Alban Bailly

Alban Bailly's first adventure of music making began with rock in his native France . Music lessons with Eric Le Lann and Cesarius Alvim in Rennes opened him to jazz and free improvisation in the late nineties. Together with percussionist Loup Barraud, Alban formed Ghenso Project and the two traveled to Morocco to study Arabic music in 2001. Under the instruction of Marrakchi Master Mohammed El Quadi, Alban practiced classical guitar and oud. While attending Music Academy in Nancy , Alban came upon a world of free improvisation. Since 2002, he has collaborated and performed with Sebastien Coste, Camille Perrin, Louis-Michel Marion, Claire Cooper, Marit Schechte, Dominique Repecaud, Chris Heenan and many others. Performances at Musique Action festival, Theatre du Saulcy, MJC Lillebonne , France , Belgium and Germany . New found interest in gypsy jazz music, learned the gypsy music with gypsy local guitarists and founded the "Meri Wago" gypsy swing jazz trio. He continued his pursuit of eastern European music by playing traditional Balkan music in Novi Sad ( Serbia ). Alban landed in the USA in 2005 and now calls Philadelphia his home. He frequently performs with Jack Wright and plays actively with many musicians ( Evan Lipson, Dave Smolen, John BerndtÉ ) and dancers ( Nicole Bindler, Eun Jung Gonzales...) with the guitar or the accordion. www.albanbailly.com

Andy Hayleck

Andy Hayleck (b. 1972) composer/ musician and recordist. Explores the aesthetics of sound, especially regarding how sound is perceived by the ear. He uses extremes of volume, pitch, and sound complexity, and variations in change over time. For the past few years he has concentrated on using unamplified bowed metal (cymbals and saw) in performance and using contact mics, hydrophones and regular mics in recording. Although he has used a computer for many years, recently he has begun to use one live. Currently a member of Trockeneis, he recently made a solo tour of the west coast of the United States (playing the amplified gong/wire). Recordings include: "Gong/Wire" (earlids), "Various Recordings Involving Ice" (HereSee), and "The Disappearing Floor" (Recorded).

Dustin Hurt

Composer, free improvisor, and organizer, Dustin Hurt is emerging as a key element to Philadelphia 's experimental and new music scene. Dustin's frequent collaboratations include a duo with Alban Bailly (as Ko Koed), a trio with Tim Albro and Jesse Kudler (as HZL BRD), and a trio with Sean Mattio and Troy Herion. He is a performer in Nicole Bindler's Philadelphia New Dance and Music Ensemble and was a performer in John Berndt's Baltimore based large group ensemble, Second Nature, in March of 2006. He has also performed with Toshi Makihara, Jack Wright, Gene Coleman, Christine Sehnaoui, Dave Smolen, Carlos Santiago, Leandro Barzabal, Jon Barrios, and Paul Neidhardt, among others. His composed works have been performed by members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pennsylvania Ballet Orchestra, and regularly by the Philadelphia based avant-supergroup, Normal Love. Dustin is also the founding director of bowerbird, a Philadelphia based experimental music presenting organization. www.bowerbird.org

Paul Neidhardt

Baltimore's Paul Neidhardt is one of the country's most astonishing new music percussionists. A trained, highly disciplined player with a flair for complex textural sound produced by friction, Neidhardt's approach to improvising covers the majority of the terrain explored by the explosive side of European free music and subtle textural players like Sean Meehan and Jason Kahn, while retaining a freshness and flexibility of purpose all his own. His background playing rock and African music adds a potential for propulsive intensity to his playing not usually found in players so skilled in the arts of minimalist reductionism. Despite recovering from injuries that limited his time playing in recent years, he is a highly in-demand player, working with groups like Trokeneis, Death in the Maze, and Multiphonic Choir, as well as frequent collaborations with Jack Wright. He is currently a member of the Red Room collective and High Zero Foundation.

The tuba player and composer Robin Hayward was born in Brighton, England in 1969. He has developed a specific approach to tuba playing, on the one hand treating the instrument as a labyrinth of tubing within which air may be trapped and redirected, and on the other hand as a collection of individual tube lengths, tuned harmonically in whole number proportions to one other. His compositions reveal a conceptual and empirical approach towards musical instuments, draw on the musical qualities of language and explore just intonation and microtonal tuning systems. In 2005 he founded Zinc and Copper Works, a chamber ensemble dedicated to exploring tuning possibilities and noise production on brass instruments. He plays as a soloist and in numerous ensembles, including Phosphor and Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin.

Scott Smallwood was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up at 10,000 feet in elevation in the Colorado Rockies. When Smallwood was 10 years old, he received his first tape recorder, and ever since he has been fascinated by the possibilities of recorded sound. Currently based in New Jersey, Smallwood's work deals with real and abstracted sound textures based on a practice of listening, improvisation, and phonography. Ranging between sonic photographs, abstracted studio pieces, improvisations, and composed structures, his work attempts to deal with the puzzle of pulling signal out of noise.

He has performed with a variety of improvisors including Cor Fuhler, Joe McPhee, Phil Gelb, Todd Reynolds, John Butcher, Mark Dresser, and Pauline Oliveros. His instrumental compositions have included performances by Network for New Music, Ensemble SurPlus, the Boston Sound Collective, and the Brentano String Quartet.

His work has been presented in a variety of national and international venues including recent presentations at Roulette in NYC, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the 2004 ICMC in Miami, and the Kulturhaus E-Werk in Frieberg, Germany. His work has been released on Autumn Records, Deep Listening, Televaw, Simple Logic, Static Caravan, and Webbed Hand Records.