"Trumpet player Lesli Dalaba, a New York resident since 1978, was a member of Wayne Horvitz's, Elliott Sharp's and La Monte Young's ensembles. Despite keeping a low profile, throughout the 1980s she contributed to renovate the vocabulary of the instrument with a style that made the cerebral sound lyrical. Her first album, Trumpet Songs and Dances (march 1979 - Parachute, 1979), collected solos (Tanz Pesen, Barrytown) and duets (Two Up with Wayne Horvitz).

Relocating to Seattle in 1989, she joined Jeff Greinke's Land and in 1996 formed Radio Chongching.

Her recordings were rare and subdued. Dalaba Frith Glick-Rieman Kihlstedt (Accretions, 2003) was a collaboration with guitarist Fred Frith, pianist Eric Glick Rieman and violinist Carla Kihlstedt. The 13-minute Worm Anvils features some of Dalaba's most sophisticated counterpoint to the most fragile scaffolding as guitar, violin and piano conspire to weave ghostly drones and dissonances. After about eight minute, the 12-minute Shallow Weather creates enough structure from chaos to sound like a funereal fanfare. At the synergetic peak of their jam the four personalities are well defined, as Dalaba's sustained tones collide against Frith's dadaistic noises, Glick-Rieman's anemic notes and Kihlstedt's demented whistles in the 16-minute Ant Farm Morning.

Core Samples (Dossier, 1992) was the first major collection of her own compositions, mainly two multi-movement suites: Core Sample (1989), with two movements performed by the 10-piece Zlatne Ustne brass band (two alto saxophones, three baritone saxophones, a tuba, three Eastern European "truba" wooden trumpets and percussion), two duets with trumpeter Herb Robertson, two duets with guitarist Elliott Sharp and vocalist Sussan Deihim; and Violin Sentiment (1989), with Sharp, violinist Jim Katzin and a drummer.

Zahir (Endless, 2002) was a trio with Bill Horist on guitar and Randall Dunn on sax and keyboards, and the album collects material recorded in 1999.

Timelines (Tzadik, 2004), featuring Zeena Parkins on harp, Amy Denio on vocals, Ikue Mori on keyboards, Carla Kihlstedt on violin, was another suite, but this time also a full-blown concept album dedicated to the history of the world. The quintet of veteran female players crafts abstract instrumental interplays that challenge the dogmas of both jazz jamming and classical chamber music. The spirited performance reinvents music as both a cathartic experience and a social experience.

Lung Tree (january 2004 - ReR, 2005) is a set of nine compositions/improvisations with Eric-Glick Rieman on prepared piano, Lesli Dalaba on trumpet and Stuart Dempster on trombone. The music is puntillistic but not overtly abstract. Emotions surface from the shy, sparse, subdued interchange of the trio. The pieces are a display of slow-motion and subliminal elegance. Most of them are sleepy elegies caught in the interplay between trumpet and trombone, such as the delicate droning and wailing of The Dock-Red Ice and Walking Ruminations, and especially Bed Shadows into Sleep, each of them littered with metallic piano noises. This paradigm culminates in the light trumpet and trombone drones of Morning Light Through the Smokestacks, the most abstract and otherworldly track, although towards the end the trumpet begins to "sing" a real song. A flickering melody is also drowned in the jelly of overtones of Waking by the Refinery. Two of the pieces are significantly different in spirit. Timbral Shift 10/ Coward's Line/Lobby Bar unfolds a series of non-musical dissonant staccato notes. The frantic piano metamorphoses of Dissolution and Redemption Animals (besides being infinitely more energetic than the rest) produces an angular melody out of what initially appears to be a mathematical game. Talking into the Wind closes the album in a somewhat desolate and depressed tone."

"Stuart Dempster, born in Berkeley, California in 1936, studied performance and composition at San Francisco State College. From 1962-66 he was principal trombone in the Oakland Symphony under Gerhard Samuel and, since 1968, he has been on the faculty of University of Washington. Grants include: Creative Associate at SUNYAB (1967-68); Fellow in the Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois (1971-72); Fulbright Scholar in Australia (1973) where he studied aboriginal didjeridu; a NEA Composer Grant (1978); US/UK Fellowship (1979); Guggenheim Fellowship (1981). His book The Modern Trombone: A Definition of Its Idioms was first published in 1979 and he has recorded on several labels including Columbia, Deep Listening, Nonesuch, and New Albion, the latter having produced his "Abbey" recording (NA 013) which has become, in the words of one reviewer: "...a cult classic."

Dempster tours regularly as a solo recitalist performing his own works as well as his commissioned works by Berio, Erb, Erickson, and others, and also with the Deep Listening Band. His work exemplified by Sound Massage Parlor, and environmental/site specific works such as SWAMI (State of Washington As a Musical Instrument) have earned him a reputation as a composer/performer whose work is at once deep, meditative, and amusing. Deep Listening Band recordings include: award winning Deep Listening, with Pauline Oliveros and Panaiotis, recorded in the old Fort Worden (Port Townsend, WA) cistern with a 45" reverberation, released in May 1989 on New Albion Records (NA 022); Troglodyte's Delight, recorded in an old limestone quary in upstate New York, released in September 1990 on ¿What Next? Records (WN 0003); and The Ready Made Boomerang, recorded in the above mentioned "Cistern Chapel" and released in January 1992 by New Albion Records (NA 044).

Dempster was the producer for all three of these CD's. In 1993-94 he was composer-in-residence in Minneapolis with Seattle's New Performance Group as part of the Music in Motion* project. Also in 1993 Dempster was commissioned by Meet The Composer's Composer/Choreographer Projectª for a collaboration with Merce Cunningham for what has turned out to be highly acclaimed performances in the US and Europe. The music for that project was recently released entitled Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel on New Albion Records (NA 076)."