"About Trevor Dunn

1968: born traversing a fine line between hippies and rednecks behind the redwood curtain. first musical affinities: the beach boys, blondie, cheap trick, kiss. first television: ultraman, speedracer, bugs bunny. first films: over the edge, the mouse and his child, snoopy come home, bedknobs & broomsticks. first books: zylpha keatly snyder's witches of worm, the velvet room and the headless cupid.

1977: began studies on clarinet

1981: began studies on electric bass and subsequently quit the clarinet as i realized that girls would now talk to me.

1986: the same year that Lynch's blue velvet and Slayer's reign in blood were released, graduated from EHS. the school's motto: "pigs live in litter, loggers live in pride". started a band called Mr. Bungle. then i got a job at shakey's pizza. began classical technique studies on the contrabass.

1990: graduated from humboldt state university after studying the likes of harry partch, iannis xenakis, alban berg, igor stravinksy, gustav mahler, js bach, you know, all the cats. Also performed Koussevitsky's Concerto for Double Bass with the HSO.

1992: first Mr. Bungle record released on Warner Bros. Moved to SF and two months later embarked on the first MB tour of the US. At the age of 24 I was one of the oldest people in the van. For the next eight years played lots of weddings and restaurants between tours with MB. Learned a lot about music playing with Connah, Goldberg, Schott, Kavee, Amendola, Greenlief, et al.

2000: relocated to Brooklyn, NYC.

Currently playing in various projects under the direction of John Zorn (Nova Quartet, Dreamers, Electric Masada, Aleph Trio). The Nels Cline Singers, Curtis Hasselbring's New Mellow Edwards, Melvins Lite, Endangered Blood, Tomahawk, The Darius Jones Quartet & Erik Friedlander's Bonebridge. I still have plans for my own bands: trio-convulsant, PROOF Readers and MadLove; and I continue to write music for independent films, practice long tones, pine over Daisy Lowe and drink shitty beer in heavy metal saloons."

"Carla Kihlstedt (born 1971) is an American composer, violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and currently working from a home studio on Cape Cod.

She is a founding member of Tin Hat Trio (1997, renamed Tin Hat), Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Book of Knots, Causing a Tiger and Rabbit Rabbit. Other musical projects include 2 Foot Yard, Charming Hostess and Minamo (Carla Kihlstedt & Satoko Fujii). She is a recognized classical composer who has performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), has worked occasionally on projects with Tom Waits and Fred Frith, and recorded numerous albums as a guest or session musician. Kihlstedt has studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

In February 2012 she founded Rabbit Rabbit with her husband (and former Sleepytime Gorilla Museum drummer) Matthias Bossi. Rabbit Rabbit released their debut album, Rabbit Rabbit Radio - Vol. 1 in 2013. The band revolves around a song-a-month subscription website called Rabbit Rabbit Radio."

"Canadian pianist Vicky Chow has been described as "brilliant" (New York Times) and "one of our era's most brilliant pianists" (Pitchfork). The New Yorker wrote [on her recording of Michael Gordon's SONATRA], "'Sonatra' is a milestone of composition, and Vicky Chow's recording of it is a milestone of pianism." Her album "Surface Image" composed by Tristan Perich was among the top 10 Avant Music albums in "The Rolling Stone" magazine. As an artist frequently broadcasted on WNYC radio, her recorded work can be found on the 'Nonesuch', 'New Amsterdam', 'Tzadik', and 'Cantaloupe', labels. Interviews and articles featuring Ms. Chow was published in the Huffington Post, Gramophone, The New York Times, and others. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, she is based in Brooklyn, New York and is currently the pianist for Bang on a Can All-Stars. She is on the Board of Advisors for Composers Now, and is also a mentor as part of the Juilliard School mentoring program. Ms. Chow is a Yamaha Artist."

"Jennifer Choi has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of solo violin, chamber music, and the art of improvisation. Hailed by The New York Times as an "excellent violinist," "soulful, compelling," and by Time Out New York as "passionate," and "adventurous", Jennifer has performed worldwide in venues such as the Library of Congress in Washington D. C., the RAI National Radio in Rome, Hong Kong National Radio, and the Mozartsalle in Vienna since giving her debut recital at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall in 2000. Having gained a significant reputation as "a leading New York new music violinist," (Boston Globe), Jennifer has pioneered new works and engaging performances to the forefront of todays contemporary music scene.

A prominent chamber musician, Jennifer was a former violinist of the Miró String Quartet. With her involvement, the group won Grand Prize at Fischoff National Competition and First prize at Coleman chamber music competition. She has performed for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan and Guggenheim Museums, MOMA Summer Garden Series, Ravinia Festival, Barge Music, Caramoor Music, Strathmore Mansion series, Ridotto, and numerous other chamber music series across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. She joined ETHEL during their 2011-2012 season, and previous to that, was member of Fireworks Ensemble and Sirius String Quartet. Currently, Jennifer is a principle violinist of Either/Or and ECCE new music ensembles.

Jennifer's recent highlights include collaborations with TALUJON Percussion Ensemble in Lou Harrison's Concerto for Violin and Percussion, guest artist appearances at the Skaneateles Festival, Austin Classical Guitar Society, and Fayetteville Chamber Music Festival.

A frequent collaborator with today's most exciting composers, Jennifer has performed solo works written for her including Randall Woolf's Holding Fast for violin and video, Wadada Leo Smith's violin concerto Afrikana 2, Orlando Garcia's violin concerto Una Marea Cresciente. She has given numerous world premieres of solo and chamber works by John Zorn, and U. S. premieres of Jacob TV and Helmut Lachenmann and can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label, New Focus Records, New World Records, Starkland label, and on her self-released album, Violectrica- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.

In 2001, Jennifer found another voice with her violin through the art of improvisation when she joined the Susie Ibarra Trio with drummer, Susie Ibarra and pianist, Craig Taborn. Her first show as an improvisor was at the Walker Museum of Art in Minneapolis. From that day forward, she began a dual career as a creative improvisor with tours of Europe and North America leading to subsequent collaborations with jazz greats Wadada Leo Smith, Ikue Mori, Erik Friedlander, Mark Feldman, Trevor Dunn, and Ches Smith. Through these collaborations, Jennifer has found a unique connection between classical and improvised repertoire as a source for unparalleled expression in performances.

A dedicated music educator, Jennifer is a veteran Teaching Artist for the New York Philharmonic and the 92nd Street Y. She has created in-school curriculums, given lectures, and instrument demonstrations to over 1000 school children. She has also served numerous residencies and continues to give master classes, composer readings, and recitals at universities around the world including of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, the University of Freiburg, Shanghai Conservatory, Zhengzhou University, Mannes School of Music, Oberlin, and Tulane University.

Jennifer is a graduate of the Juilliard School and Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and can be heard on the Golden Globe winning series, Mozart In the Jungle."

"Captivating his audiences with a "primer of technical feats" (New York Sun), and his warm, lush tone "that might be described as something akin to rich old wood" (Boston Musical Intelligencer), YVES DHARAMRAJ has earned a worldwide reputation as a dynamic cellist who blends an immaculate command of the instrument with deep musical understanding to express his fresh and elegant interpretations.

As soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and teaching artist, the Franco-American cellist enjoys a multifaceted career that takes him to the major stages of the United States and abroad, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center (New York); the Kennedy Center (DC); Orchestra Hall, Ravinia Festival, and Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago); Disney Hall (LA); National Arts Center (Ottawa); Berliner Festspiele; Téatro Nacional (Dominican Republic); Panama Jazz Festival; and the Thailand National Cultural Center (Bangkok).

A top prize winner in the Ima Hogg, Irving M. Klein, Florida Orchestra, Juilliard, and ASTA competitions, Dharamraj has appeared with the orchestras of Houston, Green Bay, Edmonton, Florida, Dominican Republic, and Juilliard, with which he performed William Schuman's A Song of Orpheus at Avery Fisher Hall as part of the Juilliard School's Centennial Celebration.

Dharamraj is equally in demand as a chamber musician and has collaborated with artists including Sir Simon Rattle, Itzhak Perlman, Miriam Fried, Christian Tetzlaff, Cho-Liang Lin, Gilbert Kalish, Ralph Kirshbaum, Mischa Dichter, Isabel Leonard, and members of the Emerson, Cleveland, Guarneri, and Orion Quartets.

As an artist also dedicated to the performance of contemporary music, Dharamraj is a founding member of the genre-defying Bohemian Trio and indulges in the avant-garde as cellist of Ne(x)tworks. He followed his passion for teaching artistry, arts advocacy, and engaging new audiences as a fellow of Ensemble Connect (formerly ACJW), a musical initiative between Carnegie Hall, Juilliard, the Weill Music Institute, and the New York City Department of Education. He continues outreach activities as a member of Decoda, the official affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall, and co-founded New Docta International Music Festival in Cordoba, Argentina in 2013 to mentor and nurture Latin American talent.

Dharamraj was a pupil of Aldo Parisot at Yale University where he graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in History (Medieval Mediterranean Studies), a Master of Music, and an Artist Diploma. He further studied in Joel Krosnick and Darrett Adkins's studio at the Juilliard School where he earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree. He has also worked with Paul Katz at the New England Conservatory. Dr. Dharamraj taught cello at Juilliard as assistant to Mr. Krosnick from 2006 to 2009. He plays an 1842 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume cello. In his leisure time, he loves to learn about and taste the great wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux, and is a zealous supporter of the Chicago Cubs, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Arsenal FC."

"Cornelius Dufallo (composer/violinist) is a constant innovator at the forefront of the American contemporary music scene. The New York Times calls him one of the "new faces of new music" and praises his "alluring" solo performances and "imaginative" compositions. A virtuosic and versatile violinist, Dufallo plays both acoustic and electric violin and moves seamlessly from classical to pop and jazz styles. He often works with cutting-edge technology such as the K-BOW by famed instrument designer Keith McMillan. According to Allan Kozinn in the New York Times, Dufallo's performances on electric violin show "how much amplification can expand the instrument's palette. Far from robbing the violin of its beauty, electronics add textural elements and gradations of timbre that the acoustic instrument cannot approximate."

Dufallo's second solo album, Journaling (Innova Recordings, 2012) documents his ongoing work with many of today's extraordinary composers. The disc includes compositions for solo violin and violin + electronics by John King, Joan Jeanrenaud, Huang Ruo, Vijay Iyer, John Luther Adams, and Kenji Bunch.

Dufallo has toured the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia as a soloist and collaborative artist, performing in the Aspen Music Festival, the Bang On A Can Marathon, the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Ojai Music Festival, and the Taipei International Music Festival. He has played with a variety of jazz and rock artists including Ornette Coleman, Kurt Elling, Butch Morris, Okkyung Lee, Thomas Dolby, Todd Rudgren, and Jill Sobule. He has recorded for the Mode, Tzadik, Cantaloupe and Innova labels. He was a member of ETHEL (2005-2012) and a founder of Ne(x)tworks (2002-2011).

Dufallo's ongoing commitment to cutting edge musical ingenuity has produced collaborations with many of today's most adventurous composers including Osvaldo Golijov, Phil Kline, Joan La Barbara, Jacob TV, and Vijay Iyer. He appears as violinist on recent and forthcoming albums of music by Anna Clyne, Corey Dargel, John King, and Neil Rolnick. Dufallo recently inaugurated a recital series, Journaling, to chronicle his collaborations with living composers while tracking various paths in 21st-century music. The second installment of Jounaling took place August 15, 2010, at John Zorn's East Village storefront performance space, The Stone.

Dufallo's debut solo album, Dream Streets (Innova Recordings, 2009), is a collection of his own compositions for electric violin. Time Out New York calls it "a beautiful, evocative disc of electroacoustic soundscapes... all serve as apt reminders of this vital artist's considerable gifts." In a review for Arcane Candy, Garry Davis writes that Dream Streets ranges "from soaring, melodic notes to repetitive Terry Riley-like riffs... gentle sawing to all-out country-inspired hoe-downs... it's all reverb-drenched and spread across the stereo field like a rock band... squirrelly electronics and deep atmospheric field recordings - cawing birds, rain, traffic ambience - find their way into the mix, and it all melds together in a most pleasing manner."

Dufallo's compositions have been performed throughout the US and Europe. Recently commissioned works include Senescence Music (for ETHEL), Mindscape 1 (for OTHERSHORE Dance Company), and Night Visions (for pianist Jenny Lin's album American Insomniac). Dufallo was a featured American composer at the Library of Congress, where the Flux Quartet performed his Afterimage: the Crossing of Invisible Paths.

A dedicated violin teacher, Dufallo currently has a private studio in New York City and frequently presents master classes, guest lectures, and workshops at schools and colleges around the country. He has served as Assistant Professor of Violin at SUNY Fredonia and also as a teaching artist for the Lincoln Center Institute, American String Teachers Association, and the Grand Canyon Music Festival's Native American Composers Apprentice Project. With this spirit of service, Dufallo founded CBD Music, Inc., a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of public interest in and understanding of the musical arts through the presentation and promotion of new music. He holds Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral degrees from The Juilliard School where he studied with Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki."

"LJOVA (Lev Zhurbin) was born in 1978 in Moscow, Russia, and moved to New York with his parents, composer Alexander Zhurbin and writer Irena Ginzburg, in 1990. He divides his time between composing for the concert stage, contemporary dance & film, leading his own ensemble LJOVA AND THE KONTRABAND, as well as a busy career as a freelance violist, violinist & musical arranger. Among recent projects are commissions from the City of London Sinfonia, The Louisville Orchestra, a new work for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a string quartet for Brooklyn Rider, a clarinet quintet for Art of Élan, and works for The Knights, Sybarite5 and A Far Cry, as well arrangements for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, tenor Javier Camarena, conductors Gustavo Dudamel and Alondra de la Parra, the Mexican songwriter Natalia Lafourcade, Argentine composer/guitarist Gustavo Santaolalla. Ljova frequently collaborates with choreographers Aszure Barton, Damian Woetzel, Christopher Wheeldon, Katarzyna Skarpetowska (with Parsons Dance). In 2018, he was a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University's Atelier program, co-teaching a course on collaboration with puppeteer Basil Twist.

Ljova is the author of more than 120 compositions for classical, jazz, and folk ensembles, as well as scores to four feature and over a dozen short films. He is an alum of the Sundance Institute's Film Composers Lab. His music has been licensed by HBO, PBS, BBC, CNBC, and NHK networks, among many other independent projects.

Ljova has taught as visiting guest faculty at The Banff Centre in Canada focusing equally on composition, arranging, and viola performance. He has also guest-lectured on film music at New York University, performance and composition at the Berklee College of Music, Mark O'Connor Method Camp, and has taught viola and chamber music at the Special Music School in New York City. He has appeared as violist on Saturday Night Live (with Sia), The Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

His album MELTING RIVER, focuses on music Ljova created for "Project XII", on commission from Canadian choreographer (and Baryshnikov's protege), Aszure Barton. LOST IN KINO, his third album, focuses on recent film music, and features cues from films by Francis Ford Coppola, James Marsh, Basia Winograd, Lev Polyakov, Roman Khrushch, as well as performances by the Gypsy band Romashka, the Tall Tall Trees and the pipa virtuoso Wu Man.

With his main performing ensemble, LJOVA AND THE KONTRABAND, Ljova has appeared at New York's Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (as part of the Sundance Film Festival), New York's Museum of Modern Art, Joe's Pub and other venues. The Ensemble has toured to the United Kingdom, Canada, and around the United States. The Kontraband released its second album, "NO REFUND ON FLOWERS", raising over $21,000 in a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Their acclaimed debut CD, "MNEMOSYNE" and is the featured ensemble on "Cupcake", a short film which debuted at Tribeca Film Festival and was performed live at Lincoln Center.

Ljova released his acclaimed solo debut recording, VJOLA: WORLD ON FOUR STRINGS, on Kapustnik Records, in 2006. Previously, he has recorded with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble on the bestselling Sony Classical CD "Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon", and with The Andalucian Dogs on the Deutsche Grammophon CD "Ayre", featuring the music of Luciano Berio and Osvaldo Golijov. (Both CDs were nominated for several Grammy awards.) He has performed on tour with Savion Glover, and recorded with composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, producer Guy Sigsworth, Nina Nastasia, Amy Correia, and the Electric Light Orchestra.

As an arranger, Ljova has completed dozens of musical arrangements for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, the Kronos Quartet, Bond, Matmos, and others. He has also collaborated with composers Osvaldo Golijov and Gustavo Santaolalla, as well as the conductor Alondra de la Parra. Resulting from these collaborations are arrangements of musics from Argentina, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Tanzania, Uruguay, as well as gypsy music from Romania and France.

Ljova grew up in a household filled with music, books and an unquenchable hunger for culture. His father, Alexander Zhurbin, is Russia's foremost composer for film and musical theatre; his mother, Irena Ginzburg, is a distinguished poet, writer and journalist. He began violin lessons at age four with Galina Turchaninova, a celebrated pedagogue who also taught violinists Maxim Vengerov and Vadim Repin. When not practicing, the pre-teen Ljova regularly overran his record player and played street hockey.

Ljova is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he was a pupil of Samuel Rhodes (violist of the Juilliard String Quartet). He has won numerous prizes as a composer, and appeared several times as soloist with orchestras, including as a winner of the Menschenkinderpreis from RTL TV (Germany). He performs on a viola made by Alexander Tulchinsky, and a six-string "fadolín" made by Eric Aceto.

Ljova lives on the Upper West Side of New York City with his wife, vocalist and attorney Inna Barmash, and their sons, Benjamin and Yosif."