Mr. Abrams is one of the most highly respected musicians in the contemporary music scene. He is co-founder of The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), founder of The AACM School of Music, and the first recipient of the grand international jazz award, The JazzPar Prize, by the Danish Jazz Center (1990).

Except for a brief period of study at the Chicago Musical College and Governors State University in Chicago where he studied electronic music, Abrams is predominantly a self-taught musician who, as a result of many years of observation, analysis, and practice as a performing musician, has developed a command of a variety of musical styles both as a pianist and composer. Abrams and members of the AACM are responsible for some of the most original new music approaches of the last three decades.

Abram’s compositions have been commissioned and /or performed by New Band, The Rova Saxophone Quartet, The String Trio of New York, the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, Ursula Oppens, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Cassatt String Quartet, and countless others. He has recorded and toured the United States, Canada and Europe with his orchestra, sextet, quartet, duo and as a solo pianist. His musical affiliations include Max Roach, Dexter Gordon, Clifford Gordon, Sonny Stitt, Woody Shaw, Anthony Braxton, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Eddie Harris. His recordings are available on Delmark, Why Not, Black Saint, Arista Novus, UMO, and New World Records.

Adams has been called "one of the few important young American composers" by Lou Harrison and "one of Alaska's great artistic resources" by the Anchorage Daily News. He has received commissions, awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace Trust, the Rockerfeller Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, among others. He is currently composer-in-residence with the Anchorage Symphony, the Anchorage Opera and the Alaska Public Radio Network, as part of the Meet the Composer "New Residencies" program. About his work, Adams says: "My music has always been profoundly influenced by the natural world and a strong sense of place. Through sustained listening to the subtle resonances of the northern soundscape, I hope to explore the territory of 'sonic geography' - that region between place and culture...between environment and imaginatio

Born in Tokyo, Michiko Akao is a pioneering artist of the yokobue. She is recognized for establishing transverse bamboo flutes as solo instruments in contemporary music. Akao has commissioned an original repertory of over 100 compositions for the yokobue. She made her US debut in 1972 in Maki Ishii's Sogu II with Seiji Ozawa and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. She was awarded the Distinguished Artist Prize by the Japan Ministry of Education in 1982. She has performed widely in Japan and North America and participated in major music festivals in Europe and Asia.

Susan Alcorn began playing the pedal steel guitar over 25 years ago, and in that time has evolved into a musician/composer of such rare inspiration that her music has redefined, for many, the very perception of the instrument itself.

As a child in the 1950's and 1960's she was surrounded by the big-band music that her parents listened to as well as the pop music that blared on her radio. She picked up the guitar when she was thirteen, and soon began playing slide guitar (inspired in particular by Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and Son House) and dobro (her favorites were Mike Auldridge, Josh Graves, and Tut Taylor). A few years later, she began playing the pedal steel guitar and performed regularly with country-western bands in Texas.

Although Alcorn's initial work with pedal steel focused on the styles of the players usually associated with it - namely, country and western swing, she was at the same time profoundly influenced by John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and 20th Century classical composers such as Messaien, Penderecki, and Piazzolla. By the late 1980s, after performing straight-ahead jazz for ten years, she took the advice of Paul Bley, with whom she had been corresponding; she "threw away the real book" and began to develop a truly distinct approach to the instrument - one that incorporates jazz, minimalism, Gamelan Music, Indian Classical music, the folk music of Latin America, to name but a few of the catalysts.

Although Susan Alcorn typically plays solo, she has collaborated in performance with electronic composer Pauline Oliveros, German bassist Peter Kowald, and multi-instrumentalist Eugene Chadbourne. "Uma", her debut CD, was released on the US label Loveletter Recordings in the summer of 2000, and a CD of recordings with Chadbourne, "Texas Music", was released on Chadbourne's own imprint soon afterward. Ms. Alcorn currently resides in Houston, TX

Amirkhanian is a leading proponent of text-sound composition in the United States. Most of his works are electroacoustic. In a radical departure from his earlier, more spare and minimal style, his recent works typically incorporate ambient and found sounds manipulated via Synclavier. He has served as Music Director of KPFA FM in Berkeley since 1969. In 1988 he co-founded the annual summer Composer-to-Composer summit conference on new music, sponsored by the Telluride Institute in Colorado.

David Arner (piano, harpsichord, percussion) is a long time proponent of innovative music and spontaneous composition. While well known for his solo work, Arner is also actively working with bassists Michael Bisio and Adam Lane, saxophonist Avram Fefer, cellist Tomas Ulrich and percussionist Jay Rosen. He has also collaborated with poets Chuck Stein and Mikhail Horowitz, and choreographer Susan Osberg. Arner has performed throughout the country for more than 30 years, including many performances at the Knitting Factory (in the 1990s), and more recently at the Center for Performing Arts (Rhinebeck) and Deep Listening Space. He has also pioneered a re-vitalization of new music for silent film for many years.

Larry Austin's music is composed for diverse combinations of instruments, voices, audio and/or video tape, film, computers and live electronics. His works have been widely performed, recorded, and published. His realization and completion of Charles Ives's Universe Symphony was premiered in 1994 by the Cincinnati Philharmonia. The compact disc recording on Centaur Records was acclaimed by the New York Times. Austin is Professor of Music and Chair, Division of Composition Studies, University of North Texas. Fellow composers know, too, his editorial and leadership roles as co-founder/editor of SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde (1966-1974) and President of both the International Computer Music Association (1989-1994) and CDCM (1986-present), producer of the CDCM Computer Music Series on Centaur Records.

Joseph Bacon is a native of San Francisco, son of the American composer Ernst Bacon. He studied guitar with Segovia, Ida Presti, Alexander Lagoya and Julian Bream. His background also includes degrees from Stanford and Harvard Universities, exhibitions of his own paintings and sculpture, and an extended study of Indian music with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. He is a self-taught lutenist and an authority on the musical literature for the lute. He has taught on the faculties of the University of Oregon, Mills College in Oakland, California State College at Hayward, and Music and Arts Institute in San Francisco, and has performed in London, New York, Sand Francisco and many other cities in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

As befits one who took her degree in English literature for fear of having too much sheer fun in the study of music, Baczewska's solo compositions derive essentially from an a capella sensibility, the voice as orchestra with consonants, pause and juncture, the click of affricatives as primary, if not sole, percussion. In 1974, she was co-founder of Care of the Cow, a cutting-edge performance group which developed quite a following through the early 1980s. During 1981's Like Feeding Pork to Pigs, Baczewska had a breakthrough: the home of the human voice is the brain. Ultimately, the expanding voice can be made to take any shape, fill any space, or convey any message. Her focus on the voice and solo performance evolves from this experience. She has concertized extensively and has recently worked on several important collaborations: with video artist Irit Batsry on vocals for video soundtracks; with Fritz Lang, to compose and perform the soundtrack for Lang's film Woman in the Moon: and, with dancer/choreographer Dennis O'Connor (with whose company she toured the United States and Europe in 1994.) She continues to explore the voice as instrument, sometimes performing with props like a weaving loom, and sometimes incorporating the multitrack capabilities of the recording studio as an added compositional tool.

Sound artist/performer Ellen Band teaches sound art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She is artistic director of Audible Visions, a new music/sound art performance venue in the greater Boston area. Her reviews on new music and sound art have been published by Pform and Boston Rock and her interview series with contemporary composers, "The Motivation Interviews," appear in issues 45 and 48 of Musicworks: The Canadian Journal of Sound Exploration. A Former new music educator (for 15 years), she wrote the newsletter set while teaching at the Eliot-Pearson lab school at Tufts University.

Lisa Barnard is a vocalist, writer and performance artist. She has honed her skills over the years in acting, movement, stage direction/design, puppetry, jazz/free improvisation and sound production which she experiments with in performances including elements of spoken work, vocalization, masks, music and movement. She dedicates her craft to exploring the open field of vocal expression from within and through the guidance of her mentors.

Barnard is a student of Deep Listening with Pauline Oliveros and studies dream work and Egyptian mythology/divination with Ione and Andrea Goodman, recently traveling in 2004 to Southern Italy to study the Black Madonna and ancient temples of Sicily. Recently, Barnard has completed projects with Pauline Oliveros for a commissioned film score Maquilapolis and participated as Kingston, NY Coordinator for Robert Whitman’s media project Local Report. Lisa performs frequently with Linda Montano and co-created the band Brothelkin with lyricist Bob Lavaggi and guitarist Ian Turner. Currently, Barnard is collaborating with Al Margolis developing a multi-media performance piece, MutaMYTHeatre’s Three Songs in Search of a Voice: a noh(t)opera.

Born in Britain in 1939, Martin Bartlett came to Canada in 1952. He studied at the University of British Columbia and at Mills College. Important influences were: the music and writings of John Cage; electronic composers David Tudor, Pauline Oliveros and David Behrman; Indian musicians, the Dagar Brothers and Pandit Pran Nath; K.R.T. Wasitodipuro; and the music of the Javanese gamelan. He was one of the founders of the Western Front, an artist-run gallery, studio and performance space in Vancouver, and taught composition, electroacoustic music and world music at Simon Fraser University. Martin died of AIDS in 1993 in his home in Vancouver.

Nancy Beckman began studying the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) at Meianji Zen temple in Kyoto where she learned the traditional solo Zen Buddhist repertoire and received her license to teach. She studied shakuhachi and ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University and later used photography, shakuhachi, and Japanese language in site-specific performance art pieces. Currently based in Berkeley, California, she teaches the solo shakuhachi repertoire as a spiritual practice. She is also a Certified Music Practitioner in the Music for Healing and Transition Program. She performs with Tom Bickley in the ensembles Cardew Choir, Gusty Winds May Exist, and Dream Down Duvet (also with Viv Corringham).

Tom Bickley (recorder + electronics + voice) listens to the world always hoping to hear more and more fully. He grew up in the semitropical soundscape of Houston, sojourned in Washington, DC
(studying music, religion, and information science) and came to California as a composer in residence at Mills College. In Berkeley he lives and sings at Incarnation Priory (an Episcopal Benedictine community), teaches privately, at the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training and on the library faculty at California State University East Bay. He plays with shakuhachi player Nancy Beckman as Gusty Winds May Exist and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir.

Excerpt from Original Liner Notes from the 1982 lp – Philip Elwood

In a recording world nearly suffocating with the monotonous sounds of pre-fab electric "rock," 1750 Arch Records has been like a breath of fresh musical air. They have dared to record "live," and issue unedited renditions; they have presented new sounds, fascinating ensembles and esoteric instrumental experiments.

But even in the rarified audio world of 1750 Arch Records the microgroove disc contained herein must be considered as unusual. Unusual, in fact, that the recording session ever took place; unusual in the sounds that emerge, and unusual in the concept and instrumental collaboration that we hear.

Black phoned. He said "Phil, you write the notes for our record". "Yessir," I replied, "…what record?" Black is not only physically impressive (he is, after all, called "Big" Black) he is also very persuasive verbally.

John Bischoff ((b. 1949, San Francisco) is an early pioneer of live computer music. He is known for his solo constructions in real-time synthesis as well as his ground-breaking work in computer network bands. Bischoff's music is built from intrinsic features of the electronic medium: high definition noise components, tonal edges, imperfections, transitions, digital shading, and non-linear motion. Through empirical play and investigation he builds pieces that can be described as sonic sculptures, shaped in real-time and present for the duration of a performance. Recently, he has fashioned pieces that combine electronically-triggered bells with synthetic computer sounds. In such works bells are distributed around the performance space in a pattern distinct from the speaker locations. His idea is to disperse the sense of "source" in electronic music—to release the music from being trapped in the speaker enclosure—while highlighting the beauty of speaker-transmitted sound at the same time.

Bischoff studied composition with Robert Moran, James Tenney, and Robert Ashley. He has been
active in the experimental music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 25 year as a composer, performer, teacher, and grassroots activist. His performances around the US include NEW MUSIC AMERICA festivals in 1981 (SF) and 1989 (NYC), Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Roulette Intermedium (NYC), and the Beyond Music Festival (LA). He has performed in Europe at the Festival d'Automne in Paris, Akademie der Künst in Berlin, Fylkingen in Stockholm, and TUBE in Munich. He was a founding member of the League of Automatic Music Composers (1978), considered to be the world's first Computer Network Band, and he co-authored an article on the League's music that appears in "Foundations of Computer Music" (MIT Press 1985). He was also a founding member of the network band The Hub with whom he performed and recorded from 1985 to 1996. In 1999 he received a $25,000 award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (NYC) in recognition of his music. Recordings of his work are available on Lovely Music, Frog Peak, and Artifact Recordings. A solo album, APERTURE, was released on 23FIVE INC in 2003. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at Mills College, in Oakland, California.

Anne Bourne is a composer, cellist and vocalist. She has performed and recorded internationally with many artists in creative music genres including Jane Siberry, Fred Frith eric chenaux, Copyright, Tom Cora, Sarah MacLachlan, Susie Ibarra, and Joelle Leandre among others. Anne has created scores for film and dance with Peter Mettler, Atom Egoyan, Andrea Nann and Michael Ondaatje. Anne first met Pauline Oliveros when she was invited to perform a distance concert with The Deep Listening Band in New York and groups in Paris and Toronto, in 1994. She then participated in the Rose Mountain Retreats for the years that followed until the milleneum shift. Bourne performed Oliveros' Primordial Lift recorded for TotE with Oliveros, Tony Conrad and David Grubbs. Anne was a participant in the DL Opera at Lincoln Centre with her young daughter Willa. Current recording called dearness, with John Oswald and Fred Frith on Spool. Anne improvises with dwct, Quorum, and Eve Egoyan. Anne "is an earthy, unrestrained musical force, she accompanies her cello with otherwordly vocalizing" - CODA magazine

Jonas Braasch is an acoustician, soprano saxophonist, and electronic media artist. His saxophone style expands the traditional repertoire [in both Classical Music and Jazz idioms] by incorporating various non-western elements, as well as original extended techniques. Another aspect of his work is the integration of soundscapes and other concrete elements, a clear reflection of his personal relationship with the environment. This sensibility has inspired him to create complex synthetic sound fields which he then integrates into his compositions.

In 2008, Jonas co-founded the trio Triple Point together with Pauline Oliveros and Doug Van Nort. He has been performing and recording with Chris Chafe, Stuart Dempster, Mark Dresser, Sarah Weaver, among others. He currently works as Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is a Board Member of the Deep Listening Institute and holds a courtesy Adjunct Professor Appointment with the Schulich School of Music at McGill University.

Iris Brooks specializes in contemporary and world flute music and has performed in Egypt, Iceland, Japan, Canada, Bali, and throughout Europe. Her articles on new music have been published in a variety of journals and she served as the editor of EAR Magazine

Since 1972, Bill and Mary Buchen have collaborated to integrate the sonic and visual arts as a multi-disciplinary form they define as Sonic Architecture. They have designed sound installations for museums, galleries and public sites throughout the United States. Large-scale public works include: Sound Parks and Science Playgrounds, Aoelian (wind) Harps and acoustic designs for urban and natural environments. Their pursuits center on the study of acoustic phenomena examined through its applications in science, architecture, ecology, and diverse world cultures. As composers they create metaphorical soundscapes for installation environments. Sound sources for their investigations utilize electronic technologies, computer-aided design and field recordings.

Tom is a baritone with a wide range of experience in a variety of musical genres. He is best known for his collaborations with contemporary composers and improvisers. He has commissioned and premiered over 100 new works. His most recent associations with composers include those with Robert Ashley, David First, David Behrman, Donald Knaack and Roscoe Mitchell. He is producer and curator of World Music Institute's Interpretations series in New York.

Charlie Buel was born in San Francisco in 1943 and began studying piano and writing music at the age of seven. He majored in composition at San Francisco State University where he taught in the experimental college and helped to found the Collegium Musicum. Further studies at U.C. San Diego with Robert Erikson, Kenneth Gaburo and Pauline Oliveros resulted in Four Theatre Pieces , for which he received his M.A. He is perhaps best known for his piece for solo alto saxophone, Reflections on Gaga Todi (1972). In 1994, he made plans for the recording of Last Works , knowing it would be his last work. He died before the project was completed.

Wendy Jeanne Burch is a poet and singer/performer, published internationally, with her Masters degree in Creative Writing. She has performed with poetry, movement, and voice in various venues with other artists, including her late husband composer/performer Joe Catalano, Pauline Oliveros, Marianne Tomita-McDonald, Toyoji Tomita, Erika Rogers, and others. Her most recent book is Traffic Prayers, with CD, and is available through the Deep Listening Catalog.

Wendy also is an animal and people psychic communicator, and a Reiki Master; she owns two pet related businesses, and is a sculptor/artist. She lives with her partner, Jon Steel, and her puppy, birds, fish and snake in the beautiful Oakland Hills of California.

Warren Burt attended the State University of New York, Albany (BA, 1971) and the University of California, San Diego (MA, 1975) before moving to Australia in 1975. In Australia he has worked in academia (La Trobe University, NSW Conservatorium, Victorian College of the Arts, Australian National University), education, and radio (freelance and commissioned productions for ABC and PBAA), and as a composer, film maker, video artist, and community arts organizer.

Monique Buzzarté is active in new music circles as a trombonist/composer. Honored as a "Soloist Champion" by Meet the Composer, she will be a featured performer in their 2007-08 season. Recent recordings include Zanana's Holding Patterns and the New Circle Five's Dreaming Wide
Awake (Deep Listening) along with John Cage's Five3 with the Arditti Quartet (Mode). She designed and developed a slide-mounted interactive live processing system for the trombone. Her advocacy work led to the admission of women into the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1997. 1999 DLI Certificate Recipient.

Raylene Campbell is an accordionist, improviser, composer, performance artist, audio/video artist, sound designer, teacher, and Deep Listening Instructor. Raylene is currently based out of Montreal, Canada and has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, NY. Raylene’s creative process involves explorations of acoustic ecology, psychogeography, architecture (acoustic and social spaces), computer interactive technology, and audience interactivity in both performance and installation environments. Raylene often collaborates with other musicians, composers, performers, and artists of multitudinous disciplines.

In Memory 

For the past 20 years, Joseph Celli has devoted his time to the premiering of over 35 inter-media works created for him by various artists; to the producing of contemporary artists activities; and to the study and performance of double reed instruments from around the world. He has commissioned and collaborated with an eclectic and diverse group of artists working in new sound technology, film, video, performance and inter-media events. Celli is one of a handful of American virtuosi recognized for developing a new instrumental syntax and a new performance repertoire for his instruments, the oboe and English horn. He co-directed the 1984 and 1988 New Music America Festivals, co-founded and directed Real Arts Ways, and served on the boards of many alternative organizations. Since 1991, he has worked as an independent, unaffiliated, itinerant composer and performer on five continents. He is the founder and director of O.O. Discs, Inc.

Joel Chadabe is an internationally recognized pioneer in the development of interactive music systems. As composer and performer, he has concertized worldwide since 1969 with Jan Williams, percussionist, and other musicians. He is listed in the International Who's Who of Musicians and the Who's Who in American Music. His articles on electronic music have appeared in Computer Music Journal, Contemporary Music Review, Electronic Musician, Perspectives of New Music, Electronic Music Review, Melos, Musique en Jeu, and many other journals and magazines. Several of his articles have been anthologized in books by the MIT Press and other publishers. His music is recorded on CDCM, Centaur, Lovely Music, Opus One, CP2, and Folkways labels. He has received awards, fellowships, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Commission, SUNY Research Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. He has been President and Chairman of Composers' Forum, Inc., in New York City. He is currently on the faculties of the University at Albany and Bennington College; President of Intelligent Music, a research and development company; and founder and President of Electronic Music Foundation. Mr. Chadabe has a B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.M. degree from Yale University.

Seth Cluett (born 1976, Troy, New York) is a composer and visual artist whose work includes photography, drawing, video, sound installation, concert music, and performance. His pieces are an exploration of the role of sound in everyday life, engaging the boundary between the auditory and the other senses as an active field of experience for the audience.

His work has been shown/performed at the 10th Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Palais de Tokyo Museum, Théatre sur le Pavé, and GRM in Paris; the ICA, Mobius Artist Space, MassArt/nonpod in Boston; WPS1/MoMA, The Kitchen, Diapason, Engine 27, Tonic, and The Knitting Factory in New York; the Betty Rymer Gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago, Heaven, Artemisia, and Deadtech Galleries in Chicago; as well as the Deep Listening Space in Kingston, NY. Seth's work is documented on Errant Bodies Press, Sedimental, Crank Satori, BoxMedia, and Wavelet Records.

Abbie Conant received her Bachelor´s Degree (cum Laude) from Temple University in 1977. In 1976 she studied at Yale University, and in 1979 she received her Master´s Degree from the Juilliard School, followed by a Meister diploma from the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany in 1984. From 1979 to 1980 she was solo trombonist of the Royal Opera of Turin, Italy. From 1980 to 1993 she was solo trombonist of the Munich Philharmonic.

The International Trombone Association Journal has featured Abbie Conant in a cover article and described her as "in the first rank of world class trombonists". She has recorded a highly acclaimed CD of trombone and organ music and performs internationally as a concerto soloist, recitalist, improviser and performance artist. This work has taken her to most of the large state theaters in Germany, where she hasperformed to great critical and public acclaim. In addition, in recent years she has performed as a soloist in over 60 American cities.

In 1992 the Baden-Würtenburg State Ministry for Education, in recognition of her international reputation as a trombonist, named her full tenured Professor of Trombone at the esteemed Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Trossingen, Germany. In 1996 the 4200 members of the International Trombone Association elected her as their President elect. In August of 1998 she was the first woman to serve as a judicator for the International Trombone Competition in Geneva, Switzerland.

Her involvement with Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening have supported her compositional talents and have resulted in a series of music theater works concerning the Holocaust which have been performed in Germany to large audiences with critical success. For her most recent project, entitled "The Wired Goddess and her Trombone", she is working with composers to create works for computer and trombone based on the theme of the goddess.

"What is multi-dimensional drumming? After dealing with polyrhythms, I began to hear layers of sounds and rhythms. Divided into many parts and facets, the drum set and secondary instruments I use and play are all aspects of the drums. In the future, there will be many changes and developments in the area of the mind – so what we (humankind) think and hear, is what we shall see and hear. In order to play the drum set you must be able to manipulate four or five things at one time (i.e. bass drum, snare drum, high-hat, ride cymbals and maybe voice). So an instruments name and structure doesn’t stop me from playing them like a drum. You have instruments that are structurally different from the drum, but they have the same characteristic in the approach to the drum (i.e. piano, balaphone and shoes with taps). In order to find the music of the drums, I had to change my assumptions and beliefs about music in relation to the drums, which is sound in the creation of multi-rhythms." - Jerome Cooper

Viv Corringham is a British vocalist and sound artist, currently based in Minnesota, who has worked internationally since the early 1980s. Articles about her work can be found in Organised Sound (UK), Musicworks (Canada), and For Those Who Have Ears (Ireland). She received an MA Sonic Art with Distinction in 2001 from Middlesex University, England, and has had many awards, including a McKnight Composer Fellowship for 2006. Most recent works appeared in Art Colony, Grand Marais MN, Women in New Music Festival, Fullerton CA, Spark Electronic Music Festival Minneapolis MN, Rochester Art Center MN, Soundworks Festival, Cork, Ireland, and Midsummer Festival, Cobh, Ireland.