Matt Gagnon

Matt is a writer, poet, educator, and creative music enthusiast living in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts with his wife and daughter. He is the author of the book of poems, Song of the Systole (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017). While a long time listener of jazz, his interest in creative and improvised music began around 2007 when he attended a Matthew Shipp solo concert at the Northampton Center For the Arts, and later, a duo with Evan Parker and Ned Rothenberg at the now retired Magic Triangle Jazz Series at UMass Amherst. These shows really opened up his ears to new sounds and possibilities of making music. He is regularly in attendance at concerts put on by Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares in Western Massachusetts, and the monthly music series, Improvisations Now in Hartford, curated by Joe Morris.

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Marinella Barigazzi

Marinella Barigazzi lives in Milan, Italy, and is an author and translator of children’s books and also writes poems and short stories.

She is daughter of renowned Italian accordionist and composer Barimar, so music was always part of her life.

She studied the piano as an adolescent and deeply loves jazz and classical music, attending many concerts throughout Europe with a special attention to those of pianist Brad Mehldau.

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Kian Banihashemi

Born to Iranian parents in Chicago, Kian is currently studying Microbiology at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo with the eventual goal of becoming an epidemiologist. Raised in the diverse community of Irvine, California, Kian has always been seeking new and exciting music from all over the world. It wasn’t until his sophomore year in high school that he became interested in jazz music; this initial interest in jazz soon became a fulltime passion. Although interested in the historical aspect of jazz, he endeavors to remain up-to-date with the latest jazz artists, releases and movements. Besides reading and writing about jazz, Kian has always been interested in the arts, history, traveling and the study of biology. He spends a lot of time on his travels attending concerts, looking for and picking jazz records to add to his collection.

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Connor Kurtz

At some point during high school, Connor Kurtz found great interest in the eccentric guitar work and experimental tendencies of Sonic Youth. A few years of exploration and listening later, he found himself critically analyzing static, sine waves and silence. Connor's lived all of his life in a South Ontario suburb where, for reasons still unclear to him, he studies IT instead of music. In addition to writing about music, he also writes experimental music and poetry and records his own music under the moniker of Important Hair.

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Paige Johnson-Brown

Paige

Who is SHE?

Paige Johnson-Brown is SHE. SHE is Paige Johnson-Brown. SHE leads Irrevery. Irrevery is a country-punk-noise band and art collective. SHE is a composer, lyricist, producer, writer, and filmmaker. SHE was hatched beneath the Y of the Hollywood sign and made the migration, as is traditional with Paiges, to New York on the first Smiling Moon of HER 18th year. SHE just completed Irrevery Volume I, [irrevery.bandcamp.com]a full-length record, a book of illustrated lyrics, and three films. SHE is now working on Irrevery Volume II…

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Andrew Choate

Andrew Choate curates The Unwrinkled Ear concert series in Los Angeles. He is the author of Language Makes Plastic of the Body (Palm Press), Stingray Clapping (Insert Blanc), Too Many Times I See Every Thing Just the Way It Is (Poetics Research Bureau), Learning (Civil Coping Mechanisms), Must Have Jazz (The Residual Press) and A Rational Arrangement of All the Senses (Blaze VOX).

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Ron Coulter

Ron Coulter is a percussionist, composer, improviser, and researcher. Interests in noise, performance art, and interdisciplinarity have led to curating many experimental sound series, Fluxconcerts, and co-founding numerous intermedia groups. As a composer, he has created more than 390 compositions for various media. His performance credits include solo and chamber percussion music, jazz, classical, pop, electronica, free improvisation, and various world musics (West African Djembe and Dunun, Shona Mbira, Cuban Folkloric drumming).

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Taylor McDowell

Like many avant-garde enthusiasts, Taylor's first major musical revelation was from listening to recordings of jazz musicians defying the pretenses of jazz itself (i.e. John Coltrane Quartet/Quintet circa 1965). There's been no looking back since. Taylor lives in a small town in the northern Rocky Mountains with his family, where he makes maps for a living. When not indulging in as much music as possible, he enjoys bird watching, hunting and fishing, and otherwise sharing outdoors experiences with his wife and children."

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Matthew Banash

Matthew Banash was born and raised in Pennsylvania and has lived in the Carolinas for the past twenty-five years. He writes poetry and short fiction, enjoys mountain biking and a lot of music. He believes Music can begin and end with McCoy Tyner's solo on "My FavoriteThings" but knows there's a lot in between. Someday he hopes to grow up.

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Katherine Whatley

Katherine Whatley is a musician and writer. She grew up in Tokyo, and now makes her life between the US and Japan. She plays the koto (transverse Japanese harp) and writes about music, art and culture for a variety of publications. She originally became interested in jazz and improvised music at Barnard College, Columbia University where she worked as a DJ on the radio station WKCR and wrote her thesis about the jazz and improvised music scenes in New York and Tokyo. In addition, she has done extensive research on 60’s and 70’s jazz, including John and Alice Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and the Loft Jazz scene, and Creative Music Studios. More generally, musical interests include: contemporary free jazz and improvised music, improvised music in the context of non-Western and folk music, and Japanese jazz. To get in contact, or to see current projects, visit her website: kwhatley.net

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Alexander Dubovoy

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Alexander Dubovoy is a pianist, composer, writer, and improviser. He graduated from Yale University in May 2016, where he wrote his thesis on the history of jazz in the Soviet Union. In university, founded a successful student initiative to start a jazz program and built connections to New Haven’s thriving creative music scene. After graduating, he moved to New York City to continue his performance career and soak up the sounds of the Downtown music scene. Since then, he was spent his time between the US, UK, and continental Europe seeking out adventurous music and musical adventures. He is also an amateur vegetarian cook and loves reading about Soviet bureaucracy and Zen Buddhism.

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Eric Stern

After coming to New York City in 1983, Eric Stern has practiced law by day and followed the improv music scene by night. He presently coordinates the House of Improv which organizes monthly performances.

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Daniel Böker

It was a long but interesting way from listening to a-ha as a young boy to Sonic Youth as a teenager. And it was a way that I wouldn't want to have missed a step of. Listening to the different things Sonic Youth did aside from their regular albums, I came across a collaboration with a guy I never had heard of. His name was (and still is) Mats Gustafsson, and the piece was called Hidros3. I was irritated and overpowered. And kept on listening. From that day on I started to seek music that could bring that kind of irritation or exitement.

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Derek Stone

Derek Stone was born in the sunny state of Florida, but has since migrated to the “Land of the Morning Calm,” South Korea, where he teaches English. His first brush with free jazz was through Albert Ayler’s “Spiritual Unity,” an album which he initially hated but has since come to admire greatly. He spends his free time hanging out with his girlfriend and trying to get her to do her best “For Alto”-era Braxton impression (it’s really quite accurate). He’s currently a student of Applied Linguistics at the University of Birmingham (via distance learning) and is desperately trying not to go mad from the excessive work-load.

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Nicola Negri

I’m a graphic and web designer based in Padova, Italy, and I’ve been involved in jazz and free improvisation for the last twenty years.

I’m a proud member of “Centro d’Arte degli studenti dell’Università di Padova”, a non-profit cultural association specialized in music promotion and concert organization.

Free improvisation and japanese free jazz, AACM and Wadada Leo Smith, John Zorn, Rob Mazurek, Derek Bailey, The Thing, these are a few of my favorite things.

Sometimes I play the trumpet.

I firmly believe that free music can make us free.

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Peter Gough

Peter Gough was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He spends his free time with his wife, three cats, and book and record collection. Peter is a proud supporter of his local creative improvised music culture, and is a member of Toronto's Music Gallery.

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Wendy Eisenberg

Wendy Eisenberg is an improvising guitarist and banjo player who has toured internationally, both solo and with the critically acclaimed band "birthing hips." some of her additional critical writing can be found in John Zorn's Arcana VII: Musicians on Music.

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Ian Lovdahl

Ian Lovdahl is a professional writer in the fields of investment management and data analysis, but his true passion is music. Graduating from Michigan State University, he wrote album reviews for the East Lansing radio station 88.9 The Impact, and most recently for the former blog Indy Metal Vault. Ian likes all kinds of music and credits a chance encounter with Miles Davis' Kind of Blue as his conduit into jazz. His favorite concert experience was SUNN O))). 

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Eric McDowell

Originally from Boston, Eric McDowell currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he teaches undergraduate writing courses and catches some of his favorite musicians on their way from Chicago to New York. When not agonizing over unfinished short stories or ungraded student essays, he is watching movies with his girlfriend or trying to keep the cat off of the turntable. By chance he attended the Vision Festival before he knew who or what anything was, and he's been making up for it ever since.

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Martin Sekelsky

Martin first brushed jazz with The Bad Plus, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Keith Jarrett, Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane in his late teens. Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane (again) and Cecil Taylor introduced him to free jazz, free improvisation and avant-garde music during his early twenties. The free music scenes in New York, Chicago, Scandinavia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, Japan and Portugal further opened his ears. He has been hunting fire music and adventurous sounds ever since, old and new alike.

Martin was born in 1989, currently lives on mainland Europe and slows down time to do all the things he wants to do.

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