Ayako Kataoka Blasser is an intermedia artist currently based between Tokyo and Berlin. Her work is a study of form, sound, and movement that explores the realms of acoustic phenomena and spatial perception. With the listening body as a site of agency and through the lens of Japanese aesthetics, she elucidates conceptual and physical states of experiential resonance.

Working across mediums, she has presented installations, performances, and sound sculptures at SF International Arts Festival (San Francisco, USA), Tokyo International Dance Film Festival (Tokyo, Japan), High Zero Festival (Baltimore, USA), Sound Forms Symposium (Copenhagen, Denmark), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bolzano (Bolzano, Italy), The Stone (New York, USA), KM 28 (Berlin, Germany), among many others.

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Daniel Carter, born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1945, is a musician and writer. Since coming to New York City, in 1970, he has sought out musicians and situations that encourage free expression. In the 1950s he sang in Doo Wop groups, took clarinet lessons, played in school bands (into the 60s), and the 49th Army Band (ca. 1967-69), played in Italian Rock and Pop bands (1967-1969). When he first came to NYC, he played in Soul bands as well as so-called Avant-Garde Jazz groups. He has always tried to transcend genre-boundaries, a demanding challenge, but he's found that the many musicians he meets and plays with, and the invaluable treasure of a huge, ever-growing, number of recordings and videos (so many, readily available on the internet), recharge and renew him, all along the way.

He has performed, recorded, and/or toured, with many musicians, through the decades, since the mid 60s, including TEST, Other Dimensions in Music, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, Jamal Moore, Esperanza Spalding, Ras Moshe, Emperor King Bishop Solomon Selassie, Sabir Mateen, Ka Baird, C. Spencer Yeh, Mary Anne Driscoll, Warren “Trae” Crudup III, Chris Corsano, Yoko Ono, Parker, Don Cherry, Matthew Shipp, Nate Wooley, Hamid Drake, Sandy Ewen, Ava Mendoza, Luke Stewart, Yo La Tengo, Susie Ibarra, and many others.

Some of his writing can be found in the following publications: The Tinker: Innovative Arts and Literature Magazine, 50 Miles of Elbow Room, Number One (2000), Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, Dyed-in-the-Wool (2000), Intervalsss: The Poems and Words of Musicians (2000), Sex Sells Magazine (1997), Wandering Archive One (1998).

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Jason Charney is a composer, media artist, and audio engineer based in Baltimore. He writes and performs music for instruments and electronics and creates installations using sound, light, and computer code. As a collaborator and freelancer across disciplines, recent projects include projection design for public art showcasing local filmmakers, mobile game development for interactive chamber music, and technical direction for an outdoor multimedia opera.

Jason teaches sound design and digital media at several universities around Baltimore and serves as the Technical Director for 2640 Space and Mind on Fire. He also performs on guitar and electronics with the trios Moth Broth and The Arm.

Trombonist Patrick Crossland was born in Jackson, Mississippi. Growing up in southern Louisiana, he began playing trombone at age 10. His musical study continued at the University of Southern Mississippi, the Manhattan School of Music, the Royal College of Music (London), the University of Minnesota, and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik – Trossingen (Germany). Prominent solo performances include the Walker Art Center’s “Festival Dancing In Your Head”, the Darmstadt Course for New Music, where he was awarded a Solo Performance Prize, UMBC’s Livewire Festivals, and the American Trombone Workshop. Dr. Crossland has performed with orchestras and ensembles across Europe, South America, and the USA, including concerto performances in the USA, England, and Germany. In addition to his activities as a soloist and chamber musician, he is an avid improviser, performing and recording with artists including Günter Christmann, Alexander Frangenheim, and Jack Wright. Recent festival performances include High Zero (Baltimore) and concepts of doing (Berlin). He is currently a member of the Maryland Winds, the composers slide quartet and Ensemble Laboratorium.

Patrick Crossland is the recipient of Maryland State Arts Council Awards and currently teaches trombone, improvisation, and other courses at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

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Warren “Trae” Crudup III’s drumming crackles with what Chris Richards of The Washington Post calls “fresh firecrackers,” yet carries “profound ceremonial depth”—a duality defining his artistry. Born in Dothan, Alabama, and raised in the DMV, Trae’s musical journey began at three, steeped in a melodic family. His passion took root in the soulful Church of God in Christ (COGIC), a Holiness-Pentecostal denomination shaping his rhythmic mastery.

Now in New York, Trae blends jazz, gospel, funk, go-go, and global styles, crafting an authentic, innovative sound. His electrifying presence fuels collaborations with legends like William Parker, Cecil McBee, Cheick Hamala Diabate, David Ornette Cherry, Tarus Mateen, and James Brandon Lewis. Trae anchors BLACKS’ MYTHS with bassist Luke Stewart, his explosive rhythms lifting Stewart’s 2024 album Unknown Rivers to “new heights,” per reviews, while pushing boundaries with 2025 improvisations.

A UDC Big Band alum, Trae honed skills alongside Bruce Williams and Allyn Johnson. His international stature shines at festivals like North Sea Jazz (2019) with Lewis, Rewire (2020) with BLACKS’ MYTHS, and Newport Jazz (2024) with Stewart’s Silt Trio, captivating audiences. With every beat, Trae honors roots, ignites the present, and drums an enduring legacy.

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Erin Demastes is an experimental composer, performer, and sound artist. She uses everyday objects and hacked electronics for her installations and performances and subverts their use and perception with play and experimentation. In addition to her interest in physical materials, Erin works with instruction and interaction design in her scores, performances, and installations by balancing structured composition and predetermined actions with improvisation and exploration.

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Ida Dierker grew up in Baltimore City as a classically trained pianist, attending the Baltimore School for the Arts and later the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), where she studied music performance with Dr. Daniel Pesca and Dr. Teodora Adzharova. During her time at UMBC, she developed a deep appreciation for New Music and improvisation, while also coming to the realization that the music world was not as inclusive as it should be. This led to the completion of her research project titled “Taking Back the Piano: Exposing Underrepresented Composers”. With this, she commissioned four different women and non-binary composers of different backgrounds, and she is now working on an album and a recital of all four of these works. Ida has worked directly with composers and performers such as Lois V. Vierk, Nilou Nourbakhsh, Chelsea Loew, and Vicky Chow. She strives to integrate her commitment to music and inclusivity into her teaching as well, aiming to challenge the longstanding biases and lack of representation that occur in the music world.

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Daoure Diongue is a Baltimore-based Senegalese-American sound essayist, educator, and technologist.

Daoure studied saxophone and oboe at the Baltimore School for the Arts, culminating in a bachelor’s degree in jazz performance at Oberlin College & Conservatory. Supported by multiple grants, he juxtaposed the study of jazz in New Orleans with traditional Wolof music in Dakar, Senegal.

In addition to working at the Center for Collaborative Arts & Technology and teaching chamber music at the Baltimore School for the Arts, Daoure’s artistic practice evokes his dual homes—Baltimore and Senegal—through sound. His work grounds his world-class training as a saxophonist in the self-determining ethos of Black American Music. He incorporates kamele ngoni, keyboards, percussion, and voice to create first-order experiences that are both mysterious and whole. His debut EP, Shado[w], explores how understanding our histories can bring us new clarity, beauty, and possibility.

Daoure has performed throughout Baltimore and beyond at venues such as the Kennedy Center, the National Aquarium, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He serves on the board of the contemporary collaborative ensemble Mind on Fire and has worked with notable local artists, including Dan Deacon, Bartees Strange, and Lafayette Gilchrist.

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Laure Drogoul is a sculptor, olfactory spelunker, and cobbler of situations who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Laure's work explores sensorial phenomena and embraces play, humor, and sometimes horror as a way to invite the viewer to be an active participant. She has performed and exhibited widely, including The International House of Japan in Tokyo, Washington Project for the Arts, The Walters Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Wavehill Public Gardens and Cultural Center, Spring/Break Art Show, as well as many street corners, alleys, and fallow urban spaces.

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Cassie Watson Francillon is a New Orleans-based avant-garde harpist, interdisciplinary artist, activist, collaborator and producer; breaking conventions to construct “sacred sonic architecture” on her concert grand harp. Influenced by hip-hop, jazz, psychedelia, and Black American spirituals, she crafts a powerfully expressive and fresh, modern-day revival through distinctive soundscapes, composition and improvisation. Proclaiming, “This is not a recital. We do this to set people free,” her approach marks an underground & formidable presence in redefining the voice of a classical instrument in contemporary culture. This lense of liberation creates a sound that reflects the journey, joy and lamentations of Black American transcendence, coupled with spiritually-sonic investigations of her father's Haitian lineage. Recent installations have included “Consortium” collaborative black sonic technology (2022-3), “Lanati” liberation of acoustic sound for well being in a public environment as nature (2024), and movements for Ron Bechet’s From the Storms of Our Souls, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans (2025). Her solo acoustic album “This Appears To Disappear” (2020) received an outpour of attention for its bold, spiritual center and received a nod in Pitchfork and by Grammy-nominated harpist Brandee Younger in Harp Column Magazine. Her electro-ambient collaborations include albums “Suite” (2025) with Sasha Masakowski and "KāFOU" (2025) with Val Jeanty. She has been a special contributor for recordings and lineups with John Cameron Mitchell, Helen Gillet, Tank and the Bangas, Chief Adjuah (fka Christian Scott), Curtis Lundy, Mark Bingham, Lilli Lewis, Leyla McCalla, Charm Taylor, Julie Odell, Irreversible Entanglements, Isaiah Collier, People Museum, Val Jeanty, Ben LaMar Gay, Sasha Masakowski, Lollise, Shakespeare & the Blues and many more.

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Max Gong improvises on the piano and with electronics. He teaches and practices the piano, volunteers for the Peabody Improvisers Collective and the High Zero Collective, meditates, and cooks. He lives with his partner and a two-year-old dog, Whey Whey.

John Hoegberg is a musician and composer from Baltimore, Maryland who sings and plays guitar and keyboard, and is active in free improvisation, while spending the majority of their time composing and producing music. His compositions occasionally simulate, or present the illusion of, free-improvisation in highly composed and arranged musical settings.

His keyboard playing involves/will involve just-intonation systems and experimental use of MIDI and sampling. His guitar playing is/will express an ongoing exploration of extended technique, unique technical extremities, self-taught idiosyncrasies - unusual playing habits, dating back to his childhood.

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Anne Ishii is a writer and musician who lives in Philadelphia. She performs often in TOTALLY AUTOMATIC with Eugene Lew and Matthew Smith Lee, but with an array of musicians in a variety of arrangements meant for everybody inside the drum.

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A beijing based musician who works with voice, electronics, field recording, body and ideas. he is active in the scene of experimental music, improvised music and sound art. A member of fen (heavy improvised music), ghostmass (noise-doom-metal) and tea rockers (free-world). and a poet.

He is not a virtuoso of anything.

"i wish i was a piece of field recording."

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Baltimore based percussionist Paul Neidhardt has been a member of High Zero and the Red Room Collective since 2004. Paul works locally as a drum instructor and dance accompanist. His performance work focuses on improvisation using extended techniques to create non-traditional drum sounds and textures. Paul currently plays in the percussion ensemble Umbilicus and hosts the monthly Volunteers Collective improvisation workshop at the Red Room.

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Bao Nguyen is a performance and visual artist based in Baltimore and raised in Vietnam. They improvise through movement, action, voice and words to unravel a range of emotions. Recently, they recited Cardi B’s “WAP”, rolled in a blanket while being naked, ate soil, scolded the audience and asked for their keys. Bao messes up the context of DIY and institutional spaces they perform in to uncover collective intimacy, openness and vulnerability.

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Violist and composer, Jessica Pavone, explores the tactile and sensory experience of music as a vibration-based medium. Inspired by processes centered on intuition and instinct, her music channels these ideas by focusing on how music feels when played and heard, integrating her experiences as an instrumentalist into works that transcend time. Pavone has dedicated her practice to exploring alternative avenues for creative musical expression and “has made a career of redefining the possibilities for her instrument” (Steve Smith, National Sawdust Log). Pavone’s music has been premiered at prominent NYC venues such as: Abrons Art Center, ISSUE Project Room, the Kitchen, the Noguchi Museum, Pioneer Works, Roulette, and the Socrates Sculpture Park. Grants and Commissions: New York State Council on the Arts (2024), Queens Arts Council (2024, 2022, 2020), New York Foundation for the Arts NYC Women’s Fund (2023), MATA Festival (2023), Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Emergency Grant, 2021), New Music USA (2015), Tri-Centric Foundation (2015), Experiments in Opera (2013), and the Jerome Foundation (2011). Residencies and Fellowships: Herb Alpert/Ragdale Prize (2024), Hambidge Fellowship (2024), Marble House Project (2024), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (2024), Loghaven Fellowship (2023), Ragdale (2022), and Ucross Foundation (2020).

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Olaf Rupp (*1963) plays Improvised Music on the acoustic and electric guitar. The organic flow of his music is guided neither by chance nor by dominant, willful decisions. To him the same level of focus and attentive energy should be present in loud and fast music as well as in softer, more subdued kind of playing. In all his music he explores how motion-clusters can be perceived as one agglomerated sound in motion by using spectralistic fields of tones. This means that every note is a dot in a higher matrix and its intrinsic color is more important than the position of that note in any hierarchic classification system.

Besides many cooperations five solo albums are published so far on the labels FMP, RELATIVE PITCH, GROB and GLIGG. Olaf Rupp has been touring in many countries and performed with extraordinary musicians such as Paul Lovens, Tristan Honsinger, Peter Brötzmann, Butch Morris, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn und Tony Buck. He is an outstanding solo performer both on electric and acoustic guitar. Important groups are among others XENOFOX, his duo with Rudi Fischerlehner, a Duo with cello player Ulrike Brand, and WEIRD WEAPONS with Tony Buck and Joe Williamson. www.olafrupp.de

Julián Pujols Quall is a Dominican-American pianist, percussionist, improviser, composer, and educator based in Chicago. A graduate of the Peabody Conservatory and First Prize winner of the DePaul University National Youth Concerto Competition, Julián has performed classical and jazz repertoire across the U.S., Dominican Republic, Spain, Belgium, and Mexico. They are a Carrier Records artist and have premiered works at venues such as the DiMenna Center in NYC, and Elastic Arts in Chicago. In 2024, they participated in the Banff Centre’s Jazz and Sonic Arts composition residency. Julián is also a curator at Fulcrum Point New Music Project, a Chicago Park District Arts Partner, and accompanist at The Joffrey Ballet. Their work blends jazz, improvisation, and cross-cultural collaboration, rooted in experimental programs as a founding member of the Peabody Improvisers Collective. Julián directs Julián and Friends, a concert series at The Jazz Showcase, and Mamey, a jazz project centered on Dominico-Haitian music, which has toured in Europe, the East Coast and Caribbean over the past two years and will release its debut album in 2025 with support from a Pathways to Jazz grant. They host The Changes, a trilingual interview show on Lumpen Radio featuring local and international improvising musicians.

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Matthew Ryals is an award-winning synthesist and composer-improviser based in New York, NY. Working primarily with the modular synthesizer, his music explores improvisation, generative composition, cybernetics, and experimental archiving. Recognized for his tactile approach to synthesis and innovative use of esoteric techniques, Ryals’ recent accolades include a 2025 Art Omi: Music Residency, 2025 Foundation of Contemporary Arts Grant, a 2022-23 New Music USA Award, and a 2021 IEA Electronic Media Residency. He has released music on Oxtail Recordings, sound as language, SØVN, and other labels. He co-curates the Brooklyn experimental music series Artifact. In 2025, Matthew will release three new projects: the final installment of his Generative Etudes series on 3OP, a live album debuting fall 2025 on Infrequent Seams, and a collaborative album with composer Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie on Oxtail Recordings.

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Taylor Washington plays the violin. A majority of the time, she does not. In the present context, only the former is relevant.