Daniel Levin has performed and/or recorded with Billy Bang, Borah Bergman, Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Rob Brown, Whit Dickey, Mark Dresser, Joe Morris, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Warren Smith and others. He has recorded as a sideman Clean Feed Records, EMANEM, Not Two and Rogue Art, and as a leader on HatHut and Riti records. Levin is major new voice on his instrument and in improvised music.

Dan Blacksberg is a trombonist who is working to expand the range of the trombone in jazz and improvised music. A native and resident of Philadelphia, he has been seen all around town with such local musicians as Jack Wright, Toshi Makihara, Sonic Liberation Front and with Bobby Zankel’s Warriors of the Wonderful Sound. He has appeared in concerts produced by Bowerbird and the Ars Nova Workshop. In addition, Dan has performed with Anthony Braxton (the premiere of Composition 19 for 100 tubas), Taylor Ho Bynum, Joe Morris, Mike Pride, Nate Wooley, Katt Hernandez, Daniel Levin and Joe Maneri in many venues in New York and Boston.

Dan holds a bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with musical luminaries Bob Brookmeyer and Ran Blake. At NEC, Dan had the opportunity to work with Irene Aebi on the U.S. Premiere of her late husband Steve Lacy’s song cycle Futurities (2004), and with Gunther Schuller in the world premiere of his monumental work Encounters (2003).

Dan is also one of the premiere trombonists in the world of Klezmer. Dan has performed with Frank London, Michael Alpert, Adrienne Cooper, Alan Bern, Aaron Alexander, and the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. He has performed twice at the Krakow Jewish Music Festival as well as the Montreal Jazz Festival and is a well known presence at KlezKamp and KlezKanada.

Tim Albro guitar Philadelphia, USA

Born in Worcester, MA in 1980, currently based in Philadelphia, Tim Albro received a BA in English at Wesleyan University. Since Wesleyan, he has done ethnographic work on gospel music in West Philadelphia, composed music for a dance ensemble, as well as participate in the vibrant improvised/creative music community growing in Philadelphia. This work as an improvising/creative musician includes performing on the 12-string electric guitar /w electronics, on the prepared guitar/electronics/radio in the duo HZL, and recent solo work with home built radio transmitters. Current research interests include: the life of milarepa, green anarchism, and good advice.

Matt Mitchell piano Philadelphia, PA

Pianist, composer, and electronic musician Matt Mitchell was born in the Philadelphia area in 1975.  After studying music at Indiana University and the Eastman School of Music, he settled back in Philadelphia in 1999. Since then he has pursued an interest in the intersections of both composed and improvised music and of ‘classical’, ‘jazz’, and electronic music, performing consistently throughout the United States and Europe. In addition to his solo activities he has been a member of the long standing Philadelphia-area groups Kaktus and Feigner, both of which groups have explored new areas of non-idiomatic group improvisation and released several acclaimed albums on Scrapple Records.  His most recent recording, large-scale electroacoustic piece ‘vapor squint, antique chromatic’, was released on Scrapple in 2007 to uniformly positive reviews. In addition to being a former member of the avant-rock band Thinking Plague, he has performed with a number of musicians including Ralph Alessi, Ravi Coltrane, Drew Gress, Mark Helias, Tom Rainey, Jim Black, Ari Hoenig, Brad Shepik, Josh Roseman, and John Swana.

Paul Neidhardt percussion, friction Baltimore , USA

Baltimore ‘s Paul Neidhardt is one of the countries 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.

Alban Bailly acoustic guitar, accordion France/Philadelphia, USA

Alban Bailly, a native of France, began his music path by playing rock his youth. He moved onto studying Jazz, which opened him to free improvisation in the late nineties. In 2001 he studied Arabic music and oud in Marrakech, Morocco. Back to Nancy, France, Alban became an active performer, playing solo and together with performers in Europe. It is at this period the gypsy and Balkan music intrigued him and took him to Serbia to meet traditonal Eastern European music in 2004. Since making Philadelphia his home in 2005, Alban has experienced abundance of opportunity as a composer and a performer, collaborating with musicians from Eastcoast and beyond. Using his guitar and accordion, he plays various genres of music and often collaborates with dancers. www.albanbailly.com

Dustin Hurt trumpet, accordion Philadelphia , USA

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.