"Amanda Monaco has performed at venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland, Jazz Standard, and the Blue Note, and with artists such as Milt Hinton and the Mingus Orchestra. She has released eight albums as a leader. Her current jazz projects include her eclectic quartet Deathblow, rambunctious organ quartet Glitter, and all-female sextet Lioness. Her Pirkei Avot Project performs her original music with lyrics from selected verses (from a collection of rabbinical teachings with the same name) compiled in the third century C.E.

Monaco's guitar playing is "well within the modernist canon, but quite distinctive: her phrasing is often made up of tartly dissonant chords and insistent yet off-kilter repetitions that remind one of Grant Green by way of Andrew Hill... her playing is utterly unique, a breath of fresh air in the cookie-cutter climes of both mainstream and free jazz." (Clifford Allen, The New York City Jazz Record)

Monaco is an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music, where she has taught private instruction, labs, and ensembles since 2011. She also teaches for Berklee Online and recorded a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), available worldwide at www.coursera.com. Monaco's book, Jazz Guitar for the Absolute Beginner was published by Alfred in 2004. In 2022, she joined the guitar faculty at Boston's New England Conservatory.

Monaco is the Artistic Director of Convergence Arts, Inc., a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization whose mission is to share the art and fun of improvisation with people of all ages. Convergence has presented festivals in New York City such at the Six String Summit (showcasing guitarists Nels Cline and Julian Lage, among others), the Queens Jazz OverGround's Spring Jazz Fest, and the Lioness™: Women in Jazz Concert Series.

Monaco received her M.A. from The City College of New York in 2008. In her undergraduate years, Amanda studied with Ted Dunbar, Kenny Barron, Rufus Reid and Harold Mabern. She received her B.Mus. from William Paterson University."

"Michaël Attias is a quietly fierce force on the international improvising scene. With a brisk and calming tone Attias is a thinker, traveler, questioner. Born in Israel, raised in Paris and the American Midwest, he has lived in NYC since 1994.

As a leader, Attias has released five critically-acclaimed albums since 2005: Credo, Renku, Renku in Coimbra, Twines of Colesion and, in 2012, Spun Tree. As a sideman, he has performed and recorded all over the world alongside some of today's most compelling musicians: Anthony Braxton, Paul Motian, Anthony Coleman, Masabumi Kikuchi, Tony Malaby, Ralph Alessi, Oliver Lake, Tom Rainey, John Hébert, Nasheet Waits, Sean Conly, Ken Filiano, Kris Davis, and many others.

His current projects include his long-standing trio Renku, with John Hébert and Satoshi Takeishi; Spun Tree, with Ralph Alessi, Matt Mitchell, Sean Conly, Tom Rainey; and the new Michaël Attias Quartet with Aruàn Ortiz, John Hébert and Nasheet Waits.

Michaël Attias has also established himself as creator of live musical scores and sound designs for theatre including, since 2008, five collaborations with legendary director Robert Woodruff: Chair, Notes From Underground, Battle of Black and Dogs, Autumn Sonata, and In a year With Thirteen Moons. These were produced at such prominent New York and regional theatres as Yale Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and The Duke on 42nd Street.

Michaël Attias was named a 2000 Artists' Fellowship Recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts and was awarded a MacDowell Arts Colony fellowship in Fall 2008. From 2003 to 2008, he curated the critically acclaimed and highly successful new music series, Night of the Ravished Limbs, at Barbès in Brooklyn, welcoming a wide array of established names such as Barre Philips, Tim Berne, Mark Helias, Jason Moran, as well as an impressive list of rising New York talent including Mary Halvorson, Eivind Opsvik, Gerald Cleaver, and many more.

Earlier

The product of migrations spanning North Africa, the Middle East, Western Europe and the American Midwest, Attias was born in Haïfa, Israel in 1968 and spent the first part of his childhood in Paris, where he attended the music conservatory and studied violin for a brief period. His family moved to Minneapolis in 1977. An early passion for the music of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman led him to start playing the alto saxophone at the age of 15 under the guidance of great Minneapolis saxophonist and composer Pat Moriarty, while attending the Children's Theatre School. Avid for adventure and experience, he graduated from high school as a junior and traveled for a year in Europe before enrolling at New York University as a Film and Music student. Somewhere in between, he had the great privilege of taking a couple of lessons with Lee Konitz. Judging that school was interfering with his education, he dropped out after the spring semester, went back to Paris for a year where he wrote a novel called Twines of Colesion (1000 pages thankfully destroyed), came back to the US for an eight-month cross-country trip that took him from New York City to San Francisco via Mexico, and returned to Paris in 1989 where he became bartender at the IACP, a music school founded by legendary bassist Alan Silva. There he met such heroes of the ex-pat scene as Steve Lacy, Sunny Murray, Frank Wright, Bobby Few and others. He recorded with a pianoless quartet dedicated to the music of Thelonious Monk, Four in One (In Situ 1992), made his first album as leader and composer with a quintet of French musicians (released on Igal Foni's For Elevators/Jazzis, 1993). In January 1993, at the prompting of Anthony Braxton, he moved back to the US, sat in on his classes at Wesleyan University for one semester and finally moved to New York the following winter."

"Sean Conly is a bassist (electric/contrabass) and composer whose love and affection for a huge spectrum of the world's musics have made him an extremely versatile performer. As a player and a writer, Sean is constantly looking for ways to mix the traditional with the new, in an never ending journey to mix melody harmony rhythm and sound into a unique artistic voice.

Born in Gunnison Colorado, raised in Topeka Kansas, he has been obsessed with music for his entire life. At age six, Sean began playing guitar and writing songs trying to emulate the music his parents loved such as the Beatles, The Doors and Harry Nilsson. In school band Sean played percussion but as his teen years began and he wanted to start a band he picked up the electric bass. "My grandmother bought me a bass for Christmas when I was thirteen. It came with a Mel Bay method book which I stayed up most of the night devouring and then the next morning I went to a band tryout ." Within A few months Sean started to play around town. For the rest of his teens he played in numerous bands performing in venues across the Midwest. Sean was already a voracious listener and was spending many nights glued to the radio discovering any and all kinds of music. Punk funk rock metal r/b and many more styles were all in constant rotation. Eventually It was thru these nighttime binges that he became more and more attracted to jazz and improvised music from such artists as Charle Mingus The Revolutionary Ensemble and Ornette Coleman and Jaco Pastorius.

After high school, Sean moved to Kansas City to attend the UMKC Conservatory of Music where he began to study the Contrabass, but his real education happened on the bandstand with local legends such as Ahmad Alaadeen, Tim (Timbone) Williams, Jay McShann, Claude "fiddler" Williams Rich Hill, Norman "Bishop" Williams, Horace Washington and many others.

Studying in the days and working 4 or 5 nights a week helped him solidify his playing, He also started to write and arrange music for his own groups, and for the university's jazz orchestra and for mentor Ahmad Alaadeen. Kansas City had a lot to offer but Sean had always had his eyes set on moving to New York City, so in an attempt to learn more and to bridge the gap between NYC and KC, he moved to Paterson New Jersey to study under Rufus Reid at William Paterson University.

A year later he moved to Manhattan, where he has resided ever since. Since then he has gone on to tour the world and/or record with a diverse list of artists such as Gregory Tardy, Freddie Hubbard, Regina Carter, Ray Barretto, Charles Blenzig, Michael Franks, Tom Harrell, Andrew Hill, Nicholas Payton, Stefon Harris, Yoron Israel, Eric Lewis, Deidre Murray, John Mcneil, Timucin Sahin, James Moody , Mike Stern, Rick Margitza, Michael Attias, Tony Malaby , Myron Walden, Phillip Harper, Russ Lossing, Anthony Coleman, Avishai Cohen (trpt), Ayelet Rose Gottleib, Vana Gehrig Trio, Darius Jones, Ken Vandermark/Steve Swell Quartet, The Newport Millenium Celebration (with Cedar Walton, Randy Brecker, Howard Alden, Lou Tobackin, Francisco Mela, Paula West, Joe Fiedler's "Stunt Chicken", Iranian singer/songwriter Mohsen Namjoo and many, many others.

As a band leader or co/ leader he has performed with several stellar groups over the years starting with The Invisibles featuring Ben Monder, Tony Malaby, John OGalliger and Tony Moreno, Re:Action with Michael Attias Tony Malaby and Pheeroan Aklaff, Grassroots with Darius Jones, Chad Taylor and Alex Harding, High Low Brow with Mike Pride and Mary Halvorson, Think Shadow with Michael Attias and also as a solo performer. Recently He has unveiled a new piano trio , The True North Project, featuring Tom Rainey and Kris Davis. In May 2018 Cleanfeed will release a new trio Recording "Hard Knocks" featuring saxophonist Michaël Attias and Satoshi Takeishi on drums.

Sean is also an in demand Teacher. He has given clinics on four continents and since 2009 has been on the faculty of The Collective School of Music (thecollective.edu). In 2017 He was chosen as the recipient educator in The Alaadeen Jazz Master/Apprentice program and in 2018 was an Judge at the Notre Dame Jazz Fest."

"Satoshi Takeishi, drummer, percussionist, and arranger [born 6 February 1962] is a native of Mito Japan. He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. While at Berklee he developed an interest in the music of South America and went to live in Colombia following the invitation of a friend. He spent four years there and forged many musical and personal relationships. One of the projects he worked on while in Colombia was "Macumbia" with composer/arranger Francisco Zumaque in which traditional, jazz and classical music were combined. With this group he performed with the Bogota symphony orchestra to do a series of concerts honoring the music of the most popular composer in Colombia, Lucho Bermudes. In 1986 he returned to the U.S. in Miami where he began work as an arranger. In 1987 he produced "Morning Ride" for jazz flutist Nestor Torres on Polygram Records. His interest expanded to the rhythms and melodies of the middle east where he studied and performed with Armenian-American oud master Joe Zeytoonian. Since moving to New York in 1991 he has performed and recorded with many musicians such as Ray Barretto, Carlos "Patato" Valdes, Eliane Elias, Marc Johnson, Eddie Gomez, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Anthony Braxton, Mark Murphy, Herbie Mann, Paul Winter Consort, Rabih Abu Khalil, Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band, Erik Friedlander and Pablo Ziegler to name a few. He continues to explore multi-cultural, electronics and improvisational music with local musicians and composers in New York."