Paul Hoskin:

Paul Hoskin began his musical work with a program of self-education, playing the bass clarinet exclusively. A native of Seattle, Paul lived on both coasts and traveled globally. Collaborations have included the orchestral as well as numerous smaller formations. Paul currently plays baritone saxophone and clarinet.

An accomplished solo performer, Hoskin extends the form both in terms of duration and sonority. His annual ninety minute contrabass clarinet solos were legendary. Performances take place in venues ranging from jazz festivals in Czechoslovakia to oyster bars in Jackson, Mississippi.

As a New Yorker (1987-1995), Hoskin worked in innumerable ensemble settings as well as developing his skills as a solo performer. This work included the trio Trigger (Fred Lonberg-Holm-cello, Leslie Ross-bassoon) and the Dierker/Hoskin/Meehan trio, with Baltimorite John Dierker on reeds and Sean Meehan with drumset. Though improvisation informs the work of these ensembles, compositional form (“language”) is an explicit element. Work with dancers (especially Linda Austin) also was a feature of Paul’s development. A longstanding member of a music/dance improvisation workshop, Hoskin worked on the development of vocabularies/structures that both dancers and musicians could use.

Returning to Seattle (1996-2001), Paul involved himself with ensembles as well as countless ad hoc formations. Groups included: Tactile: Lori Goldston-cello and Robert Jenkins-guitar; UnFolkUs: Rob Bageant-chapman stick, Bill Horist-guitar, Eveline Mueller-Graf-percussion; Bolt: Angelina Baldoz-trumpet, Aimee Sullivan-saxophones, Greg Powers-trombone, tuba; Jerman/Hoskin/Horist: Jeph Jerman- percussion, Bill Horist-guitar. These groupings reflect Hoskin’s continuing involvement with improvisation.

Paul, as founder of the Seattle Festival of Improvised Music (in 1985), continually assisted with organization of events as well. (Even re-fueled the aforementioned Festival in 1996.)

After moving to rurality (Clallam Bay and the Olympic Peninsula), Paul “vacates” from urban music life, as he re/hears to re/begin. From 2002 until the present. As Paul begins to play, re/joining with many of his “past” colleagues becomes the present and the future.

Manpack Variant

Jaime Fennelly:

Jaime Fennelly is an electronicist from Brooklyn, New York. He is a founding member of psi and one half of aktionist noise cover band, Pee In My Face with Surgery. He collaborated with choreographer/dancer Miguel Gutierrez from 2001 - 2004 and regularly plays with Swiss/NY duo Le Doigt de Galilée. Other recent collaborators include Sean Meehan, Charles Atlas, Chris Heenan and Shawn Hansen. Jaime has released records on Evolving Ear, Locust Music, Falçata-Galia and Happy Zloty.

Chris Peck:

Chris Peck is a Brooklyn-based electronic musician and composer, primarily concerned with listening, field recording, live performance and improvisation with the computer, and collaboration with dance. He has composed music for choreographers including John Jasperse, David Dorfman, Eleanor Bauer, and Beth Gill, and is currently working on a new piece with Mark Jarecke. Recent projects have also included an audio correspondence with Karinne Keithley, a series of incrementally revised self-released CDRs, experiments in graphic scores and structures for collective improvisation, and an installation with Fritz Welch. In addition to his work with Manpack Variant, Chris has also makes music with Regina Sadowski, Stephen Rush, Jon Moniaci, Nate Wooley, and Wrasses (with Chris Forsyth).

Floss

John Seman:

John Seman is an active bassist, composer and archivist in Seattle, WA. He is a founding member and current director of the Monktail Creative Music Concern.

John was born in New Jersey and began playing the piano as a boy. While enduring public education John developed skills o­n trumpet, tuba, percussion, guitar and double bass and began composing and studying music theory.

John earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Ethnomusicology and Music Composition from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he studied ethnomusicology with Roderic Knight, composition and theory with Randolph Coleman, Param Vir and Richard Hoffmann, and double bass with Peter Dominguez, Ralphe Armstrong and Richard Davis. While at Oberlin he also studied Sitar and North Indian vocal technique, performed in the Oberlin Gamelan Kyai Barleyan, and took lessons o­n West African Mandinka Kora.

In 1997 John moved to Washington, D.C. and was granted a graduate fellowship to the University of Maryland in College Park, whose ethnomusicology program is strengthened by the direction of Ki Mantle Hood. John continued his Mandinka studies there with 149th generation Senegalese Jali Djimo Kouyate while teaching workshops o­n West African drumming and music culture. John’s interest in recorded media thrived in D.C. as he archived historical content for The Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Estate of American Composer Elie Siegmeister and worked very late nights at the very bitchin’ LION and FOX Recording Studios.

John relocated to Seattle, WA in 1999 where he currently resides. By mid-2000, Seman and percussionist Mark Ostrowski had begun abducting performers, artists and other nogoodniks from Seattle’s seedy underbelly toward a revitalized MCMC cause.

During the daytime, John is the Audiovisual Preservation Specialist at a new music museum, and he has presented papers and workshops o­n archiving and preservation techniques at local and national conferences.

John has been a contributing member of Butoh-bizarre-o group The Degenerate Art Ensemble, post-punk performance artists Mail Order Bride and even good ol’ folkies The Kerry Lauder Band - before he was replaced. John has performed with many of the Northwest’s most original improvising musicians and had his compositions performed by the many members of MCMC.

Izaak Mills:

Izaak is a talented and imaginative multi-instrumentalist and reedman. Izaak is a jazz nazi.

Izaak’s Fabulous Street Band can be heard around Seattle busking for your change, and Ike also leads the trio Floss with John Seman and Mark Ostrowski. One of the original woodwind players of the Monktail Creative Music Concern, his other projects include the Boogie Brown Band, the Infernal Noise Brigade, Bacteria and Picoso.

Mark Ostrowski:

Mark Ostrowski was born of Polish stock on January 12, 1975.

-Attended Gov. Mifflin High School – Graduated 1993

Won Loius Armstrong Jazz award, and various outstanding soloist awards with the Gov. Mifflin Jazz Band. In 1992 performed with acclaimed multi saxophonist / flutist / Dennis Di Blasio.

-Attended Berklee school of Music from 1993-1998 where he studied composition with Thomas McGaw, John Bovich, Tibor Putzi, Armand Qualliotine, Danny Harrington, Ken Pulling, Dennis LaClaire. He also studied percussion and performance with Ian Froman, Jamey Haddad, Mike Rinquist, Skip Haden, Jon Hazila, Richard Flannagan, and Nancy Zeltzman.

-As a performer, Mark Ostrowski has been involved with Pennsylvania avant-rock groups OPEN, Yeast and Your Mom. He is a founding member of the Monktail Creative Music Concern, and currently performs with Deal’s Number, Non Grata, Shit Orange Horsey, Dry Socket, and pretty much every other group in the M.C.M.C. with the exclusion of Johnny and the Primordial Poo. Mark toured extensively through the U.S. with the group “Allset” as their percussionist between 1997 and 1999. He was with Allset when they released their albums “Bakers Dozen”, and “Gelatin in Vermont”. He is currently in preparation to perform “Mark Drinks and Goes Home” by John Seman

-Marks compositions have been performed by Stephen Fandrich, Sean Owen, Matt Coe, Sadeeq Holmes, John Seman, Izaak Mills, And many members of the Monktail Creative Music Concern.

-Mark Ostrowski created “the Cabbage Foundation” in 1997 to explore experimental electronic music of all kinds, and to give younger musicians a chance to explore their instruments in totally improvised situations.

-He is the prime interpreter for Sir Julius Pudding.

-He has had a very profound effect on the visual work associated with the Monktail Creative Music Concern.

Na

Kazutaka Nomura:

Kazutaka Nomura was born in Asahikawa, Hokkaido in 1984. He was brought up by jazz enthusiast father, started playing electric guitar at age of 14 and studied with Harumichi Saitoh. Soon after he came to Seattle, he started playing open mic shows at local cafes. Noriaki and Shinsuke met him at Shoreline Community College. He was wearing a pair of pink shoes.

Kazu plays classical guitar, purcussion and sings. He develops improvisational concepts for the group, and does a lot of collaboration with other musicians. Currently he studies classical and jazz guitar with Dave Peterson and Steven Novacek at Cornish College of Arts. His favorite fruit is the strawberry.

As a professional guitarist, he is happy to play at weddings and parties.

Shinsuki Yamada:

Shinsuke Yamada was born in Japan. He started playing the guitar with no string on it at age of 16 and started putting his ideas together onto a MD and later a hard disk recorder with lots of effects. He came to Seattle to go to college in 2001. Soon, after he came to Seattle, he started exploring in the improvised music sense. There he began performing either solo or with other Seattle based musicians at venues such as Coffee Messiah and festivals including the first year Seattle noise festival.

A night in the summer of 2004, Shinsuke took Kazu to Noriaki’s recording studio. Kazu was bare feet. They jammed for the first time, and Na started. He plays the electronic guitar, laptop, and his special drum kit in the group. He does graphics and film, also. He likes keeping himself busy and is open to any collaboration

Noriaki Watanabe:

I was born inTushima-city which is 30 minutes west from Nagoya-city which is the forth biggest city in Japan. I always liked music, and when I met the Beatles at the age of 15, I decided to become a musician and play music in other parts of the world not only in Japan.

At this point of my life, I live in Seattle, the United States, going to school and playing music in two bands, pause pneumatick and na.

I have made lots of mistakes that I don’t want to make again, and I’m very sorry if I hurt someone because of my insensibility, but I think I’ll still hang in here and live in this world somemore.

My favorite song at this moment is Homeward Bound by Simon & Garfunkel.

By the way, I don’t really play the cello.
Noriaki's homepage

Gutcanes Trio

Sara Schoenbeck:

Los Angeles bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck is dedicated to performing contemporary music and is always interested in expanding the sound pallette of the bassoon. Sara has performed with the ROVA Sazophone Quartet, Lisle Ellis, Anthony Braxton, Gino Robair, Fred Frith, Wayne Horvitz, Yusef Lateef and the L.A.-based conductor-less chamber orchestra Mladi, to name a few. She is currently a member of Vinny Golia's Large Ensemble, the L.A. contemporary music group Ensemble Green, Dakah Hip-Hop Orchestra, and Adam Rudolph's GO Orchestra.

Jesse Canterbury:

Clarinetist Jesse Canterbury has performed new music in a variety of different contexts, ranging from modern classical music through free improvisation. His playing draws from a nonlinear approach to the clarinet and includes a large vocabulary of extended techniques. He has worked and performed with George Lewis, Butch Morris, the Shaking Ray Levis, Walter Thompson, Philip Gelb, Matthew Sperry, Gino Robair, and Kevin Drumm, and Daniel Carter. Since moving to Seattle in August 2000, he has performed with the finest of Seattle improvisers and has appeared multiple times at the Seattle Festival of Improvised Music, at Earshot Jazz's Voice and Vision Series, the annual Arts-in-Nature Festival, and the Olympia Experimental Music Festival. Additionally, he has kept an active schedule as a chamber musician, performing in '02 and '03 with the Seattle Creative Orchestra, the University of Washington Contemporary Group, and the Seattle New Music Ensemble. He has studied music at the University of Washington and is currently studying clarinet with Canadian clarinet virtuoso François Houle and the legendary American clarinetist William O. Smith.

Nathan Levine:

Seventeen years of bass instrument study has shaped Nathan Levine into a musician who understands what is fundamentally desired from a piece of music. From slow and beautiful to freaky and frantic, the sounds he coaxes from his instrument can be delightfully spellbinding at times. At other times, well, we'll just say that he has had this penchant of late for the weird and wondrous. He is currently the artistic director for Puree, a theater company intent on getting deeply into a lovely mix of improvised musique, theater & dance; and musical director of Volute, an improvising chamber musique ensemble interested in spinning creatively contemplative musical yarns. Both groups involve numerous artists, yet both focus on unique, tightly knit small ensemble work. The varying lineups create an ever changing concoction of aural and visual stimuli. In August 2004 he launched his "ecstatic and erratic" creative performance series aptly entitled “Whole Lotta Noise”.

Lê Quan Ninh:

Born in Paris in 1961

Lê Quan Ninh began piano studies at 5 years old and began percussion studies when he was a teen-ager. He entered the Conservatoire de Versailles in the class of Sylvio Gualda when he was 16. Four years later, he obtained the first prize. Besides thoses studies, he was already very interested about improvisation discovered during numerous concerts that were organized in Paris and its suburb at this time.

Out of the conservatory, he taught percussion in a conservatory for three years and started to play within several contemporary music ensembles and within dance and theatre companies. Nevertheless, he persisted in leading himself as a self-taught towards free improvisation. Several encounters encouraged him to work in that way : with the guitarist Jean-Christophe Aveline, the clarinetist Misha Lobko and the saxophonist Daunik Lazro. Ninh was already a big fan of Daunik as soon as he saw him for the first time during a tribute to Charlie Parker organized by the photographer Horace in 1979 where he played with violence and lyricism.

Together, they worked in Blois within the Compagnie du Hasard directed by Nicolas Peskine. During a tour in Poland in 1986, Michel Doneda joined the company. The trio continued to play out of the company, gave numerous concerts in Europe before becoming Les Diseurs de Musique, a quartet with the poet Serge Pey.

Since 1986, he is one of the members of the Quatuor Hêlios, a percussion ensemble which premieres new pieces mixing percussion, theatre and new technology.

In 1987, Lê Quan Ninh met the bass player Peter Kowald during the Free Music Festival in Antwerpen and two years later, this one invited him to participate to different Global Village, groups featuring improvisers from different cultures : Kazue Sawai, Sainkho Namtchylak, Seizan Matsuda, Zeena Parkins, Junko Ueda, Ishii Mitsutaka, Leo Smith, Savina Yanatou, India Cooke, Xu Feng Xia, Werner Lüdi, Gunda Gottschalk,...

From the same period, he participated to several Conductions of Butch Morris (in Kassel, Istanbul, Verona, Münich, Sevilla, ...) and some of them have been edited on CD's.

Since then, he participates to numerous encounters in Europe and in the USA and plays regularly in ensembles in forms that mix acoustic & electroacoustic music, improvisation, "art performance", dance, poetry, experimental cinema, photography and video...

From 1992 to 2002, he is founder and a member of the Association La Flibuste engaged in the organisation and presentation of improvisation in relation to others art forms.The association organised almost 140 artistic events in the area of Toulouse and elsewhere. He also has been a member of Ouie Dire Production which produces special recordings.

In 1993, Quatuor Hêlios requests a new piece of interactive computer music to George Lewis. This is the beginning of a long work with computers. Several experiences are made which involve interaction between acoustic instruments and computer in the field of improvisation but also in the field of composition. A piece is written for the Quatuor Hêlios : Oscille. The first part has been premiered at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts at the University of San Diego, California and the entire piece has been premiered at the Sons d'Hiver festival in 1998. In collaboration with the mathematician Philippe Besse, he created18h22 an installation based on Erik Satie's Vexations which involves two computers allowing a moving spatialization of the Satie's piano piece and the replacement pixel by pixel of Satie's face by John Cage's face (and vice versa).

Because he began to improvise for a dance course, Lê Quan Ninh always privileges encounters with dancers. In that way, he works currently with Iwana Masaki, Valérie Métivier, Nakamura Yukiko, Michel Raji, Pascal Delhay, Franck Beaubois et Patricia Kuypers.

In 2000, he introduced the two first projects called Umwelt based by the work of the ethologist Jakob von Uexkül. In this series of project, the artistic coherence doesn't come from a direction or a spectacular will but from the autonomy of each artist puting in relation his/her own perception of the real through the tools of his/her own.

In 2003, he is artist in residence in Biel (Switzerland) invited by the Office of the Culture of the State of Bern. During this residence he met artists as the musicians Charlotte Hug, Daniel Erismann, Katrin Scholl, Pierre Eggimann, Philippe Krüttli, Christian Wolfarth, Tomas Korber, Christian Müller, Gaudenz Badrutt, Claudia Binder, Jacques Demierre, Franziska Baumann, Gilles Schwab, Hans Koch, Martin Schütz, Dorothea Schürch, Jürg Solothurnmann, Lu Ying-Ying, Franz Aeschbacher, Hans Anliker, Christoph Zimmermann, Marianne Anliker, Gilles Aubry, ...the dancers Katharina Vogel, Sophie Dubrocard and the Compagnie du Quotidien, the video-artists Maïté Colin and Michael Egger, etc...

Karen Stackpole:

Karen Stackpole performs and records with metals/gongs duo Euphonics, Dean Santomieri, Ron Thompson, Myles Boisen, Moe Staiano, and John Schott’s Ensemble Diglossia as well as collaborating on various other projects. Gongs and resonance are the calling. Small distinct sounds (a la insect music) and use of silence and space rank high also. She is the drummer for Cactus Motel and has played with Malcolm Mooney and The Tenth Planet, Moxie, Bolshoi Rodeo, and Rare Thing. She is the percussionist for the improvising quartet, Vorticella. Her percussive efforts include work with the Onsite Dance Company and the San Francisco Shin Taido group. Karen also operates Stray Dog Recording Services and works as a freelance writer for DRUM! and Electronic Musician magazines.

Tim Duroche:

Tim DuRoche is a jazz drummer, conceptual artist, curator, and freelance writer living in Portland, Oregon. Over the last decade he's played all forms of jazz from dixieland and grindhouse to swing, bop and beyond. He's a vital force in the NW jazz-improvisation community, who performs frequently in Seattle, San Francisco/Bay Area with some of the west coast and Europe’s prime figures.

“One of Portland’s most interesting players” (Cadence magazine), DuRoche has an idiosyncratic, yet melodic approach to sound, rhythm, swing, and space and an uncanny ability to work both sides of the jazz continuum, from ragtime to no time. Working with a broad palette of sounds, he engages traditional drums, cymbals in a glassbead game alongside such unconventional elements as small gongs, beads and bells, cloth, saw blades, violin bows, sand, water, and mechanical toys. For many years, he performed solely with a minimal combination of snare-hihat-brushes—developing a singular, trademark approach to sound, rhythm, swing, and space—and working both sides of the jazz continuum, from ragtime to no time ( with such folks as pianist Butch Thompson, Cap’n Jack McDuff, Douglas Ewart and Carei Thomas of the AACM, George Cartwright, and poet Tracie Morris, among others. More recently, DuRoche’s been working with a who’s who of West Coast and European jazz innovators, including Paul Plimley-Lisle Ellis, Wally Shoup, Bert Wilson, Perry Robinson, Phillip Greenlief, Jack Wright, Gust Burns, Bob Marsh, Ron Heglin, Frank Gratkowski, Bill Horist, John Edwards, John Gross, Michael Bisio, André St. James, Rob Blakeslee, Jerome Bryerton, Glen Moore, Jim Knodle, Rich Halley, Michael Vlatkovich, Doug Theriault, Torsten Müller, and Damon Smith. He’s involved currently in an ongoing series of intermedia duo performances, recordings, and projects-installations with poet-conceptual artist Lisa Radon, as well as with a cooperative trio featuring pianist Scott R. Looney and Damon Smith from the Bay Area, and in the deconstructed Monk ensemble Humph.

Arrington de Dionyso:

Arrington de Dionyso (b. January 4th, 1975) of Olympia, Washington uses performance as a vehicle for driving through the nameless territories held between surrealist automatism, shamanic seance, and the folk imagery of rock and roll.

Arrington moved to Olympia in 1992 to attend the Evergreen State College, where he studied Ethnomusicology, Music Therapy, and Butoh dance theater. In 1995 he founded the group Old Time Relijun, which has since toured and recorded throughout the US and Europe and has released six albums on the K Records label from Olympia, enthralling audiences with an approach to performance described as deep hermetic practice and/or "stewed diarrhea" by critics in the k(no)w.

Arrington performs on the bass clarinet, jaw harps, and his voice with a distinctly multiphonic ability inspired by Tuvan throatsinging and the ecclesiastics of Albert Ayler and Don Van Vliet. Pushing the envelope between musicality and pure energy, between religious ecstacy and lunacy, Arrington enwraps rooms with resonant sound.

In addition to Old Time Relijun, Arrington devotes a significant amount of his time to furthering the cause of free improvisation. He is the founder and curator of the Olympia Festival of Experimental Musics, in its eleventh year. Arrington has performed or/and recorded with notable improvisers throughout the West Coast, Italy, and France.

Arrington has received increased attention for his visual art work, which deals with many of the same themes as his music. Recent exhibits have been held in Los Angeles, New York City, Vancouver BC, Paris, and Bologna. A series of several dozen ink drawings is on view at www.kpunk.com/oldtimerelijun.

What We Live

Larry Ochs:

Born 1949 in New York City. Larry has served as an advisor to the San Francisco Chamber Music Society and has received Meet the Composer grants from Chicago, Milwaukee, New York and California, as well as a commission award from the Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program in 1989. In 1987, he was a featured composer at New Music America. In addition to his work with Rova, Larry is a member and composer of Room, a new music trio with electronics composer Chris Brown and percussionist William Winant (with 2 CD's on the labels Sound Aspects and Music & Arts) and a founding member of the Glenn Spearman Double Trio, whose first CD he produced for Black Saint Records in 1992. Also in 1992, he was commissioned by Antwerpen '93's year-long festival of the arts to compose a work for ten-piece ensemble. Larry has studied trumpet as well as saxophone. He also has an extensive background in musical production, having owned and operated Twelve Stars Studio in Northern California as well as having founded Metalanguage Records in 1978.
Larry Ochs homepage

Lisle Ellis:

Lisle Ellis has been an active performer on acoustic bass, and a composer, conductor, curator and director of orchestras, and small ensembles for more than twenty-five years. The force and beauty of his art, both visual and musical, is apparent in all that he creates. Ellis began playing bass in 1963, and in 1973,he enrolled in the music Department at Douglas College, Vancouver, where he studied with Milan Hurt of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

From 1975-1979, Ellis studied in New York at the renowned Creative Music Studio (CMS) with many of the luminaries of creative music. The most developmentally influential of these musicians was Cecil Taylor. Since that time, Ellis has worked with many players associated with Taylor including Andrew Cyrille, Raphe Malik, as well as the late Jimmy Lyons and Glenn Spearman.

While living in Canada, he founded the New Orchestra Workshop (NOW) in 1978 and the Association des Musiciems Improvisaterus de Montreal in 1991. He has lectured at numerous Universities and has served as artistic director/curator form many festivals in Canada and America.

Ellis has toured and performed worldwide with many if not all of the luminaries of creative music - Paul Bley, Alvin Curran, Marilyn Crispell, Myra Melford, and Paul Plimley. He has also collaborated extensively with dancers, actors, and artists from Europe, Canada, and America.

Ellis has recorded extensively. He is featured on at least 40 CD's. He began winning awards and commissions in 1978, and in 1991, he was the first musician honored in Canada as a recipient of the Freddie Stone Award, which is presented annually to a musician who has shown innovation and integrity in their field.

The current direction of his music is highly experimental integrating the bass with electronics. Presently he divides his time between San Diego and San Francisco.
Lisle Ellis at bayimproviser.com

Donald Robinson:

Described as a 'percussive dervish' (Coda) Donald Robinson is a technical master of the drums. He is a stalwart of the of San Francisco bay area avant-garde jazz scene, playing and recording with many of the area's improvisational players, from saxophonists John Tchicai, Marco Eneidi and Larry Ochs to koto player Miya Masaoka and pianist Matthew Goodheart, and with prominent visitors like Cecil Taylor, Wadada Leo Smith, George Lewis, trumpeter Raphe Malik and Canadian pianist Paul Plimley. Much of this work has featured the combination of Robinson and bassist Lisle Ellis as rhythm section: 'the best bass-drums tag team on the scene' (Jazz Times). His longest musical association, dating from the 1970's, was with the late tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman.

Born is Boston, Massachusetts in 1953, Robinson first studied classical percussion at the New England Conservatory. During the early 1970's he served his musical apprenticeship in the jazz world of Paris, studying with Kenny Clarke and playing with Alan Silva, Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake and Bobby Few among many others. He first played with Spearman as a duet partner during this period in Paris, an association which continued through various configurations and many recordings until the saxophonist's death in 1998.

Robinson is currently playing in many configurations with a broad range of musicians throughout Europe and the US.
Donald Robinson at bayimproviser.com

Beach Party

Linda Gale Aubrey:

Electronics.

Linda Gale Aubry's first instrument as a child was an egg slicer. Her earliest memories include being fascinated with the sound of humming transformers, birds, the distant sound of the television which she references through her harp and electronics. Aubry studied music at Berklee, Boston Conservatory and Bennington but has developed a career in visual arts. As Ambrosia Porcelain, Linda and her mother Miriam create handmade and handpainted porcelain pieces. In addition to Beach Party, Aubry is a member of the duo, with double-bassist Mike Bullock, peep, and perofrms in a trio with Bullock and sampler player Brendan Murray called The Please.
ambrosiaporcelain.com

Chris Cogburn:

Percussion.

Drummer Chris Cogburn is an active performer and organizer within Austin’s creative music community . The founder of the Creative Music Workshop, Cogburn has previously hosted Austin performances by International improvisors, always in direct collaboration with local artists. Beginning in the summer of 2003, the Creative Music Workshop has hosted an annual festival of improvised music - the No Idea Festival - showcasing a handful of Texas' premiere creative musicians in collaboration with improvisors from around the U.S. and Europe . A 2-cd set documenting this year's festival (2004) was released in November 2004 on Cogburn's own ten pounds to the sound record/dvd label .

Since 2000 Chris Cogburn has worked intimately with Houston trombonist/educator Dave Dove, facilitating workshops on improvised music and art . Their work together has led them around th US and parts of Mexico, working in contexts as diverse as inner city community centers, homeless shelters, battered women's shelters, public and private high schools, dance studios, a church and Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening Space - where they held a co-residency in the fall of 2002 . In Austin, Cogburn has held weekly workshops, along with guitarist Kurt Newman, on improvised music .

The last few years has seen Chris performing with national and international improvisers including : Joe McPhee, John Butcher, Joelle Leandre, Alvin Fielder, Marc Whitecage, Matt Ingalls, Mike Bullock, Sabine Vogel, Sean Meehan, Susan Alcorn, Michael Griener, Bryan Eubanks and Tatsuya Nakatani . He has, along with Joe McPhee and Dave Dove, a cd slated for release on Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening label . He is also a member of the improvising trio 'Perruque' with Kurt Newman (amplified guitar) and Aaron Tucker (clown) .

Bryan Eubanks:

Soprano saxophone and analog tape.

Bryan Eubanks lives, and does most of his work, in Portland, Oregon. He has been active in improvised music for over 1 million years. However, it was in this wonderful locale, Portland, that he was turned on to the method of Free Improvisation (and continues to be inspired) through collaborations with guitarist Jean-Paul Jenkins and Joseph Foster. Since those fertile grounds were broken in 2000/2001, the community in Portland has grown tenfold and could now be counted among the very creative and active improvising communities in the States. Bryan is glad to be a part of this "thing" in Portland, but he is also very happy to travel around the country, and other parts of the world, meeting new friends and wonderful players, hearing and meeting what he would call his mentors, and generally expanding his vocabulary in all of its manifestations. socks and shoes.

At this time, Bryan's playing revolves mostly around the Soprano Saxophone, and an increasingly idiosyncratic language on that instrument. However, there is still a strong connection to the lyricism and "melody" of the Alto Saxophone. In addition to these accoustic sound sources, Bryan has become fascinated by a suitcase that contains some slightly modified open-circuit electronics and the variable sound fields made possible by such flexible methods of interaction. There is also a parallel interest in analog tape, discovered through interaction with players in Los Angeles, that has turned into an avid creation of, and search for, tape-head based instruments.

He runs a small record label, a tiny one, in fact: rasbliutto
Bryan Eubanks at blogspot.com

Murderous Copulation of Birds

Gregory Reynolds:

Saxophonist Gregory Reynolds in his own words:"As a composer and improviser, I am interested in exploring the historical relationship between people and sounds and working out a musical identity that makes sense in the context of 21st century urban life in America. The presence of increasing globalization, the availability of vast amounts of information, and the monolithic influence of the music "industry" are some factors influencing our identity that demand constant investigation. Especially in an urban environment where information in the forms of media, ambient noise, and human interaction are most dense, people often react with desensitization and the muting of the senses. Recently, I have been working to re-orient myself to sound through the pursuit of improvisation based musics that work with sound as narrative vibrational architecture capable of reflecting and communicating a sublime space. A loose but encompasing focus that continues in a constant state of waking, always one foot in the spirit world, allowing sound to become song."

Cristin Miller:

Cristin Miller began as a classical pianist in Los Angeles, until tendonitis forced a change in direction (the culprit: "Diabolic Suggestions" by Prokofiev). After studying jazz voice in Santa Cruz and earning a degree in creative writing, she moved to Seattle, where for the last three years she has become increasingly embroiled in the improvised music community. Although she credits her beginnings as an improviser to a week-long workshop four years ago with performance artist Nina Wise, Cristin's style has been greatly influenced by the circle of talented musicians here in Seattle, including the trouble-makers at OMW. Cristin currently performs as a vocalist in Switch (with Gust Burns, Annie Lewandowski, Gregory Reynolds, Jason Anderson, and Angelina Baldoz), Volute (with Tom Swafford and Nathan Levine), Pique (with Adam Diller and dancer Corrie Befort), and Emma Zunz (with Annie Lewandowski), as well as the Murderous Copulation of Birds.

Kamigakari

Beth Fleenor:

Clarinetist Beth Fleenor comes to the Northwest via her home state of Tennesee. Currenltly finishing a Bachelor’s of Music degree at Cornish College of the Arts, Fleenor has spent most of her time exploring the creative music scenes of Seattle and Nashville since 1998. You can find Fleenor’s work in the following idioms: jazz, rock, classical, contemporary chamber, metal, folk, ambient, surf, and noise, as well as in a variety of venues including night clubs, concert halls, and art galleries. Recently, Fleenor presented New; Works: a clarinet recital of new variety featuring 10 commissioned pieces of music by some of Seattle’s most innovative composers in forms ranging from neo-classical, atonal, and experimental, to laptop collaborations, country songs, and theatrical noise-scapes.

Over the course of the last year, Fleenor has started a multitude of projects which are all seeking their places in the Seattle creative music world. These groups include a five piece jazz assemblage sculpted by Denney Goodhew, a chamber quartet dedicated to music of the 21st century called Artha, and the generative and interpretive efforts of Kamigakari. Fleenor is director of The Frank Agency: Innovative Arts Management, an active member of the Monktail Creative Music Concern, and one of the collective operators of Gallery 1412. For more info please visit: www.thefrankagency.org

Mark Oi:

Mark Oi has been heard extensively on both the national and international levels, touring and recording with saxophone legend John Tchicai. His time away from Tchicai’s group, the Archetypes, has been spent finishing a Bachelor’s of Music Degree at Cornish College of the Arts where he studied/performed with Denney Goodhew, Julian Priester, Jarrad Powell, Dave Peck, and Dave Peterson. Oi is noted as an artist not limited by genre and can be found playing in a variety of formats and locations.