"Called "a thrilling improviser" by Downbeat magazine, Fay Victor consistently hones a unique vision of the vocalist's role in jazz and improvised music. Victor's eight (8) critically acclaimed recordings as a leader since the late 90's has seen praise in venerable media outlets such as Downbeat, JazzTimes, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, The Wire, Signal to Noise, Popmatters.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out Chicago, The Chicago Reader, The New York City Jazz Record and JazzWise (UK). Victor's long standing group, the Fay Victor Ensemble - an expansive and cohesive mix of jazz, rock, blues, new music and free improvisation - released three albums to huge critical acclaim (2009's The FreeSong Suite made it onto numerous year-end lists including The Village Voice, NPR and Popmatters.com). The experimental blues project The Exposed Blues Duo, with FVE guitarist Anders Nilsson delving deep into a variety of blues forms released Bare in 2010. There is Herbie Nichols SUNG, Victor's homage to the unsung be-bop pianist incorporating Victor's lyrics and arrangements in a quintet and trio format. The trio project has been recorded and currently looking for label support for release and 2018 will see Victor release Wet Robots on ESP-DISK, a brand new vehicle for fresh sounds and improvisational approaches in a group called SoundNoiseFUNK.

In addition to Victor's band-leading vehicles on record, her voice has attracted esteemed ensembles including Other Dimensions in Music (ODIM), the perennial free jazz outfit joined forces with Victor for 2011's Kaiso Stories on Silkheart Records in 2011, lauded for its impressive fusion of Calypso, the music of Trinidad & Tobago and home to Victor's cultural roots, with free jazz. The legendary and longstanding Dutch outfit, the Instant Composer's Pool Orkest (ICP) led by Misha Mengelberg/Han Bennink invited Victor to tour with them in Europe in 2010 and appear during US tours in 2011, 2014 and 2015. Victor is the first vocalist to work consistently with ICP in it's 50 year history. Victor was one of the vocalists on Trillium E (New Braxton Records 2011) with Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Orchestra and Trillium J during the four-day Braxtonian Festival in 2011. Reedist Ab Baars invited Victor and french horn hero Vincent Chancey to celebrate 20 years with his esteemed trio in 2011 including a 15-concert European tour, the first time Baars had written material for voice and specifically for Victor; that work is contained on The Invisible Blow (Stichting Wig 2014). Victor received a presenting commission from Anthony Braxton himself on behalf of the Tricentric Foundation for Neighborhood Dynamics (co-composed with Jochem van Dijk) that was presented during the TriCentric Festival in a double bill with Anthony Braxton's Nonet in 2014. Neighborhood Dynamics is a piece about gentrification and the changing demographic landscape of Brooklyn, NY, where Victor calls home. Over the past four years, Victor's work with esteemed avant-garde trombonist Roswell Rudd has seen a deeper connection appearing on his 2014 Trombone for Lovers(Sunnyside Records 2014) and now appearing on every track of Embrace (RareNoise 2017), a project of re-imagined standards. Victor was part of a voice/percussion/piano duo with MacArthur genius grant recipient, professor and composer/multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey, with appearances at Constellation in Chicago, IL (2016) and Vision Festival XVVI (2014) amongst their performance highlights.

Victor is also out on record as a part of Glorious Ravage, a sprawling song-cycle in honor of Victorian-era female explorers composed by Bay Area bassist/composer Lisa Mezzacappa (New World Records 2017). Mezzacappa and Victor have collaborated frequently since 2011 and the song cycle was originally inspired by Victor's first trip out West to play with Mezzacappa. Finally, Victor is part of ReDDeer a trio of improvisors that met at MusicOmi in 2010 with a record of live duo/trio recordings in New York & Austria called New York - St. Johann (Evil Rabbit Records 2017) and Victor is a featured guest on Marc Ribot's Songs of Resistance, due for release in January 2018. Victor was just awarded a residency at Yaddo Corp. for Music Composition, staying there for 6 weeks to complete a large work on the life and death of her mother, in early 2018.

Victor performances has included such luminaries as Wadada Leo Smith, Marshall Allen (Sun Ra), NEA Jazz Master Dr. Randy Weston, NEA Jazz Master Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Nicole Mitchell, William Parker, Myra Melford, Lawrence Butch Morris, Gary Lucas, Dave Burrell, Henry Threadgill, Andrew Cyrille, Jason Moran, Sam Newsome, Darius Jones, Anthony Coleman, Aruan Ortiz, Joe Morris, Vijay Iyer, Matana Roberts, Mark Dresser, Steven Bernstein, Marika Hughes, Mazz Swift, Marty Ehrlich, Melvin Gibbs, Henry Butler, Curtis Clark and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Victor has graced stages around the world including BAMCafe Live, The Stone (NY), Symphony Space (NY),The Jazz Standard (NY), Jazz at Lincoln Center (NY), National Sawdust (NY), Firehouse 12 (New Haven), The Bimhuis (The Netherlands), Cankarjev Dom (Slovenia), Koln Philharmonie (Germany), Nardis(Turkey), Rostov Philharmonic Hall (Russia), De Loft (Koln), The 55 Bar (monthly residency for over 5 years - NY), Vision Festival XV, XVI, XVIV, XXI, The ArtActs Festival (Austria), New Frequencies Festival (San Francisco) and River to River Festivals (New York)."

"Marika Hughes is a cellist, singer, composer, song-writer and teacher. A native of NYC, Marika was exposed to a varied creative life from an early age. Her parents owned a jazz club on the Upper West Side and she was fortunate to enjoy an exciting classical music life as the granddaughter of the great cellist, Emanuel Feuermann. She was a regular on Sesame Street, was a member of New York Youth Symphony, spent summers at the chamber music camp, Greenwood, was a student at festivals in Europe and busked in NYC with her high-school string quartet. Marika received her B.A. from Barnard College in political science and cello performance at the Juilliard School, where she studied with Ardyth Alton.

Shortly after completing her studies, Marika left NYC and moved to San Francisco, CA. It is there that she began to explore a musical life outside of the western classical tradition of her childhood training. In addition to playing in the Berkeley and Santa Rosa Symphonies, she joined Quartet San Francisco and enjoyed performing and recording for a host of artists and films including, Tom Waits, Mr. Bungle, Xiu Xiu, Santana and Finding Nemo.

Marika joined Carla Kihlstedt and Shahzad Ismaily in 2 Foot Yard. The band released two CDs; 2 Foot Yard (Tzadik, 2005) and Borrowed Arms (Yard Work, 2008). She founded the band Red Pocket with Jewlia Eisenberg and they released their CD, Thick, on Tzadik's Oracle Series. She also joined Jewlia's a cappella trio, Charming Hostess. She is a featured singer on that band's release, Sarajevo Blues (Tzadik 2005). Marika began her compositional work here, writing string arrangements and songs for all of these groups.

In 2006, Marika moved back to NYC. She has enjoyed playing with many local musicians she has long admired as well as some superstars. She has performed and/or recorded with D'Angelo, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Sean Lennon, Valerie June, David Byrne, Lou Reed, Ani DiFranco, Imani Uzuri, Charlie Burnham, Anthony Braxton, Toshi Reagon, Adele, Aruan Ortiz, Nasheet Waits and Henry Threadgill. She has appeared on The David Letterman Show, The Jimmy Fallon Late Night Show as well as Saturday Night Live.

Upon returning to NYC, Marika began to write for her own groups. She has written songs steeped in instrumental composition and lyrical content. In the last few years she has enjoyed writing entirely instrumental tunes for her new string quartet of cello, upright bass, violin and acoustic guitar (with Rashaan Carter, Charlie Burnham and Marvin Sewell respectively). She has released three records of original music under her own name; Afterlife Music Radio (2011) with pieces written specifically for her solo cello by artists including Nasheet Waits, Carla Kihlstedt and Eyvind Kang, The Simplest Thing (2011) an album of original songs and most recently, New York Nostalgia (2016) with her band, Bottom Heavy.

Marika has worked with Triad Trust, a Boston based NGO for 10 years. The ImprovED program which Marika helped to create (in rural South Africa and Haiti) utilizes a unique improvisation technique that provides students a stage to rehearse critical moments in their young lives. Thru original song and dramatic sketches, the local ImprovED troupe teaches ideas and practices related to self care and HIV?/AIDS testing/prevention/ treatment in the communities where they live.

In addition to her cello duties, Marika enjoyed being a guest host for Terrance McKnight's radio show, All Ears on WQXR, she has been a featured storyteller on The Moth and was a cast member of Stew's play, Family Album produced by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Marika lives in Brooklyn, NY."

"Over the past decade, Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of African-American music. "Jones' concept is proudly his own," writes Philip Clark in The Wire. [His music] poses big questions about the relationship between the African-American tradition of spirituals, blues and gospel, and now." With New York City as his base since 2005, Jones has brought his unique sound to dozens of cities around the United States, Canada and Europe.

Jones early on established himself as a powerful voice in the jazz community and was nominated in 2013 for Alto Saxophonist of the Year, and for Up & Coming Artist of the Year two years in a row for the Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards. Jones was one of Jazz Times' Debut Artists of the Year for 2009 and was featured in the Wall Street Journal in 2011. In 2012 he was featured in DownBeat and on WBGO's The Checkout. Jones' 2012 release, Book of Mæ'bul (Another Kind of Sunrise) was listed among NPR's Best Top 10 Jazz Albums of that year. "Jones speaks through his alto in an original and unforced language," writes DownBeat's Joe Tangari. Critics have called him "robustly creative" (Nate Chinen, New York Times) and "one of NYC's most incisive and passionate saxists" (Time Out New York). AllAboutJazz.com reviewer Troy Collins writes, "Jones has set the stage for a winning series of albums designed to document his rise as one of the most impressive and unique voices of our time."

More recently The New York Times named Jones among the Best Live Jazz Performances of 2017 for his Vision Festival performance with Farmers by Nature.

Jones has collaborated with artists including Gerald Cleaver, Oliver Lake, William Parker, Craig Taborn, Jason Moran, Georgia Ann Muldrow, Trevor Dunn, Eric Revis, Mike Reed, Nasheet Waits, Orrin Evans, Branford Marsalis, Kris Davis, Vijay Iyer, Marshall Allen, Dave Burrell, James Carter, Harriet Tubman, JD Allen, Tyshawn Sorey, Andrew Cyrille, Yo La Tengo, Chad Taylor, Dan Weiss, Matt Mitchell, Ches Smith, Steve Lehman, Jim Black, Sun Ra Arkestra, Shazhad Ismaily, Fay Victor, Cooper-Moore, Imani Uzuri, Matthew Shipp and many more.

Signed to AUM Fidelity records in 2009, Jones has released a string of diverse recordings which comprise his Man'ish Boy Epic, featuring music and images evocative of Black Futurism.

In 2008 Jones was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship by Roulette, which he used to launch his chamber ensemble, the Elizabeth-Caroline Unit, a project dedicated to new works for voice. Roulette continued their support for Darius' work through a Jerome Foundation Commission, and he was a Jerome Artist-in-Residence when the Elizabeth-Caroline Unit premiered the first section of The Oversoul Manual, in the Spring of 2014. Jones made his compositional debut at Carnegie Hall with the same work in October of 2014. In March 2018, Jones presented a new composition entitled LawNOrder a dramatic commentary on social justice and American politics, at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

In 2013, Jones was awarded the French-American Jazz Exchange grant for a collaboration with French vocalist Emilie Lesbros.

Jones graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelors in Jazz Studies in 2003, earning a Master's Degree in Jazz Performance/Composition from New York University in 2008. He also taught New Music Improvisation there for a year as an adjunct professor. Jones taught saxophone and improvisation at Columbia University in 2017.

Of note, Jones was featured in the Wall Street Journal and BBC's Jazz on 3 in 2011. In 2012 he was featured in the New York City Jazz Record, JazzTimes.com, the Village Voice Blog, DownBeat, and on WBGO's The Checkout. Darius was featured on the cover of Portuguese magazine, Jazz.pt in 2012, and on the cover of Italian magazine, Jazz Colours, in 2013. Darius' 2012 release, Book of Mæ'bul (Another Kind of Sunrise) was listed among NPR's Best Top 10 Jazz Albums of that year."

"NYC-based composer and improvising bass guitarist Jochem van Dijk got his start in music by playing a homemade tea-chest bass with the highschool Dixieland band in his native town Apeldoorn, a suburban community in the east of The Netherlands. When the paper route brought the 1st bass guitar, the opening 8 bars of Take Five were studied diligently with his high school mates for 2 months; the Bb and Db from the Eb-Bb-Db 3-note bass figure in 5/4 were fingered on the the A-string, with the d-string tuned Eb for the time being, and off to the races it was. Numerous bands in his home country followed, with both covers and self penned songs. Playing bass with a circus band for 5 years in the summers led to a master's thesis on Circus Music, sealing a Master's Degree as an Ethnomusicologist. He wrote the music for a number of stage plays for Belgian Theater Amsterdam, an experience that greatly shaped his compositional thinking. Jochem currently lives and works in New York City.

Stateside highlights include his arrangement of Strange Fruit performed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 2005 at the Apollo Theatre, and the performance in 2009 of his pocket cantata Stuyvesant Reluctant at the Dia:Beacon. Since 2000 his compositions are featured on 5 cds by the Fay Victor Ensemble. Absinthe & Vermouth, the latest cd with all-original work, co-written with Fay Victor, was released in November 2013, to a 4-star review in Downbeat Magazine, amongst others earning accolades for its "strange and intricate forms-chiaroscuro theatrical pieces that tell tales of an individualist's exuberant survival in dystopia." 2014 saw the successful performance of an hour-long composition "Neighborhood Dynamics" in Roulette Brooklyn, commissioned by the Tricentric Foundation and premiered at the Tricentric Music festival alongside Anthony Braxton's Falling River Nonet. In November 2014, JAN was relased on Greene Ave Music, a project with Super Natsuki Tamura, Ken Kobayashi and Keith Lewis featuring Jochem's effect-driven bass work in a soundscape-like environment. In July/August 2015 he was an OMI Music fellow.

Besides the Fay Victor Ensemble, Jochem and Fay's work has been performed among others by: Misha Mengelberg, Roswell Rudd, Tyshawn Sorey, Michael Attias, Michael Moore, Wolter Wierbos, Darius Jones, Tim Daisy, Kyoko Kitamura, Yoon Sun Choi, Tomas Ulrich, Fred Lonberg Holm, Vijay Iyer, John Hebert, Steve Hass, Ernst Glerum, Curtis Clark, Drew Gress, Tom Rainey and others.

Jochem performs currently around New York and had the privilege to share the stage amongst others with his wife Fay Victor, Marvin Sewell, Jason Nazary, Daniel Carter, Darius Jones, Jeremy Carlstedt, Federico Ughi, Michael 'TA' Thompson, Ras Moshe, Anders Nilsson, Nick Didkovsky, Evan Gallagher, Claire Debrunner, Timucin Sahin and many others."