Barrett’s teaching. He plays internationally with artists such as Keiji Haino, Jacques Demierre, Anthony Pateras among others. He is a founding member of Konnekt, organizing events around sound practices.

Projects include a collaboration with Japan's free legend, Akira Sakata, Re-Ghoster, an electro-acoustic trio and solo performances, with drums & electronics. He creates installations that materialize the interaction between sound, space and human presence.

He also works for dance and theatre as a composer, musician and performer.

Whether through music, the creation of sound installations or during performances, Nicolas questions the possibilities of interaction with the Other as well as the relationship between the present moment and its historical continuity. He is interested in the phenomena of separation/diffusion, exclusion/inclusion and parasitism.

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Jeff Carey performs synthetic noise music with a physically controlled software based instrument of his own development called ctrlKey. He is an avid electro-instrumental improvisor and is a composer of multichannel acousmatic music. His music is abstract and sculptural, full of gesture, colored by noise bursts, percussive glitches and shifting resonance. His work often incorporates extramusical elements like strobe lights, lasers and computer animation all under the constructive control of his electro-instrument to explore the space between visceral and the external embodiment of sound. He builds physically controllable custom software synthesis instruments and is interested in exploring immediate and flexible sound production with virtuosity in electronic music.

“...an exhilarating firestorm of glitchtronica and light and laser displays, reinforced by intense vibrations channelled through the backs of the chairs. As the music is heard via headphones, the nature of the experience was a curious mix, both individual and part of a group, with differing levels of perceived intimacy; there were times when i felt the roller-coaster effect, enjoying the ride all the more due to being in the company of others, while at other times i felt entirely alone, often moving between these states in the blink of an eye.” – 5:4 editor Dr. Simon Cummings on the installation Precursor to Hypercube

“His work resists easy pigeonholing to square categories. Particularly so, as their sounds seem to exists primarily as a result of direct physical movement and effort, more so than through any adherence to specifics of genre or aesthetics. This is not the studied physicality of effortless virtuosity, nor the outpouring of raw punk anger, but a carefully crafted collision of skill, physical force and intuition.” – Bjørnar Habbestad, Only Connect Artistic Director

"He's acting on raw instinct here - he refuses the clinical approach to programming software or composing music, and strives to throw himself bodily at his machines, replacing all mechanical moving parts with human flesh, blood, and bone. In pursuit of this all-organic goal, virtually everything else is jettisoned, starting with recognizable notes or melody." – Sound Projector magazine editor Ed Pinsent on the CD Impulse

Jeff Carey has a Bachelors of Science in Audio Technology from American University in Washington D.C. and studied computer music at the Institute for Sonology, Koninklijk Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands.

jeffcarey.foundation-one.org | Bandcamp

“Multi-reedman John Dierker has become a major improvisational stylist... interweaving concepts augmented by howling lines, injections of blues-drenched choruses and Albert Ayler-like display of energy." (All About Jazz) A Baltimore, Maryland native Dierker has worked in a wide variety of musical settings collaborating with Peter Zummo, Jason Willett, Jad Fair, The Basement Boys, Dave Ballou, Ches Smith, Oscar Noriega, Paul Dunmall, Michael Formanek, Wilbert de Joode, Darius Jones, Jeff Carey, Gerald Cleaver, Audrey Chen, Tony Malaby, William Parker, Peter Kowald, Mario Pavone, Chris Corsano, Marty Ehrlich, and Pascal Niggenkemper to name a few. John is a longtime member of Lafayette Gilchrist and The New Volcanoes. Currently he is working with Microkingdom as well as freelancing in the Baltimore/D.C. area.

Genosidra is a versatile artist known for his intense and incendiary performances. excelling in the realms of sound art, performance, composition, production, and DJing, in his performances he pushes creative boundaries to captivate audiences. Integrating sound performance, spectral rhythms, and vertiginous slash noise, Genosidra creates immersive sonic experiences. His stage presence is relentless, weaving soundscapes, visuals, and improvisation seamlessly. As a composer, he contributes compositions to film scores and installations. In the studio, Genosidra crafts genre-blurring tracks that showcase his versatility in the experimental Latinx Club scene. With unwavering dedication, he continues to redefine his own artistica voice in the limits of sound art and music.

Genosidra is part of Blanco teta (Noise-rock) and is an artist of the Argentinean label Hiedrah Club de baile. Having published more than 20 albums between own projects and collaborations, having participated in several residences and having performed at prestigious festivals such as RUIDO, Primavera sound (AR), and Lollapalooza (AR), Fusion Festival (DE), la ferme electric (FR), Pohoda (SK) Cité de la musique (CH) Genosidra has showcased his unique artistic vision to diverse audiences. His intense and captivating performances leave a lasting impact, captivating listeners with their intense and particular energy.

Instagram | Bandcamp: TVL 031 Ruin, Edits Y Porquer A 2022, Safriska, Audrey Chen & Carlos Quebrada, Rompe Paga

photo credit: Manuel Pose Varela

Adam Goodwin (b. 1986) is a composer, double bassist, improviser and multi-media artist raised in Texas and currently living in Berlin, Germany.

After receiving degrees in classical and contemporary double bass performance at the University of North Texas and University of California San Diego, his artistic output has expanded across a multitude of musical and aesthetic dimensions, tending towards extremes of silence and cacophony, harmony and dissonance, repetition and chaos.

His work is closely connected with and influenced by the natural world, and he engages in regular tours and solitary retreats in which he composes, plays music, films, records and explores within wilderness areas and other natural habitats.

As a composer, his work often places a heavy emphasis on the use of harmonics, overtones and microtonality on string instruments, as well as using non-idiomatic and unconventional sounds as musical elements, resulting in a vast universe of resonant textures reflecting elements of drone music, extended just intonation, minimalism, free improvisation and harsh noise. His compositions often include graphic notation, text instructions and conceptual ideas intertwined with a more traditional approach to musical notation.

He remains active as an interpreter of contemporary music as a soloist as well as an active member of many different bands and ensembles spanning a wide array of genres, including the Havoc Quartet, Elmer Kussiac, Ensemble New Babylon, Murmur Collective, Circuit Training, Nawa Ensemble and more.

Lauren Sarah Hayes is a Scottish improviser, sound artist, and scholar who is recognised for her embodied approach to computer music. Her music is a mix of experimental pop, live electronics, techno, noise, and free improvisation and has been described as ‘voracious’ and ‘exhilarating’. She is a sculptress of sound, manipulating, remixing, and bending voice, drum machines, analogue synths and self-built software live and physically. She is excited by what can happen in the vulnerable relationships between sound, space, and audience. Her shows are highly physical, making the performance of live electronic music more engaging for audiences. Over the last fifteen years she has developed and honed a deliberately challenging and unpredictable performance system that explores the relationships between bodies, sound, environments, and technology·

She has been commissioned by major festivals including the London Jazz Festival, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with a live BBC Radio 3 broadcast as part of its 2017 International Showcase, and Sonica, for which she gave four sold-out performances inside Hamilton Mausoleum, Scotland, famous for once holding the longest echo of any man-made structure. She has performed extensively across Europe and the US, including as part of her tenure with the New BBC Radiophonic Workshop at Kings Place, London. The Wire described her 2016 album MANIPULATION (pan y rosas discos) as “skittering melodies and clip-clopping rhythms suggesting a mischievous intelligence emerging from this web of wires”. Her 2021 release Embrace (Superpang) was included in Bandcamp’s Best Experimental Music of February 2021.

laurensarahhayes.com | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Research

photo credit: Dan Gorelick

Katt Hernandez is a violinist, radiophonic artist and activist. She moved to Stockholm in 2010, and rapidly began working with many artists and music organizations in the city. In addition to her solo projects, she has worked with a host of artists in a swath of music and sound scenes in Europe. After earning a Masters in composition from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, she began a PhD at Lund university in 2015, entitled The Ephemeral City: Songs for the Ghost Quarters, comprised of a group of multichannel, field recording, synthesizer, string and organ works about the psychogeography of Stockholm, and the importance of our inner-most imaginary cities. The latest composition for that project was for the 1926 Wurlitzer theater organ that is now housed in the R1 former nuclear reactor hall, deep under the Royal Technical Institute in Stockholm. In recent years, she has also worked with Klas Nevrin's project Music in Disorder at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Fire! Orchestra, GGR Betong, multi-disciplinary artist Björn-Ola Lind, Dennis Egberthäs group, Butoh artist KAI-EN, songwriter and poet Rotem Geffen, Lotte Anker's subhabitat project at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, Vilhelm Bromander's In this Forever Unfolding Moment project and Elsa Bergman's Playon Crayon – amongst a host of others. Her work has been featured at festivals, series, museums, conferences and radio stations throughout the world, most recently at Antenn Festivalen, Cola bora dio and Datscha Radio in Berlin, PULS festival of multichannel music in Bergen and Visby, Nordic New Music Days in Bodø, Motvind festival in Oslo, Klubb Primi in Copenhagen, as well as the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, BlowOut in Oslo, Common Ground in Brooklyn, Lokal Harmonie in Duisberg, N:EAR in Slovenia, SuperDeluxe in Tokyo and more. Katt is also a member of the Nattsvart anarchist collctive in Stockholm, and has volunteered at Bokhandeln inFo and the Stockholm Anarchist Book Festival. Before leaving the U.S., Katt was a 13 year veteran of experimental music scenes on the East Coast, where she produced masses of concerts, and worked with a vast array of musicians, dancers, visual artists, puppeteers, film makers and performance artists, in venues ranging from underground art spaces to ivy league concert halls."

katthernandez.net

Alma Laprida is a multi-disciplinary artist whose creative pursuits encompass composition, improvisation, performance, installation, video and radiophonic pieces. Armed with unconventional instruments and objects such as the trumpet marine, field recordings, synthesizers, megaphones and the lyre, her explorations traverse diverse realms in the pursuit of creating captivating sonic experiences.

Alma has released three solo albums, collaborated on two other albums, and contributed to various compilations. She has played, performed, and exhibited installations in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Italy, Mexico, and the United States. In 2021, after a decade of creative work and life in Buenos Aires, Alma relocated to Maryland, USA. Besides her solo work, she currently plays in Hypnotized Chickens, the Bureau of Sensory Affairs and has a duo with Mike Kuhl.

almalaprida.wordpress.com | Bandcamp | album: ensayos baschet

Qiujiang Levi Lu/卢秋江 (they/them) is a Beijing-born, New Jersey-based performer, experimental vocalist, composer, and certified foodie. As an improvising performer, Lu utilizes custom-built feedback-driven electronic instruments, voice, and amplified muscle movements to perform in various settings. Other than performing, Lu also writes for acoustic and electronic improvisers. Through using sound-canceling headphones and in-ear monitors, Lu creates surreal listening environments for improvisers to explore human relationships, audio-visual interactivity, and the phenomenology of sound.

Lu’s works have been performed at Festivals, Conferences, and Venues such as DiMenna Center, IRCAM Forum, SEAMUS conference, NIME conference, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Oberlin MMG, Spencer Museum of Art, Rhizome DC, and NowNet Arts conference.

After graduating with a Master of Music in Computer Music from Peabody Institute in May 2023, Lu now works as a lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

Instagram | Youtube

photo credit: Scott Congyu Li

Toshi Makihara's performance utilizes traditional percussion with a variety of discovered sound media, everyday objects and toys. Through a rigorous, systematic, and practiced process of experimentation, Makihara seeks out sounds that have never been heard before, experimenting with touch, force, and speed, and always remaining aware of sound's relationship to the body. Makihara studied drums and percussion with Sabu Toyozumi, a renouned improvising percussionist in Tokyo. He has also studied butoh with dance master Kazuo Ohno and others.

Stewart Mostofsky does many things, often simultaneously. One of them is that he plays electronic instruments. He is also a member of the Red Room collective and the High Zero Foundation.

Baltimore based percussionist Paul Neidhardt has been a member of High Zero and the Red Room Collective since 2004. Paul works locally as a drum instructor and dance accompanist. His performance work focuses on improvisation using extended techniques to create non-traditional drum sounds and textures. Paul currently plays in the percussion ensemble Umbilicus and hosts the monthly Volunteers Collective improvisation workshop at the Red Room.

photo credit: Stewart Mostofsky

Shelly Purdy (percussion) is a contemporary musician and teaching artist committed to presenting new and experimental music. Her sonic explorations tend to favor the mingling of found objects with more traditional instruments and an affinity for chance and improvisation whenever possible. Purdy regularly performs with such ensembles as the percussion quartet; Umbilicus, the science/music ensemble; The Inverse Square Trio, and the avant/jazz trio; The Compositions. Purdy also has been studying Javanese & Balinese Gamelan under the tutelage of Prof Gina Beck and is a board member for The High Zero Foundation and 2640 Collective.

Instagram | Soundcloud | Bandcamp

photo credit: Jason Poncheri

Will Redman is a cacophonist from Baltimore. He is a minimal maximalist who embraces functional mistakes. Will’s unsystematic compositions can be found in the books Notations 21, Music After the Fall, and A Semiotic Approach to Open Notations, as well as poetry and design journals, tattoos, and the facade of the Conservatoire Paris-Saclay. His percussive sounds can be heard with Microkingdom, Umbilicus, and The Compositions. Prof. Redman shares his knowledge and experience with students at Towson University.

willredman.com | music.willredman.com | Bandcamp

Martin C. Schmidt is a composer, sound artist, video artist and one-half of the internationally acclaimed duo Matmos, which has made albums and/or shared the stage with Bjork, Robert Wilson, Terry Riley, Zeena Parkins, Dan Deacon, So Percussion, Marshall Allen, the Kronos Quartet, and many more. He has been a guest lecturer in sound art at Stanford University, Yale University, California Institute of the Arts, Boston University, Harvard University and a guest faculty member at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University. Martin enjoys digital and analogue synthesis, using objects not usually considered musical instruments as musical instruments, and the piano.

Martin joined the High Zero Collective in 2009, also co-curates the DIFFUSION Festival of multichannel electroacoustic music along with collective members Jeff Carey and Obie Feldi.

Called “a modern guitarist” by world renown musician, Mr. Jackie Blake, Chris Taylor has tuned his strings to more than 30 years of classical reverberations. His finger style manifests original compositions. With harmonies narrating the bloom of wind, pitch of rain and turn of sun, Taylor gleans the strength of the guitar. And with that artistic ingenuity, he radicalizes other instruments like the spoon and paint brush. A chef of Japanese traditions and painter with abstract sensibilities, Taylor masters rhythms of every medium. Find him seizing a bench in Mount Vernon lulling the day with his sounded inventions.

SZachary James Watkins studied composition with Janice Giteck, Jarrad Powell, Robin Holcomb and Jovino Santos Neto at Cornish College. In 2006, Zachary received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College where he studied with Chris Brown, Fred Frith, Alvin Curran and Pauline Oliveros. Zachary has received commissions from The Switch Ensemble, Density512, the Beam Foundation, sfsound, The Living Earth Show, Kronos Quartet and the Seattle Chamber Players among others. His 2006 composition Suite for String Quartet was awarded the Paul Merritt Henry Prize for Composition and has subsequently been performed at the Labs 25th Anniversary Celebration, the Labor Sonor Series at Kule in Berlin Germany and in Seattle Wa, as part of the 2nd Annual Town Hall New Music Marathon featuring violist Eyvind Kang. Zachary has performed in numerous festivals across the United States, Mexico and Europe. Zachary releases music on the labels Sige, Cassauna, Confront (UK), The Tapeworm and Touch (UK). Novembre Magazine (DE), ITCH (ZA), Leonardo Press, Walrus Press and the New York Miniature Ensemble have published his writings and scores. Zachary has been an artist-in-resident at the Espy Foundation, Djerassi, the Headlands Center for The Arts and the Amant Foundation Siena, Italy.