Hrayr Attarian

Hrayr Attarian has been writing about music, particularly improvised music, since 2004.  He writes for Jazziz, All About Jazz, and has written in the past for the Chicago Jazz Magazine.  He also serves as the chair of the Jazz Journalist Association's annual photo contest committee and runs a live webinar on jazz photography called Seeing Jazz. He is working on a book profiling 101 undeservedly obscure jazz musicians.  He lives in Chicago with his wife and a menagerie of animal companions.

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Irena Stevanovska

Irena is the founder of the Macedonian review website mono-ton.com and a freelance audio editor. Shaping her whole life to evolve around music and finding beauty in all kinds of free sounds, she decided the best way to express herself was through writing about how music makes her feel.

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Gary Chapin

Gary Chapin wrote a lot about this music back in the early '90s, when he was a frequent denizen at the original Knitting Factory, and then he stopped. Now he's doing it again. He lives currently in the Maine woods, while writing and advocating for ethical practices in education. He also plays traditional French music on accordion and has a blog about that (accordeonaire.com). He understands that in the Free Jazz Collective context that might seem weird (and he wondered if he should even mention it) but hey, it's a funny old world with all kinds of people in it.

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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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Charlie Watkins

Charlie Watkins is a clarinettist based in Oxford. He studied improvisation with Sarah Gail Brand and James Allsopp, and is completing his Master's thesis on the philosophy of symbols. 

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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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