"Ayumi Ishito was born and raised in Ishikawa, Japan. At the age of 19, she began playing tenor saxophone in a college big band at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.

In 2007, Ayumi received a scholarship to attend Berkee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She spent three years there studying performance and composition. At Berklee, she studied with George Garzone, Hal Crook, and Frank Tiberi.

After graduating from Berklee, Ayumi moved to New York in 2010. Currently, Ayumi is a regular member of The Jazz Thieves, GADADU, The Eighty-pound Pug, Platypus Revenge and Big Squid performing and recording for numerous projects. As a member of the Jazz Thieves, she performed at renowned music festivals around east coast such as Burlington Discover Jazz Festival (VT '18), River Jazz Festival (PA '17, '19), and Sowebo Arts and Music Festival (MD '17).

In 2017, Ayumi joined Marc Edwards & Slipstream Time Travel led by Marc Edwards, former drummer of the Cecil Taylor's band. She has also worked with several renowned musicians and artists in New York's creative music scene such as Daniel Carter, Dave Sewelson, Elliott Levin and Steve Dalachinsky.

Ayumi has been leading her own group since 2011. She released two albums, "View From A Little Cave" (2016) and "Midnite Cinema" (2019), that consist of all her original compositions. The albums are receiving a lot of attention from home and abroad and have been featured on national and international music blogs including Jazz Trail, Bandcamp Daily, Divide and Conquer, The Family Review, Left Bank Magazine, Odd Creative, and Disk Union, just to name a few. In December 2019, Ayumi was invited to WFMU-FM's radio program "Give the Drummer Radio" as a guest musician and talked about her music and performed live with the host saxophonist Dave Sewelson."

"With twenty years of performing and playing experience, George Draguns [...] is primarily a bass player, Draguns knows the importance of "the groove" and "the hook". Reference Radiohead, Beck and Pell Mell for his mellower work and the sounds of Marc Ribot, Sonny Sharrock and Don Caballero for his edgier material. Credits include: music for the skateboarding films Fruit of The Vine, Ecuador, and Skateparks of Oregon (Nicols/Charnoski productions). Touring briefly with the band Don Caballero in 1994 and 1995, he played bass on: "No More Peace And Quiet for The War-like" on Singles Breaking Up (Vol 1) (Touch and Go, 1999). Draguns wrote bass lines on Don Caballero 2, (Touch and Go, 1995). [...]"

"Kevin Shea is valued as being a vital and original artist in the contemporary music scene. Shea's originality is manifested not only by his personal approach to his instrument, but also throughout his constant search for new musical horizons unifying all the bands he has been involved in despite the parameters set for musicians by genre definition, or by historical icons.

The plurality of rigorous artistic aspirations and creative engagement that distinguish the discography of Kevin Shea are not the product of chance or merely taking advantage of opportunities -- but the result of labor, strong convictions, and a strong conceptual support -- a deliberate search for transitional territories away from the dogmas of boring and unnecessary conventions.

Shea's artistic interests are rooted in reevaluating what a band/music, musician/performer, artist and audience can and should be. Splitting the difference between passion and song, Shea plays multi-dimensional utopian sound in which opposing musical forces integrate to form a new sustainable recipe for sound and social implication. Remaining devoted to his belief that the application of sonic diversity is paramount to the appreciation of human diversity, Shea's ultimate goal has been to wed disparate ideologies through proficiency, controversy, inquiry, and compassion -- an approach perpetuating audiences, listeners, and sometimes fellow band members, to face, question, define, and attempt to defend their own level of tolerance and compassion head-on, no-holds-barred.

Through this carefully planned direct method in the round, Shea's sonic investigations emphatically traverse the mobius strip highway of refurbished canticles, perpetually climaxing between Sadean semelparity and Platonic resurrection. At the heart of Shea's dialectical core, unabashed artifacts of rhythmic iconoclasm conjoin with anthemic melody gestures and modern memory loss to create a vital force that gives us bittersweet contemplation and empathy.

As a youth, Shea moved throughout the States many times, transforming any of his formal expectations into a joyous foundation of constant flux. He learned that intuition and customs had to be constantly re-evaluated and negotiated rather than held as sacred. This process of questioning is central to Shea's music. To him, sound is a result of a broader process rather than formulas tied to notions of predictable emotional response. Shea sees sound and music, not as a prize, but a simple aspect of banal daily life.

Kevin Shea has over 25 years of experience as a professional drummer, composer and performer. He has recorded on over 120 albums in a mish-mash of contexts and has performed in over 40 countries. His training started in public elementary school and continued steadily through his college years at Berklee College of Music."