"Tim Berne (born 1954) is an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Described by critic Thom Jurek as commanding "considerable power as a composer and ... frighteningly deft ability as a soloist", Berne has composed and performed prolifically since the 1980s. His mainstream success has been limited Ð Berne recorded two albums for Columbia Records Ð but he has released a significant body of work over the decades spanning dozens of critically acclaimed recordings.

Though Berne was a music fan, he had no interest in playing a musical instrument until he was in college, when he purchased an alto saxophone. He was more interested in rhythm and blues music Ð Stax records releases and Aretha Franklin, especially Ð until he heard Julius Hemphill's 1972 recording Dogon A.D.

Hemphill was known for his integration of soul music and funk with free jazz. Berne moved to New York City in 1974. There Berne took lessons from Hemphill, and later recorded with him.

In 1979, Berne founded Empire Records to release his own recordings. He recorded Fulton Street Maul and Sanctified Dreams for Columbia Records, which generated some discussion and controversy, due in part to the fact that Berne's music had little in common with the neo-tradionalist hard bop performers prominent in the mid-1980s. Some regarded Berne's music as uncommercial. In the late 1990s Berne founded Screwgun Records, which has released his own recordings, as well as others' music.

Beyond his recordings as a bandleader, Berne has recorded and/or performed with guitarist Bill Frisell, avant-garde composer/sax player John Zorn, violinist Mat Maneri, guitarist David Torn, cellist Hank Roberts, trumpet player Herb Robertson, the ARTE Quartett and as a member of the cooperative trio Miniature.

Recent years have found Berne performing in several different groups with drummers Tom Rainey and Gerald Cleaver, keyboardist Craig Taborn, bassists Michael Formanek and Drew Gress, guitarists Marc Ducret and David Torn, and reeds player Chris Speed.

He is one-third of the group BBC (Berne/Black/Cline) along with drummer Jim Black and Nels Cline of Wilco. The group released a critically acclaimed album called The Veil in 2011.

Berne's complex, multi-section compositions are often quite lengthy; twenty- to thirty-minute pieces are not unusual. One critic wrote that Berne's long songs "don't grow tiresome. The musicians are brilliantly creative and experienced enough not to get lost in all the room provided by these large time frames." "

"Born in San Diego, CA and raised in Sacramento, Ches Smith came up in a scene of punks and metal musicians who were listening to and experimenting with jazz and free improvisation. He studied philosophy at the University of Oregon before relocating to the San Francisco Bay area in 1995. After a few years of playing with obscure bands and intensive study with drummer / educator Peter Magadini, he enrolled in the graduate program at Mills College in Oakland at the suggestion of percussionist William Winant. There he studied percussion, improvisation, and composition with Winant, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Curran. One of Winant's first "assignments" for Ches was to sub in his touring gig at the time, Mr. Bungle (here he met bassist / composer Trevor Dunn who would later hire him for the second incarnation of his Trio-Convulsant). During his time at Mills, Ches co-founded two bands: Theory of Ruin (with Fudgetunnel / Nailbomb frontman Alex Newport), and Good for Cows (w/ Nels Cline Singers' Devin Hoff). He currently performs and records with Xiu Xiu, and Secret Chiefs 3. He has also performed with Ben Goldberg, Annie Gosfield, Wadada Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Fred Frith, and Trevor Dunn. In addition to Ceramic Dog, he also leads his two of his own projects, Congs for Brums and These Arches. He currently spends his time between Los Angeles, San Francisco and Brooklyn."

"Improviser, film composer and soundscape artist - approached the far sonic edges of what one man and a guitar can create with only sky, a solo recording of almost orchestral atmosphere. This album followed Torn's 2007's acclaimed prezens, a full-band project for ECM (featuring Tim Berne, Craig Taborn & Tom Rainey) that Jazzwise described as "a vibrating collage full of shimmering sonic shapes, a dark, urban electronic soundscape - a potent mix of jazz, free-form rock and technology that is both demanding and rewarding." Many of those same descriptors apply to only sky, with its hovering ambient shadows and vaulting flashes of light, its channelling of deep country/blues memories and Burroughsian dreams of North Africa. Nearly 30 years before the release of only sky came Torn's ECM album Cloud About Mercury, with trumpeter Mark Isham and the latter-day King Crimson rhythm section of Tony Levin and Bill Bruford.

Torn's initial tenure with ECM also included Best Laid Plans, his 1984 release with drummer Geoffrey Gordon; and the guitarist featured on Jan Garbarek's album It's OK to Listen to the Gray Voice. More recently, Torn produced and mixed saxophonist Tim Berne's ECM albums Shadow Man (2013) and You've Been Watching Me (2015). Torn, a native of New York state, has worked across jazz (with the Bad Plus and others), film music (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Carter Burwell) and pop (David Bowie, Jeff Beck, David Sylvian and more)."

"Craig Marvin Taborn (/ˈteɪˌbɔːrn/; born February 20, 1970) is an American pianist, organist, keyboardist and composer. He works solo and in bands, mostly playing various forms of jazz. He started playing piano and Moog synthesizer as an adolescent and was influenced at an early stage by a wide range of music, including by the freedom expressed in recordings of free jazz and contemporary classical music.

While at university, Taborn toured and recorded with jazz saxophonist James Carter. Taborn went on to play with numerous other musicians in electronic and acoustic settings, while also building a reputation as a solo pianist. He has a range of styles, and often adapts his playing to the nature of the instrument and the sounds that he can make it produce. His improvising, particularly for solo piano, often adopts a modular approach, in which he begins with small units of melody and rhythm and then develops them into larger forms and structures.

In 2011, Down Beat magazine chose Taborn as winner of the electric keyboard category, as well as rising star in both the piano and organ categories. By May 2016, Taborn had released six albums under his own name and appeared on more than eighty as a sideman."

"Mike's singular and very personal musical style seeks to blur the lines between composition and improvisation, while connecting a wide range of musical genres that influence him. He has earned accolades from the press that call this approach "...beguilingly atmospheric..." (Time Out New York) and that "Baggetta's music is quietly transgressive... Even when he plays a lot of notes, his playing can sound almost static, as though ideas were being snagged out of thin air." (Hartford Courant)

Baggetta's most recent project, mssv, is a post-genre power trio featuring the iconoclastic rhythm team of drummer Stephen Hodges and bassist Mike Watt. They have just released their self-titled debut studio album, Main Steam Stop Valve, on BIG EGO Records, following up last year's Live Flowers album on Striped Light Records, recorded live in Philadelphia, PA and Northampton, MA. This band grew out of Baggetta's previous album, also on BIG EGO, Wall of Flowers, which featured a reimagining of his music alongside an unlikely, bound to be legendary, rhythm team pairing of bassist Mike Watt and drummer Jim Keltner. His prior 4 albums as a leader have been released on the Fresh Sound New Talent label, including Spectre, chosen as best of 2016 by Guitar Moderne and New York City Jazz Record, among others, and have featured working bands including Jerome Harris, Billy Mintz, Jason Rigby, Eivind Opsvik, George Schuller and RJ Miller. Mike also co-leads the new music duo TIN/BAG with trumpeter Kris Tiner. They have released 4 albums together including Bridges, which was included in Time Out New York's Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2011.

Baggetta has had the pleasure to work all over the world with a wide range of visionary musicians across many generations including David Torn, Mike Watt, Jim Keltner, Nels Cline, Donny McCaslin, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Tim Berne, Craig Taborn, Dominique Eade, Ches Smith, Tyshawn Sorey, Psychic Temple, Julian Lage, Jon Irabagon, Greg Tardy, Jerome Harris, Cameron Brown, David Wax Museum, Tom Harrell, Joseph C. Philips' Numinous, Imani Uzuri, Conrad Herwig, Billy Mintz, Eivind Opsvik, Jeremy Udden, and Ruth Brown among many others. Baggetta is an Endorsing Artist for D'Addario Strings, Koll Guitars and Fryette Amplification."

"Rachel Golub is a violinist, vocalist, string arranger and session artist of many colors and sounds, performing with artists ranging from Sting, Elton John and Lady Gaga to Jay-Z, Andrea Bocelli, Florence + The Machine and Suzanne Vega.

As an arranger and session artist, her performances can be heard on recordings with Five for Fighting, Philip Phillips, EarthRise SoundSystem, The Walkmen (Lisbon), Ryuchi Sakamoto, Nancy Magarill, Breaking Benjamin, Modern English, Lucy Woodward, Seth Glier and many others.

As her alter-ego, Go-Ray, she released 'The Yoga Sessions: Go-Ray & Duke' on Yoga Organix.

In New York, Rachel can be heard leading improvising ensembles like Ensemble Sospeso and the Club Foot Orchestra; performing with the Sirius Quartet or members of FLUX; and accompanying dance from Shen Wei to Merce Cunningham Company. She is a frequent player with Elliott Sharp's Orchestra Carbon and Syndakit, and was featured in 2010 at the Whitney Museum's Christian Marclay Festival.

After receiving her BA in Classics from Yale, she studied violin with Lorand Fenyves, and also became a disciple of Indian classical music with sitar maestro Ustad Shahid Parvez.

Rachel is often seen with Orchestra of St. Luke's, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, SEM Ensemble and other symphonic engagements ranging from Star Wars in Concert to Pierre Hughye's Antarctic orchestra for 'A Journey That Wasn't'.

Rachel was the violin soloist with the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre's klezmer band for their production of On Second Avenue and the BQE Project's The Golem, featured live on WNYC. She is also the concertmaster and soloist for the 2011-2012 national tour of Fiddler on the Roof and also played concertmaster for the national tour of West Side Story.

She is featured on White Swan, EMI and Chesky Records, and in Universal and Warner Bros. pictures including Music & Lyrics. Rachel's original song Ajnabee was featured on Syfy's Lost Girl."