Articulated with defiant raw beauty, Dahl and Oe crack the facade of our mediated reality, plunging into the darkness and truth beyond our daily skin. They embody their discoveries, a live transmission, a possession, they are the sounds and movements of our zeitgeist. Honesty, force and elegance define Dahl & OE’s performance, giving voice to unspoken knowns and reigniting our desire to be bathed in the intangibles of live experience…

“For years, few improvisation units have been as omnipresent in the D.C. area as Heart of the Ghost. For good reason: The trio of alto saxophonist Jarrett Gilgore, bassist Luke Stewart, and percussionist Ian McColm is something of a trinity of the finest free jazz improvisers in the region. If you’ve seen Heart of the Ghost in concert, then you know—Gilgore, Stewart, and McColm’s performances feel like a kind of séance, with the trio locked into a musical conversation with one another.

Daniel Levin is “one of the instrument’s most brilliant contemporary practitioners” (The Wire), “ridiculously fluent, virtually overflowing with ideas” (New York City Jazz Record) and “very much the man to watch.” (Penguin Guide to Jazz). No matter what setting he plays in, cellist Daniel Levin occupies a musical space bordered by many kinds of music, but fully defined by none of them…

Stephen Vitiello and Molly Berg are a collaborative duo who have create CD and record releases for the NYC-based 12k label and the French label IIKKI Books. Their most recent release, "I Drew A Fish Hook and It Turned Into A Flower" features guest-musicians including percussionist and drummer Justin Alexander. This is Stephen and Molly's first performance in 6 years. It's their first live performance with Justin. The trio will combine electronics, voice, clarinet, guitar and drums.

Zach Rowden is interested in the thresholds of acoustic phenomena and performance. The instruments used range from the double bass, electric bass, fiddle, and cassette tapes which are dragged through genres otherwise known as spectralism, drone, American folk, and harsh noise. He is currently based in New Haven, Connecticut…

Nat Baldwin is a musician and writer living in Portland, Maine. He began playing double bass in high school and studied jazz performance at the Hartt School of Music before dropping out to pursue his own musical interests outside the confines of academia. In 2001, he moved to Middletown, CT to immerse himself in the Wesleyan experimental music community, studying with Anthony Braxton and performing with such artists as Mary Halvorson, Charlie Looker, Nate Wooley, Tatsuya Nakatani, Daniel Carter, Jack Wright, and Jessica Pavone.

Jack Wright- saxes, Ron Stabinsky- piano and synth.

They both have the capacity to shift from near-classical to near-jazz to nearly insane, bringing in bits of melody from virtually anywhere, along with kicking and screaming. They have performed often but will do their first full tour as duo. 

MANAS is moving outward while exploding in a parallel plane that curls up into a tight ball before achieving escape velocity.

Bill Direen will read from his fiction and poetry and he will perform songs as well, self-accompanied and with assistance from Matt Swanson and Chris Davis.

"Bill Direen grew up in the sixties surrounded by music and poetry of all sorts, classical, cultural, liturgical, radio pop and rock. He was fortunate to study electronic music under Douglas Lilburn before concentrating on literature (M.A. Hons, Canterbury University) and developing an independent career as writer and musician...

Anteloper is the electric brain child of Jamie Branch (fly or die, high life) and Jason Nazary (little women, helado negro, bear in heaven)… Blacks' Myths create pulsing, hypnotic rhythmic structures that churn unpredictably, all while exploring the cracks and ambience in between. The DC duo is comprised of Luke Stewart on bass and Warren G. "Trae" Crudup III on drums.

…Samara’s violin creates a base of long form string distention, against which Bill’s amp-shudder creates event surges that fill your brain with frozen images of walls caught in mid-collapse, and continents sinking into a sea…

NYC-based duo LEYA is harpist Marilu Donovan (Eartheater, Julie Byrne) and violinist/vocalist Adam Markiewicz (PC Worship, The Dreebs). In 2018, the duo released "The Fool," available on NNA Tapes, and a full length soundtrack for the erotic film "I Love You," directed by Brooke Candy and produced by PornHub…Thieves of Shiloh is a solo project by Richmond VA, based multi-instrumentalist JK

Unicorns in the Snow (Julia Vering) of Kansas City and Anna Azizzy of Pittsburgh are touring new solo experimental multimedia works together June 2019'. Vering and Azizzy met last summer while performing together and realized their performances were the perfect pairing…

Claire Rousay and Jacob Wick is a drums and trumpet duo. The pair chew up the macho and militaristic histories of their respective instruments and spit out vulnerability and absurdity. They have been performing together since June 2018.

Heart of the Ghost is an improvisational unit from the Baltimore/Washington area. Comprised of Jarrett Gilgore (alto saxophone), Luke Stewart (bass) and Ian McColm (drums), this group is the culmination of years of encircling orbits. Collectively encompassing a massive variety of interests and collaborators-- including Dave Rempis, Tashi Dorji, Dave Ballou, Jaimie Branch-- and themselves known players in the circles of improvised music, these three find common ground within their individual vocabularies: an aim to deconstruct and reshape canonized creative tropes into a new & stunning language.

Bill Baird is an Oakland, CA-based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and multimedia artist. An incredibly prolific musician, he has released an enornmous volume of work under several different monikers over the past 20 years. Bill will be touring in support of his newest work, Owl. . . Under the name Gardener, Richmond, VA-based Dash Lewis uses a modular synthesizer, effects pedals, and his own voice to create intricately layered, rhythmically complex slabs of trance-inducing psychedelia, weaving looped vocal passages into thick, textured drones. . .

AHRKH is the solo project of A P Macarte, current multi-instrumentalist member of Salford's critically acclaimed noise experimentalists GNOD (Rocket Recordings/NoNotFun). 
Using modular synthesiser, field recordings and voice, AHRKH aims to create moments of presence and calm, enouraging deep listening and meditation. . .

André Roligheten: Saxophone
Thomas Johansson: Trumpet
Oscar Grnöberg: Piano
Jon Rune Strøm: Double Bass
Tollef Østvang: Drums

The Norwegian/Swedish Quintet Friends & Neighbors was founded in 2009 in Trondheim, Norway. Since their first record, "No Beat Policy" in 2011, they have not just released three more powerful albums, but also established themselves as a force to be reckoned with on the Scandinavian jazz scene. The band is clearly defined by the five members strong individual voices, both as players and composers, and their long experience of playing together gives the music a clear and distinct sound. Stretching from melodic ballads to hard swinging free-bop or powerful free jazz they keep their collective sound intact, showing influences from a wide spectra of jazz history. The band has been touring frantically through the years, including concerts Europe, USA, Japan, New Zealand and Australia…

Mars Williams: Reeds
Kent Kessler: Double Bass
Paal Nilssen-Love: Drums

Boneshaker was established some 7 years ago when the three met for a handful of concerts and recording sessions around the Chicago area in early January 2011. The three musicians knew each well through various bands like Hal Russel´s NRG ensemble, Peter Brötzmann´s Chicago tentet, Territory band and had since 2002 wanted to do something together. Boneshaker’s music remains free improvised, but with clear roots to the American tradition of free jazz. Although all three members are influenced by European improvised music as defined by the English, Dutch and German players of the mid-sixties, the three share broad interests in music traditions from all over the world and appreciate when influences are let loose.

Amirtha Kidambi: vocals, harmonium, synthesizer, compositions
Matt Nelson: soprano saxophone
Nick Dunston: bass
Max Jaffe: drums and electronic sensory percussion

The forthcoming release From Untruth builds upon the bedrock foundation of Amirtha Kidambi's previous compositional and conceptual work with Elder Ones, while forging uncharted territory. After a journey into wordless abstraction on Holy Science, Kidambi felt the urgency of the political moment required a direct and verbal call to action. The lyric fragments in "Eat the Rich", "Decolonize the Mind", "Dance of the Subaltern" and "From Untruth" critique power structures of capitalism, racism, colonialism and fascism, distilling heavy post-colonial theory into concentrated visceral battle cries. 

Daniel Levin: “one of the instrument’s most brilliant contemporary practitioners” (The Wire).
He was born in Burlington, Vermont, and began playing the cello at the age of six. In 2001, he graduated with a degree in Jazz Studies from the New England Conservatory of Music and arrived on the New York City jazz scene shortly thereafter… A. Eithne Hamilton: is a performing artist based in Western North Carolina. Her original choreography and film work has been performed and shown in the US and South America …

Bill Nace is an artist and musician based in Western Massachusetts. He has collaborated with an extraordinary range of musicians, including Michael Morley, Mats Gustafsson, Joe McPhee… Chris Corsano is a drummer who has been working at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and noise music since the late 1990's. Corsano's dedication to collective improvisation has led to collaborations with all sorts of kindred spirits and his appearance on over 150 records and 1000 live performances… Crazy Doberman is an offshoot of the Doberman project that is open, collaborative, and improvisational. While Doberman existed as an Indiana quartet rooted primarily in the industrial and experimental-electronic musical traditions…

The Chicago-based improvising trio Hatcher/Maunu/Kirshner, Gerrit Hatcher (tenor saxophone), Peter Maunu (guitar, violin, mandolin), and Julian Kirshner (drums, percussion), is a union of some of its members' most meaningful longstanding collaborations…

… Tongue Depressor is the duo of Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey - two quietly prolific artists working in New Haven, CT - who’ve incorporated Trevor Saint’s dynamic approach to glockenspiel to the project. The newly minted trio will expand on experiments delving into long bouts of trance inducing microtonal drone, utilizing strings (primarily violin) and glockenspiel. The trio’s creates a vibrant, sustained tension delicately balanced along discordant, iconoclastic visions of a vacant world…

The FG trio's music is free improvised and has its roots in the free-jazz tradition. The trio enjoys a high level of energy but with strong dynamics and rapid contrasts. The trio has developed a sound of it ́s own and has it ́s strength from many years of experience as a working group…

 - "CLEBS is the beats-manipulating electronics/voice duo project of Brooklyn-via-Switzerland vocalist Emilie Weibel and avant-jazz drummer/producer Jason Nazary. It’s, I’m Here, is interstellar electro-jazz club music designed to fry minds. Glitch-heavy rhythmic madness and belching, blipping and bleating knob turning and twiddling intersect with warped speak-sing as CLEBS transmit its alien techno from some other universe." -The Brooklyn Rail

Daniel Levin (Vc), Tony Malaby (tsax), Randy Peterson (dr)

Levin/Malaby/Peterson are a trio of improvisors who can be both daring and extra subtle.  Levin leads improvisation workshops for string players and he's been keen to push toward a more egoless place of exploration, where musical invention can happen uninhibited by one's sense of style, rules or tradition. Arizona-raised Malaby is a big guy with a big-sounding horn, but he's been taking interesting approaches to blending in and fading back in ensemble settings while cultivating a specific worked-out vocabulary on the saxophone. Drummer Peterson does an impressive job of allowing time to breathe, without actively destabilizing the flow. The interplay between the three should be nuanced and melodic, with plenty of textural complexity to keep one alert. . . . (view event for full description)