"John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, arranger, producer, saxophonist, and multi-instrumentalist with hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, and producer across a variety of genres including jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, surf, metal, klezmer, soundtrack, ambient, and improvised music. He incorporates diverse styles in his compositions which he identifies as avant-garde or experimental. Zorn was described by Down Beat as "one of our most important composers".

Zorn established himself within the New York City downtown music movement in the mid-1970s performing with musicians across the sonic spectrum and developing experimental methods of composing new music. After releasing albums on several independent US and European labels, Zorn signed with Elektra Nonesuch and received wide acclaim with the release of The Big Gundown, an album reworking the compositions of Ennio Morricone. He attracted further attention worldwide with the release of Spillane in 1987, and Naked City in 1989. After spending almost a decade travelling between Japan and the US he made New York his permanent base and established his own record label, Tzadik, in the mid-1990s.

Tzadik enabled Zorn to maintain independence from the mainstream music industry and ensured the continued availability of his growing catalog of recordings, allowing him to prolifically record and release new material, issuing several new albums each year, as well as promoting the work of many other musicians. Zorn has led the hardcore bands Naked City and Painkiller, the klezmer/free jazz-influenced quartet Masada, composed over 600 pieces as part of the Masada Songbooks that have been performed by an array of groups, composed concert music for classical ensembles and orchestras, and produced music for opera, sound installations, film and documentary. Zorn has undertaken many tours of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, often performing at festivals with many other musicians and ensembles that perform his diverse output.

Zorn's compositions cross many genres and he has stated "All the various styles are organically connected to one another. I'm an additive person-the entire storehouse of my knowledge informs everything I do. People are so obsessed with the surface that they can't see the connections, but they are there." For Zorn "Composing is more than just imagining music-it's knowing how to communicate it to musicians. And you don't give an improviser music that's completely written out, or ask a classical musician to improvise. I'm interested in speaking to musicians in their own languages, on their own terms, and in bringing out the best in what they do. To challenge them and excite them." "

"Kyle Armbrust started playing the viola at age three. Since giving his New York solo debut with Kurt Masur and the Juilliard Orchestra in Avery Fisher Hall, he has created a multi-dimensional career performing and recording a wide range of music. The New York Times has described him as "assured, brilliant, and stylish..." and the New York Post called him "musically mature, technically sound..."

As soloist, Kyle has performed with The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Lake George Chamber Orchestra, Maple City Chamber Orchestra, and Woodstock Festival Orchestra.

An active proponent of contemporary music, Kyle has worked with Elliot Carter, Mario Davidovsky, Osvaldo Golijov, Steve Reich, Charles Wuorinen, and others. He first performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2011 as part of the Tully SCOPE Festival, then again in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and he participated in the Carlos Iturralde ICElab in February 2012. Kyle also performs with Argento Ensemble and the Orchestra of the League of Composers. In addition to his other activities, Kyle is currently the assistant principal viola of the New Jersey Symphony, principal viola of the Westchester Philharmonic, and a founding member of the Knights Chamber Orchestra. He is a substitute member of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Philadelphia Orchestra.

Kyle's dedication to chamber music has led to festival appearances at Aix en Provence, Caramoor, Charlottesville, La Jolla Summerfest, Marlboro, Monadnock, Moritzburg, Ravinia, Schleswig Holstein, Stillwater, and Verbier. He has performed at Bargemusic, the Gardner Museum, Freer Gallery, New York Yacht Club, Neue Gallerie, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Kyle has also worked with Herbie Hancock, Lauryn Hill, Mya, Sufjan Stevens, Sting, and made an appearance on the show "30 Rock."

Kyle received his BM, MM, and Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School where he studied with Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, and Michael Tree. He has recorded for Ancalagon, Cedille, Interscope, Naxos, Ondine, and Sony. Kyle plays a Carlo Antonio Testore viola made in Milan in 1752 and plugs in with a DPA 4099V."

"Cellist Jay Campbell has been recognized around the world for approaching both old and new works with equally probing curiosity and emotional commitment. His performances have been described as "brilliant and insatiably inquisitive", "electrifying", and "prodigious" by the New York Times, and "gentle, poignant, and deeply moving" by the Washington Post. A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Jay performed with the New York Philharmonic in 2013 and was a curator for the New York Philharmonic's 2016 Biennale. He has soloed in major venues around the globe including Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium, Avery Fisher Hall, and Lucerne's KKL and performed recitals in Carnegie's Weill Hall, the Kennedy, Mondavi, and Krannert centers. Dedicated to introducing audiences to the music of our time, Jay has worked closely with some of the most creative minds of the 20th/21st centuries including Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, Matthias Pintscher, Kaija Saariaho, and countless others from his own generation. His close association with John Zorn has resulted in over a dozen works written for him including The Aristos, a Pulitzer Prize runner up ­­resulting in the release of Hen to Pan (Tzadik), listed in the New York Times Best Recordings of 2015. Forthcoming discs in '16/17 include George Perle's cello concerto with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot, a disc of Beethoven, Debussy, Stravinsky and Pintscher (Victor Elmaleh Collection), and a disc of works commissioned for Jay by David Fulmer (Tzadik). Also beginning in 2017, Jay will be the cellist of a new piano trio with violinist Stefan Jackiw and pianist Conrad Tao. He has been a guest at the Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, Moab, Heidelberger­Fruhling, DITTO, and Lincoln Center festivals."

"Claire Chase is a soloist, collaborative artist, educator, curator and advocate for new and experimental music. Over the past decade she has given the world premieres of more than a thousand new works in performances on six continents, and she has championed new music throughout the world by building community organizations, forming intersectional alliances, pioneering commissioning initiatives and supporting educational programs that reach new audiences. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase holds Honorary Doctorates from The Curtis Institute of Music and The Cleveland Institute of Music.

In 2013 Chase launched Density 2036, a 24-year commissioning project to create an entirely new body of repertory for flute between 2013 and 2036, the centenary of Edgard Varèse's groundbreaking 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5. Each season as part of the project, Chase premieres a new program of commissioned music, with seven hours of new repertory created to date. In 2036, she will play a 24-hour marathon of all of the repertory created in the project. Chase will release world premiere recordings the first five years of the Density cycle in collaboration with the producer Matias Tarnopolsky at Meyer Sound Laboratories in Berkeley, CA in December 2020.

A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University. From 2016-2019, she served as co-artistic director, with her longtime collaborator Steven Schick, of Ensemble Evolution, a three-week intensive workshop for emerging musicians at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity in Canada. From 2014-2018, Chase was a Fellow at Project&, a Chicago-based social justice organization founded by Jane M. Saks. Chase collaborated with Project&, the composer Marcos Balter and the director Douglas Fitch on the creation of "Pan," an opera for solo flute and an all-ages ensemble of community members, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker called "art as grassroots action."

Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, described as the United States' "foremost new-music ensemble" (The New Yorker), and served as its artistic director until 2017 and as an ensemble member on performance and education projects on five continents. The Ensemble has premiered more than 800 works since its inception and has spearheaded an artist-driven organizational model that earned the ensemble the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center in 2010 and the Ensemble of the Year Award in 2014 from Musical America Worldwide. The ensemble can be heard in dozens of recordings on the Tzadik, Mode, Naxos, Bridge, New Amsterdam, New Focus, Samadhi Sound and Nonesuch labels, as well as on its own online, streaming video library of live performances, DigitiCE.

Upcoming projects in the 2020-21 season include the world premiere of a new duo concerto by Felipe Lara for Chase and Esperanza Spalding, to be premiered by the Helsinki and Los Angeles Philharmonics and conducted by Susanna Mälkki; the release of Density 2036 (2013-2018) world premiere recordings; a collaboration with the Swiss director Julie Beauvais and the Ecuadorian anthropologist Eduardo Kohn on Pauline Oliveros' "The Witness"; and the world premiere of an evening-length work by Liza Lim called "Sex Magic" for contrabass flute and kinetic percussion.

Chase grew up in Leucadia, CA with the childhood dream of becoming a professional baseball player before she discovered the flute. She received her B.M. from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in the studio of Michel Debost. She lives in Brooklyn."

"Rebekah Heller is a multi-hyphenate artist: a bassoonist of both highly notated and improvised music, a conductor, composer, educator, curator, arts leader, organizer, and thought partner.

With a conservatory education and early career focused on western classical orchestral traditions, and over a decade of experience in the fields of new music, non-profit organizing, and performing arts education, Heller is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between classical and experimental music practices. She is committed to centering conversations about anti-racism, decolonization, and uprooting patriarchal and white supremacist structures and mindsets across the music industry.

As a solo artist, Heller is known for creating immersive environments - using custom lights, commissioned clothing, and playing from memory - to facilitate electric connections with her audiences.

Called "an impressive solo bassoonist" by The New Yorker, Heller made her solo debut with the New York Philharmonic in September 2018, and has been a soloist with the Seattle Symphony, the Nagoya Philharmonic, and the New World Symphony. She has been a featured soloist at the TIME:SPANS Festival, on Miller Theater's Portrait Concert Series, at the experimental music hub, The Stone, and she will make her solo debut at the Born Creative Festival in Tokyo in July of 2023.

A curious and unceasing advocate for the bassoon as a solo instrument, Heller has worked side-by-side with composers over the last decade to forge an exciting new repertoire of works for solo bassoon and bassoon with electronics. Many of these compositions can be found on her solo albums: 100 names, which was called "pensive and potent" by The New York Times, and METAFAGOTE, which ArtMusicLounge insists is "here to explode...any preconceived notions you may have had about bassoon music."

As a conductor, Heller is thrilled to share her decades' worth of experience interpreting contemporary music, and her gift of translating a composer's vision into clear and emotionally charged performances.

In response to her 2022 New World Symphony conducting debut, the South Florida Classical Review wrote, "Heller's crisp direction, sans baton, guided the players through the score's intricacies, marshaling their energetic reading."

As bassoonist (since 2008) and former Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Heller has collaborated with hundreds of composers worldwide to make countless groundbreaking new chamber pieces come to life. Through her many roles in the ensemble, she has been deeply involved in the act of collaborative curation for over a decade. Recognizing that conscientious curation cannot happen in a vacuum, she and her colleagues have always curated with racial, gender, and social justice at the core.

Inspired by groundbreaking artists and close collaborators George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, and Matana Roberts (among others), Heller has taken her musical practice off the page - becoming an exciting force in the improvised music community. As a composer, she has written for herself, her duo with vocalist and composer Fay Victor, and has several new chamber music commissions on the way.

A passionate and committed educator, Heller is invited to give classes, lectures, and workshops across the globe.

She gives lectures on topics as wide-ranging as collaborative practices, conscientious curation, contemporary bassoon techniques, and composing for the bassoon, as well as intensive seminars on non-traditional career paths and how to create and sustain community-centered spaces in music. She has given classes at The Juilliard School, The Manhattan School of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory, The Peabody Institute, Ensemble Connect, the Chicago Civic Orchestra and The New World Symphony, among many others. Heller often participates in mentorship programs for female-identifying, trans, and non-binary composers and performers, most recently serving as a mentor in the Blueprint Program - a partnership between The Juilliard School and National Sawdust for young composers.

Heller joined the faculty of the College of Performing Arts (CoPA) and The Mannes School of Music at The New School in the fall of 2019. She leads a bassoon studio, co-chairs the wind department, and teaches classes in contemporary repertoire and experimental music practices. She recently led a week-long intensive online program for young artists called "Finding Your Path" and served as part of the team that developed a new cross-disciplinary and holistic core curriculum for The New School's CoPA.

A graduate of the Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music and the University of Texas at Austin, Heller was also a member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra and The New World Symphony. She served a one-year appointment as Principal Bassoonist of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra before moving to New York City to join the International Contemporary Ensemble.

Heller lives in Manhattan."

"Christian Lee McBride (born May 31, 1972) is an American jazz bassist. He is considered a virtuoso, and is one of the most recorded musicians of his generation; he has appeared on more than 300 recordings as a sideman. He is also a five-time Grammy award winner.

McBride has performed and recorded with a number of jazz musicians and ensembles, including Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Brad Mehldau, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Joe Henderson, Diana Krall, Roy Haynes, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Wynton Marsalis, Hank Jones, Lewis Nash, Joshua Redman, and Ray Brown's "Superbass" with John Clayton, as well as with pop, hip-hop, and soul musicians like Sting, Paul McCartney, Celine Dion, Isaac Hayes, The Roots, Queen Latifah, Kathleen Battle, Renee Fleming, Carly Simon, Bruce Hornsby, and James Brown."-Wikipedia

"Tyshawn Sorey (born July 8, 1980 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American musician and composer who plays drum set, percussion, trombone and piano.

Since graduating from William Paterson University, Sorey has been a sought-after musician in many different musical idioms. He is both a performer and composer, and has had works reviewed in The Wire, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Modern Drummer and Down Beat. In August 2009, Sorey was given the opportunity to curate a month of performances at the Stone, a New York performance space owned by John Zorn. He was selected as an Other Minds 17 (2012).

Sorey recently completed a Master of Arts in composition at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. In the fall of 2011, he began pursuing doctoral work in composition at Columbia University.

To date, Sorey has released four albums as a leader: That/Not (2007, Firehouse 12 Records), Koan (2009, 482 Music), Oblique (2011, Pi Recordings) and Alloy (2014, Pi Recordings). He has recorded or performed with musicians including Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Coleman, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Steve Lehman, Joey Baron, Muhal Richard Abrams, Pete Robbins, Vijay Iyer, Dave Douglas, Butch Morris and Sylvie Courvoisier, among many others."