Daniel Carter & Matt Mikas – As a duo Daniel Carter and Matt Mikas create improvised dialogues and open-ended conversations that seek to engage and enlighten listeners via saxaphone, flute, sampler, specially pressed records and turntables. The resulting
environment is one that acknowledges science fiction soundtracks, hip-hop minimalism, ecstatic free-jazz, and a quest that supercedes both conflict and resolution.

Daniel Carter Flutist/saxophonist/trumpeter Daniel Carter isn't as well-known as some of his contemporaries on the New York free jazz scene, which may partially be due to the fact that he refuses to name his own projects after himself. But judging from his long history of playing in New York and his winding, exploratory recordings, he deserves to be as well-known as peers like David S. Ware or William Parker. Carter began playing in New York in the early '70s and he sporadically recorded during that decade with artists such as Gunter Hampel and Bob Moses. But due to his reputation as an avant-garde musician, he had difficulty finding steady gigs and began performing as a street musician around 1978. In 1981, he joined Other Dimensions in Music, a quartet that also features Roy Campbell on trumpet, Parker on bass, and Rashid Bakr on drums; the group released a self-titled album on Silkheart in 1989. During the 1980s, Carter also played with punk rock groups. His recording career really took off in the 1990s. He continued to play with Other Dimensions In Music and began recording with another quartet called Test. Test, featuring multireedist Sabir Mateen, bassist Matthew Heyner, and drummer Tom Bruno, still frequently performs on subway platforms. Carter also recorded with non-jazz acts like avant-rock songwriter David Grubbs and electronic musicians Spring Heel Jack and DJ Logic. Since 1999, Carter has kept himself busy with projects on the Aum Fidelity and Thirsty Ear labels.

Matt Mikas Matt Mikas is a sound artist with a history of involvement in microradio, nightclub entertainment, and museum exhibition. A sonic anthropologist, Mikas uses turntables alternately as a historia n and performer and electronics and low-power FM transmitters as artist and activist. He is also a co-founder of and the operations manager for free103point9, a New York based non-profit arts organization focusing on the creative usage of transmission mediums (www.free103point9.org). He has spoken on independent media actions at the Grassroots Radio Conference, the New York Poetry Project, The Ford Communications Policy Network Meeting, Coco Fusco’s Performance and Technology Classes at Columbia University, among others. In January 2000 he curated the sound program for Dave Hickey’s Ultralounge at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, FL. "Of The Bridge," a sound and video collaboration with Matt Bua and Tom Roe, premiered in Brooklyn! (2001) at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, sampling the sounds of the Williamsburg Bridge and Sonny Rollins (who often rehearsed there). He has also performed at The Kitchen, P.S. 122, and Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan, and the 2004 Gwang-Ju Biennialle in South Korea. Mikas’s current project "Interactive Audio Response Kit" is a musical composition and listening tool created for two identical LPs.

– NRA is a multi-national conglomerate comprised of Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion - Japan), Vic Rawlings open-circuit electronics, amplified prepared cello U. S. A.), and Ricardo Arias (bass-balloon kit - Colombia). The trio creates a sound world that is simultaneously austere and excessive, static and explosive. Their performance practice is firmly based on a kinetic-physical approach to their respective instruments, yet devoid of the heavy-lifting trappings of physical music. The players have concocted their own distinctive instrument adaptations/inventions, and playing techniques, each bringing markedly contrasting sonic materials to the ensemble. Their compositional approach exploits the intersection of these disparate sounds within the confines of particular times and spaces.

Tatsuya Nakatani Originally from Kobe and Osaka, Japan, Tatsuya Nakatani has resided in the United States since 1995. After living in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, he and is now based in Easton, Pennsylvania. He is recognized as a key player in New York City‚s ever-burgeoning creative music scene. His music often defies categorization and is not limited by generic considerations. His eclectic creative approach welcomes influences from Brazilian and Japanese music; from improvised and experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, etc. An intense freedom combined with impeccable sensitivity and depth of thought characterizes his approach. He is widely recognized as a solo and ensemble player. His elements of percussion are drummed set, gong, cymbal, singing bowls, pieces of metal objects, and various sticks and bows. In addition to live performances, he provides sound design for Television and Film, and collaborates regularly with dancers and artists. Nakatani has established an independent Record label, music & dance studio "H&HPRODUCTION" in South Bronx, New York from where he dispatches his music creations to the rest of the world. He is also a recipient of the New York, Bronx Art council individual artist grant.

Vic Rawlings Vic Rawlings is an active member of the Boston improvised music community. His performances focus on the metamusical potential of unstable sounds and silences. He is an instrument builder specializing in modifications of existing instruments. In addition to his extensive cello preparations, he continually develops an electronic instrument from extant analog circuitry, producing, in effect, an analog synthesizer with a highly unstable interface. He performs regularly as a soloist and as a member of undr quartet, The BSC, and in duo and trio ensembles with Michael Bullock, Greg Kelley, Bhob Rainey, Sean Meehan, Jason Lescalleet, James Coleman, Tatsuya Nakatani, and Howard Stelzer. Other collaborators have included Eddie Prevost (AMM), Donald Miller (Borbetomagus), Daniel Carter (Other Dimensions in Music), Laurence Cook, Jaap Blonk, Masashi Harada, and Stephen Drury. Rawlings appears on the record labels Grob, Sedimental, Emanem, Boxmedia, Chloe, Absurd, and Rykodisc. He has performed as a soloist/ composer with Nicola Hawkins Dance Company and has composed scores for films by Alla Kovgan and Jeff Silva. He has toured most of the United States and in France.

Ricardo Arias Ricardo Arias was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1965. He has lived in Barcelona, The Hague, and currently resides in New York City. He studied composition and electroacoustic music with Chilean composer Gabriel Brncic at the Phonos Foundation in Barcelona and flute with Hiroshi Kobayashi and Joan Bofill, also in Barcelona. During 1995-1996 Arias studied computer music at the Institute of Sonology in ThaHague. He holds a BA in Anthropology from Hunter College in New York City. Most of Arias' music is improvised and made in collaboration with other musicians. Apart from occasionally playing the flute, he uses nconventional instruments and found objects as sound sources. He has performed with a shifting array of small found objects, amplified with piezo-electric transducers. Since 1992 he has focused almost exclusively on the balloon kit, a number of rubber balloons attached to a suitable structure and played with the hands and a set of accessories, including various kinds of sponges, pieces of Styrofoam, rubber bands, etc.. Arias has been artist in residence at Harvestworks (New York City, 1999) and at Engine 27 (New York City, 2003) and was a fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Center (Umbria, Italy, 2004). Arias has published essays in Experimental Musical Instruments (Vol. 13, #2, 1997), and Leonardo Music Journal (Vol. 8, 1998 and Vol. 12, 2001).

Zeljko McMullen - Zeljkovision: A color symphony of math and stars

A color symphony of math and stars - impenetrable walls of delicate timbres create a womb-like space, perpetually collapsing in on itself. Projections from multiple sources collide onto a central focal point - manifesting a new composite world. Sensory overload turns into lowercase intrusion, becomes a faded memory, and then disappears. This performance consists of a multitude of collaborations (obstructed) with various artists kaleidoscoped into a singular deluge. Zeljkovision glasses will be distributed to the audience.

The Bridge

The Bridge: M.V. Carbon will portray the stages of structural decomposition that occur within architecture, landscape, human physiology, and perception.  She will use imagery captured on 16 mm film and perform representational compositions. Fragmented field recordings and analog synthesizers are combined with homemade circuits, tape manipulations, and photosensitive oscillations to assimilate the disintegration.

Maryanne Amacher

Maryanne Amacher is a composer and sound installation artist. Her pioneering work in acoustics and architectural installation has earned her numerous grants and prizes, including awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc., Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Pew Memorial Trust. She was the recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica Distinction in Computer Musik in 1997, 2000, and 2005. Major works include the telepresence series CityLinks #1–22 (1967– ); the architecturally staged Music for Sound-Joined Rooms (1980– ); and the Mini-Sound Series (1985– ). She has presented pieces in solo and group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Casa de Serralves, Porto, Portugal; Whitney Biennial (2002); Kunsthalle, Basel; Galerie Nachst St. Stephan, Vienna; Kunstmuseum, Bern; Kunsthalle-Krems; Panasonic Hall, Tokyo; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Amacher was commissioned by John Cage to compose the sonic environments for Lecture On The Weather and for his solo voice composition Empty Words, and to perform these works with him (1976–84). She also received commissions from Merce Cunningham to create the repertoire music for Torse. Amacher taught at MIT while a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (1972–76), and was a Bunting Institute Fellow at Harvard University (1978–79) and a DAAD Fellow in Berlin (1986–87).

Stefan Tcherepnin

Stefan Tcherepnin is a composer/artist who has spent much of his life writing and playing music, both as a solo artist and collaborator.  Tcherepnin currently focuses on creating live electronic soundscapes out of material derived from and generated by analog electronic synthesizers, acoustic stringed instruments, and percussion…as well as the occasional archaic digital technology. His work, Transient Apparel, examines moment by moment, indefinable, and temporary occupants of the miniature spaces that holistically comprise all musical experience, by enlarging, opening up, eventually obliterating, and ultimately observing the natural reformation of these tiny, holographic places.

Davey Williams

Davey Williams has been known for several decades as one of the finest painters of seashells alive, using pleasing colors and a small brush with great intuitive skill. Thursday before last, he abandoned this activity briefly to take up improvising music on guitar. This pursuit, while less satisfying to an audience than watching laborious hand-tinting of seashells, may nevertheless be helpful in alleviating dismal reports from television news, and hopefully more "informative" as well. At the least, any attempts at profiteering will be brief and tasteful, while reasoned editorial content promises to be virtually non-existent, which it usually is on network tv anyway.

Guitarist Davey Williams has performed at most of the leading venues for and festivals of new composed and improvised music in North America and Europe (well over 1500 concerts since 1974); has appeared on over 40 published recordings, many under own name. He has performed in groups such as Curlew; in The Knitting Factory line-ups; in a long-standing partnership with LaDonna Smith; as a solo performer; and, as "Cyd Cherise", in Ron 'Pate's Debonairs with the legendary Reverend Fred Lane. Williams has collaborated extensively with a wide variety of artists, including Min Tanaka, the Shaking Ray Levis, Gunter Christmann, Anne LeBaron, John Zorn, Eugene Chadbourne, Kramer, Roger Turner, Marcus Eichenberger/Philip Micol, Billy Jenkins, and Gustavo Matamoros. He was the Co-Founder/editor of The Improvisor journal of free improvisation, and served on advisory panel to National Endowment for the Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts.

Tony Buck

Tony Buck is regarded as one of Australia's most creative and adventurous exports, with vast experience across the globe. He is the leader of the hardcore/improv. band, PERIL and has played, toured or recorded with, among others, Jon Rose, Nicolas Collins, Tenko, John Zorn, Tom Cora, Phil Minton, Haino, Switchbox, The Machine for Making Sense, Ne Zhdall, The EX, Peter Brotzmann, Hans Reichel, The Little Red Spiders, Subrito Roy Chowdury, Clifford Jordan, Kletka Red, Han Bennink, Shelley Hirsch, Wayne Horvitz, Palinckx, and Ground Zero. Following time spent in Japan, where he formed PERIL with Otomo Yoshihide and Kato Hideki, Tony moved to Europe, and involved himself in many projects there, including the development of new "virtual" MIDI controllers at STEIM in Amsterdam.

His recent performance activity focuses on solo percussion concerts using only the acoustic sounds of the drum kit and associated bits and pieces, but still incorporates the influence of his earlier work with electronic sound sources. Buck’s acoustic material is informed by his experiences with sampled sounds, loops and the over-layering of various materials.  Blending sounds, cross-fading textures and juxtaposing patterns and motifs continue to be primary concerns, as he experiments with the richness and subtlety of acoustic sounds in a living and breathing space as opposed to electronically produced, speaker driven sounds. His solo CD, “self_contained_underwater_breathing_apparatus," a forty minute solo improvised studio performance, was released in 2002.

Julia Heyward

Heyward will be showing her interactive version of "Miracles in Reverse" as well as a work-in-progress version of parts two and three of works which form a triptych with "Miracles."  The triptych is entitled "Nothing Random Access Memory" and the additional two parts are individually entitled "Points of View" and "The Gabriel Frequency." All parts of the triptych deal with trauma and memory -- some from a local perspective others from a global perspective.  "Points of View" is series of 'faux' windows, which include the artist's own bedroom window, which looks out onto Cortland Alley, and a continuous stream of Hollywood simulated violence. "The Gabriel Frequency" is a look at monotheism and its only shared middleman (some say he is a she,) the Archangel Gabriel, who is the source of much of the conflicting information that to this day is at the core of the various infidel cleansings. Heyward is collaborating with artist musician Ken Butler on the music for parts of these works. Butler will be performing live in concert with Heyward.

Multimedia artist Julia Heyward began her career as a solo performance artist touring America and Europe throughout the 1970s with work that incorporated video, film, monologues and a cappella singing. During the 1980s Heyward’s work expanded into ensemble performances as she formed and toured three multimedia music groups. In January 1981 (a year before MTV’s debut), she premiered 360, a long-form music video. Heyward won a Bessie Award for outstanding performance of the year in 1984 for No Local Stops. Her video works have been featured at various festivals, including the Tokyo International Video Biennial, the Mill Valley Film Festival and the Film-X Film Festival, Los Angeles. She has received a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

LaDonna Smith - LaDonna Smith will  play in the moment a deeply intense solo set reflecting emotional depth, technical explorations and current personal musical inclinations. In addition there may be a guest or two.

As Violinist and violist, LaDonna Smith has been on the international new music scene for nearly 30 years. She is an active performer, as well as an educator and native of Birmingham, Alabama.  LaDonna has created a style of improvisation on violin and viola that is uniquely her own. Alternating classical and extended techniques, she explores her instrument, painting scenarios and sound pictures as she plays. She has performed at practically every major improvisation festival and many of the New Music Festivals. She has toured Europe on numerous occasions, playing solo and in collaboration with many musicians. Her travels have taken her from New Music America to the former USSR, Siberia, China and Japan. In addition, she and guitarist, Davey Williams, have toured North America and Europe many times as TransMuseq.

BISSET & BEINS - John Bisset - acoustic guitar (London); Burkhard Beins -percussion and objects (Berlin). 

John Bisset and Burkhard Beins began playing together in 1995 and have toured extensively in Europe, as a duo and in collaboration with others. Over the time their playing styles have developed in very different ways, resulting in a wide range of projects from melodic instrumentals to electronic noise. Burkhard became one of the pioneers of the so-called "Berlin Reductionism", but also a member of the "post-industrial" group Perlonex and a frequent duo-collaborator of table-top guitarist Keith Rowe, whilst John explored conceptual approaches being the leader of the London Electric Guitar Orchestra (LEGO) and deconstructed song structures with his band Pocket besides working extensively as an improviser. In 2001 their duo CD "Chapel" has been released on 2:13 Music.

Peter Evans Peter Evans is a trumpeter, improvisor, and composer living in New York City. Born in 1981, Peter grew up near Boston, and moved to New York after graduating Oberlin Conservatory with a B.M. in classical trumpet performance.

While at Oberlin, Peter was able to collaborate and perform with many musicians, including James Dillon, George Lewis, Francis Marie-Uitti, and Ursula Oppens. In New York, Peter works primarily in the fields of improvised and creative music, jazz, and contemporary classical music. He co-leads the New York Trumpet Ensemble with Mark Gould, plays in the improvisation groups Imaginary Folk & Effects on Man and Animals, and leads a maximalist jazz quartet with Mary Halvorson, Moppa Elliott and Kevin Shea.  Other collaborators have included Guillermo Brown, Perry Robinson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Brian Chase, Stefan Tcherepnin, David Taylor, Marcus Rojas, Butch Morris, and Dave Douglas.  

Recent projects have included American premieres of music by Brian Ferneyhough, the premiere of Composition 103 for 7 trumpets by Anthony Braxton, the 10th Annual Vision Festival, several performances at the 3rd Annual Festival of New Trumpet Music, a collaboration with Zach Hill (drummer for Hella), and performances with Moppa Eliott's terrorist bebop band Mostly Other People do the Killing. Peter also plays with contemporary music groups Alarm Will Sound, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and Ensemble 21.  While in NYC, Peter has presented his music in many venues, including dancespace at St. Mark's church, Northsix, Tonic, and the Stone.

Glenda Goodman Violist Glenda Goodman will perform works for solo viola by Salvatore Sciarrino and Giacinto Scelsi. The ethereal, shimmering, almost meditative nature of these pieces has made it some of Glenda's favorite music for a long time. These pieces push the sonic expectations of the traditionally middle-ranged, mellow-voiced instrument, creating fleetingly beautiful soundscapes that are devilishly difficult to execute but highly stimulating to hear.

Glenda Goodman has a multi-faceted track record as a violist. The creation and performance of new music is her top priority, and to this end she has collaborated frequently with composers to generate new works for viola, and regularly performs as an improviser. Recent projects include performing in the opening Summergarden 2005 concert at the Museum of Modern Art, in which she “played brilliantly,” according to the New York Times. Glenda also is collaborating with video artist/composer team King/Diaz de Leon, in the creation of two videos, performs in Walter Thompson’s Soundpainting Orchestra, and plays Persian music with Iranian musician Hafez Nazeri. Glenda enjoys traditional classical music as well, and performed with the Mosaic Trio at Miller Theater, Weill Recital and Alice Tully Halls during in 2005. Goodman recently was awarded a Jacob Javits Fellowship to pursue her graduate studies in viola performance at The Juillard School.