"Nick Dunston is a Brooklyn-based composer, bassist, and scholar. An "indispensable player on the New York avant-garde" (New York Times), his performances have also spanned a variety of venues and festivals across North America and Europe. He's performed, toured, and recorded professionally with bands led by artists such as Tyshawn Sorey, Vijay Iyer, Marc Ribot, Ches Smith, Imani Uzuri, Ingrid Laubrock, Anthony Coleman, Roman Filiu, Jonathan Finlayson, Amirtha Kidambi, Moor Mother, Dave Douglas, Matt Wilson, Tomas Fujiwara, Allison Miller, Jeff Lederer, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Darius Jones. He's spent extensive time studying with bassists Linda May Han Oh, Ben Street, Harish Raghavan, as well as with composer Missy Mazzoli.

As a composer, Dunston has written for a wide range of artists of multiple genres and disciplines. He's written for entities such as the New York Public Library of Performing Arts, the Joffrey Ballet School, The Witches, violist Joanna Mattrey, and the ESMAE Jazz and Chamber Orchestras. In 2019 he was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship by Roulette Intermedium, which supported the world premieres of The Floor is Lava! (upright bass quintet), and La Operación (double saxophone trio + soprano voice), referred to as "a work so dramatic and large that is both a response to socio-historical truth as well as a reflection on his own identity..." (I Care If You Listen). As a writer, he's made monthly contributions to Hot House Jazz Magazine from 2016-2019."

"Louna Dekker-Vargas is a flute soloist, collaborative artist, and advocate for new and experimental music in her chamber projects--The Witches, and Trio Jinx. She is a flexible sound artist, deploying her flute and voice gracefully and skillfully in a variety of genres. She received classical training at Peabody Institute under renowned flute soloist Marina Piccinini, as well as new music and improvisational specialized training from world class artists Courtney Orlando and Michael Formanek. She is a substitute flutist for the Broadway show Wicked as of August 2017. As a soloist she has been featured on Boom Bap Society- A Baltimore hip hop collective- several times, and served as principal flutist of the Peabody Concert Orchestra. She also plays piccolo, alto flute and bass flute. She grew up in NYC, attended LaGuardia Performing Arts High School and currently freelances in New York and Baltimore.

Her duo The Witches ~ has appeared at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Walter Art Gallery, Johns Hopkins University, the World Alliance for Better Health conference, and has curated and performed art concerts in venues such as Westbeth, The Windup Space and the Thrive Series.

As co-director of Trio Jinx, Louna has curated concerts that bring together high level artistry and community- most recently a large-scale community benefit concert called Music For Puerto Rico, which featured Trio Jinx and local ensembles performing to support Puerto Rico hurricane relief efforts. They have also curated classical dance party performances that combine artful chamber playing with dance-hall like atmosphere."

"Baltimore, MD and New York City when not traveling. A passionate performer, creator, and curator of contemporary classical music, she is a co-founder of the Bergamot String Quartet and experimental duo The Witches, in addition to being a member of Atlantic Extraction (jazz quintet led by Nick Dunston) and earspace ensemble (contemporary music ensemble based in Raleigh, NC). As a composer, she has been commissioned by Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound/Now Hear This, the Bridge Ensemble, and The Peabody Community Chorus among others. Her music embodies a desire to create and share a sound-world in which the classical tradition, the folk music with which she grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and an extensive improvisatory sensibility can be in productive dialogue.

In 2019 she has been invited to perform as part of the Sitka Summer Music Festival and the Lucerne Festival Alumni tour. With the Bergamot Quartet, activities for this year include participation in the Quatuor Diotima Academy in France, the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, the Banff Centre Evolution of the String Quartet program, and the Young Artist Development Series in El Paso, TX. Ledah has also participated in Ensemble Modern's Klangspuren Academy, the Bang on a Can summer institute at MASS MoCA, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program. She holds undergraduate and master's degrees in violin performance and composition from the Peabody Conservatory, where she studied with Herbert Greenberg, Oscar Bettison, and Judah Adashi, and studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Kenan Scholarship, a full fellowship for musical and academic merit."

"Traveling the borders of genre and style, guitarist and composer Tal Yahalom seeks to weave a wide spectrum of aesthetic elements into a distinct musical language - committed to engaging storytelling and attentive interplay.

Born in Israel and based in New York City since 2014, Yahalom has been exploring and fusing the worlds of hard bop, alternative rock, free improvisation and impressionistic classical music. Looking to expand the sonic and textural vocabulary of the guitar, he pursues unconventional, creative ways of instrumental playing - both acoustically and through a flexible array of effects. He is drawn to the elusive balance between composition and improvisation, clarity and mystery, the subtle and the intense.

Yahalom is the co-leader of KADAWA, a collective trio with bassist Almog Sharvit and drummer Ben Silashi, rooted in powerful grooves, distinct moods and adventurous improvisations. Founded in Tel Aviv in 2013 and working together dedicatedly to this day in Brooklyn, the band performs original compositions as well as new arrangements of music by the likes of David Bowie, Bjork and Nick Drake. The three create song-like instrumental pieces as commentary to various bizarre incidents, disappointing films and the weather, among other things...KADAWA performs regularly at many of NYC's finest venues, and has toured internationally across Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Holland, UK and Israel. The band released its debut album in October 2017, and since then collaborated with John Escreet, Jon Irabagon and Adam O'Farrill, while working on the production of their 2nd album, to be released in summer 2019.

Tal leads various trios as part of an ongoing performance residency at New York's 'Bar Next Door', which featured musicians such as Caroline Davis, Dan Weiss, Eivind Opsvik, John Hebert and Tom Rainey. The trios perform his original compositions alongside loose interpretations of tunes by Paul Motian and Thelonious Monk.

Additionally, he is currently developing a new solo program which integrates sampling and prerecorded material into the spontaneous live performance - unexpectedly combining multiple parts and soundscapes to maximize the element of surprise. A debut solo EP is set to be released early 2019.

Yahalom is the winner of the 2015 Detroit Jazz Festival National Guitar Competition, 3rd prize winner of the 2016 Montreux Jazz Festival International Guitar Competition, scholarship recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and the Siena Jazz Foundation (IT), and has performed at notable music events such as the 2016 Bern Jazz Festival (CH) and the 2015 Alternative Guitar Summit 'New Generation' concert in Brooklyn.

Besides his own projects, he is thankful to be a part of fruitful collaborations with Nick Dunston, Gaya Feldheim Schorr, Lisa Hoppe, Sagi Kaufman, Assaf Salhov and Gabriel Zucker, and to have studied with highly influential and inspiring teachers such as Richard Boukas, Shai Chen, Hal Galper, Tony Malaby, Bill McHenry, Andy Milne, Miles Okazaki, Gilad Ronen, Robert Sadin and Dan Weiss."

"Stephen Boegehold is a drummer and composer based in New York City. As a bandleader, Stephen has self-released three albums: "A Telling of Death" (2016), "Shared Realities" (2017), and "Way of Dreams" (2017). Equally active as a collaborator, Stephen can be heard on stage and recording with Nick Dunston's Atlantic Extraction, the David Leon Quartet, the Jessica Ackerley Quartet, and the Alex Levine Trio. He has shared the stage at home and abroad with musicians such as Michaël Attias, Kris Davis, Francois Moutin, and Laurence Hobgood. A founding member of the Brooklyn-based, artist-led nonprofit Polyfold Musical Arts Collective, Stephen also works to build musical community through Polyfold's regular workshops and concert series. Find out more about Polyfold at www.polyfold.org.

Drawing upon the musical and social diversity of his New York City home and his upbringing in the Detroit music scene, Stephen aims to examine the junctions of the inner and outer human experience by means of improvisation, composition, and meditation."