"Since the mid-seventies, Ellen Christi has steadily gained ground as an important contributor to American improvised music and contemporary jazz. As a composer/vocalist, Ms. Christi has worked in varying performance venues ranging from multi-media theatrical productions to solo vocal concerts. She has also been an active advocate in supporting innovative performing artists through organizations that she has co-founded or directed.

Ms. Christi came to New York in the nascent period of the downtown loft scene. Jimmy Hopp was a positive catalyst introducing her to a musicians' collective at 501 Canal Street. And it was there that she lived and performed for many years with Tom Bruno, Ray Anderson, David Ware, Dave Burrell, and Coopermore.

Ms. Christi studied piano technique, composition, and arranging with Jaki Byard, an internationally acclaimed pianist/composer and a professor at the New England Conservatory of Music. She studied the bel canto technique with Galli Campi, a coloratura singer with the Metropolitan Opera. Earlier on in her career, she studied vocal technique and movement with Jeanne Lee, an avant-garde jazz vocalist. Presently, Ms. Christi is working with vocal coach, Dr. Virgina Davidson, composer/conductor and founder of New York Treble Singers.

Ms. Christi was one of the co-founders of New York City Artists' Collective, a non-profit organization committed to developing creative independence for artists, fostering appreciation of visual and performing arts, and record documentation/ production (N.Y.C.A.C. Records). New York City Artists' Collective was housed at 501 Canal Street, one ofthe prominent loft performance spaces of the 70's in Tribeca.

She is also the founder of Network Records, an independent record label promoting contemporary jazz music.

She has received numerous grants and commissions from the New York State Council of the Arts and Meet the Composer as well as having received varied commissions for dance and theater performances throughout the years. Her most recent commission has been funded through the prestigious Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. She is currently performing and teaching master classes in vocal technique/improvisation and movement throughout the United States and Europe.

Ms. Christi has been performing and recording with musicians in the United States and Europe for the past twenty five years. She has worked with: Tom Bruno, Ray Anderson, Mark Dresser, Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, Rashid Ali, Tony Scott, Ed Blackwell, William Parker, Lisa Sokolov, Jeanne Lee, Kenny Wheeler, Steve McCall, Rahn Burton, Roy Campbell, Lawrence "Butch" Morris, and Hans Koch.

For the past twelve years, she has been collaborating with Fiorenzo Sordini, Claudio Lodati, Carlo Actis Dato, and Enrico Fazio in Italy. In Switzerland, she has been performing and recording with Thomi Hirt , Fritz Heigi, and Pit Gutmann of the trio, Illustrio. Currently she is working with Joe Gallant's Illuminati, a 22-piece ensemble,as well as performing and producing concerts with her present performing ensemble, Aliens' Talk. She is developing a world music project with Vincent Nguini of Cameroon. And the most recent recording project is with bassist, Habib Faye and balafonist, Babacar Konate of Senegal. A great portion of her time has been spent working as a producer for Bliss Corporation, a euro dance music production company in Torino, Italy."

"Born 1954, in Torino (Italy). At the age of 20 Claudio Lodati founded the legendary ART STUDIO along with Carlo Actis Dato, Enrico Fazio and Fiorenzo Sordini. The group recorded 7 LPs and played hundreds of concerts throughout Italy and Europe.

1983 - 1993 Lodati was involved in two major theme-based projects, DAC'CORDA and VOCAL DESIRES. Formations varied with the participation of seasoned musicians, including Antonello Salis, Maria Pia De Vito, Ellen Christi, Giovanni Maier, Maurizio Brunod, Enrico Fazio, Fiorenzo Sordini, Massimo Barbiero, UT Ghandi, Alex Rolle, Laura Culver.

Lodati has brought his music to a long list of festivals and series, in Italian cities such as Florence, Palmi, Milano, Foggia, Padua, Pisa, Reggio Emilia, Brescia, Modena, Tarcento, Siena, Torino, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Trieste; and in Europe at Tubingen, Jazz Fest Konstanz 2000 (Germany), Sens Music Meeting, Belfort, Chanteney, Paris, Poitiers, Avignon and Montpellier '95, Le Mans '98 (France), MU.MO.VO. London (UK), Locarno, Basel, Zurich, Lucerna (Switzerland), Belgrade (Yugoslavia), Pristina (Kosovo), Stettino, Swinoujscie (Poland), Amsterdam, Zwolle, Rotterdam (Netherlands), Krani (Slovenia).

Jazz Festival Volterra 2008; MITO festival (Settembre Musica) in Torino 2010.

He toured the USA and Canada in 1995, '96 and '98 with the group ALIENSTALK, accompanied by vocalist Ellen Christi of New York and Swiss musicians Luigi Archetti and Jan Schlegel - more than 60 concerts in cities including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Hartford, Toronto, Buffalo, Rochester, Erie, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Middletown.

In 2001 Lodati played at the Daniel Sorano National Theater in Dakar (Senegal), with Ellen Christi, Fiorenzo Sordini and Senegalese musicians, including Youssou N'Dour's bassist Habib Faye.

Besides the musicians already mentioned, Claudio Lodati has played and collaborated with Hervè Bourde, Bobby Zankel, Tristan Honsinger, Karim Tourè, Fred Frith, Hens Reichel, Guido Mazzon, Radu Malfatti, Louis Sclavis, Tiziana Ghiglioni, Franco Cerri, Pascale Charreton, Irene Robbins, Tiziana Simona, Claudio Cojaniz.

He has also been featured on radio and TV broadcasts on Italy's RAI, Radio France (including the well known show "France Music"), Radio TV Yugoslavia, as well as radio stations in New York and Washington DC.

Articles on Lodati and reviews have appeared in the music press and newspapers the world over. He has been mentioned in numerous books and music encyclopedias, including Grande enciclopedia del Jazz (Curcio Editore, Italy), I Grandi del Jazz (Fabbri Editori, Italy), Storia del jazz Moderno Italiano (AZI, Italy), II Jazz in Italia by Arrigo Polillo (Fabbri Editori Italy).

Since 1988 he has taught jazz guitar at the City of Torino's Scuola Civica Musicale and today he's teaching Jazz Guitar to the Alessandria's Conservatory A. Vivaldi."

"Jan Schlegel was born in 1964. In the 1980s he attended the Jazz School Lucerne and completed studies in New York (Ken McIntyre). Since 1989 he has made countless appearances at home and abroad with various ensembles (solo to big band). At the center of his artistic work is free improvisation paired with composition, and this in the wider environment of jazz, contemporary music, rock to noise. A matter of the heart are the working bands such as "Objets Trouvés", "Noisy Minority", "Tresbass", "Cheap Farmer", the duo with Luigi Archetti, "Quittology", "Bass Quartet", among others Jan Schlegel is also a member of Ensemble Zampugn (Daniel Ott). Since 1990 he teaches at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences.

Cooperation with:

Gabriela Friedli, Co Streiff, Dieter Ulrich, Omri Brick, Peter Landis, Herbert Kramis, Marco Käppeli, Jürg Wickihalder, Yves Reichmuth, Nick Gutersohn, Manuela Keller, Roberto Domeniconi, Sheldon Suter, Natalia Sidler, Marco von Orelli, Urs Blöchlinger, Burhan Oecal, Martin Schlumpf, Lukas Heuss, Markus Schoenholzer, Oliver Schmid, Martin Gantenbein, Urs Röllin, Tiziana Jelmini, Claudio Lodati, Irene Swiss, Urs Voerkel, Ellen Christi, Tom Varner, Urs Leimgruber, Christian Wolfarth, Michael Griener, Christoph Thewes Fredy Studer, Saadet Türköz, Charlotte Hug, Christophe Dufaux, Simon Piccard, Daniel Studer, Herman Bühler, Claudia Binder, Marius Peyer, Lionel Friedli, Bruno Amstad, Hans Koch, Christoph Gantert, Urban Lienert, Hanspeter Pfammater, Susann Wehrli, Karin Ernst , Joke Lanz, Wu Wei, Ray Anderson, Toby Pingler, Christoph Baumann, Christian Weber, Peter K Frey, Lina Allemano, and others."

"Luigi Archetti, born in Italy (1955) but raised in Switzerland (since 1965), specializes in music that borders on ambient, droning and microtonal. His first solo album was Das Ohr (ATM, 1993), which includes 35 brief vignettes, notably the dilated, Hendrix-ian guitar-solo of Outer Ear the android-exotic ballet Hammer and Ambass, the robotic folk dance Trommelfell, the tense strumming of Gehorknochelchen, the closing drone of Ohrtrompete, the industrial-metal nightmare of Paukengang. Archetti's dissonant guitar miniatures (the instrument is mostly unrecognizable) explore a territory that extends from Fred Frith's noise-rock to Derek Bailey's noise-jazz.

Adrenalin (Recdec, 1994), his "rock" masterpiece, assembled 28 deconstructed, cubist songs of a dissonant post-psychedelic music mutating into a wild variety of styles. The "band" (Archetti on distorted guitar, Urs Blochinger on cacophonous reeds, Martin Gantenbein on creative percussion effects, Hubl Greiner on disorienting samples, Der Volz on the rare vocals) was subjected to all sorts of sonic torture in the remixing stage. Virtually each piece was born at the intersection of abstract electronic music, tribal folk music, convoluted prog-rock, loose free-jazz, demented chamber music, with one or the other element prevailing over the rest.

Archetti's third and boldest solo was Cubic Yellow (Captain Trip, 1999), credited to the Hulu Project, that added sampling, electronics and drum machines to Archetti's eclectic and surreal guitar soundscapes. The collection opened with the atmospheric dance piece Yellow Notification that could not be more misleading, as the rest of the pieces (except Yellow Lullaby) were in the abstract, dissonant vein. Some of them toyed not only with texture but also with rhythm, thus achieving the most disorienting effects: The Yellow Sign, an eerie blend of cosmic music and drum'n'bass, Yellow & Grey, a similar amoeba of drones, reverbs and syncopated beats, Yellow Greenland, halfway between Brazilian carnival frenzy and galactic signals, Fall Back on Yellow, drum'n'bass punctured by volleys of dissonances. Other pieces sounded ominous portraits of future life (or death): The Yellow House, a shapeless post-industrial noise that coalesces into a rapid-fire miasma, Yellow Pellet, an assembly of ghostly echoes from another world, Yellow Hotel Bill, a series of electrical shocks, an well as the assorted noise collages of Get Into Yellow water, Yellow Lunar Vehicle and How About Yellow?.

He played guitar on, among others, Guru Guru's Shake Well (Zyx, 1993), Moshi Moshi (Think Progressive, 1997) and 2000 Gurus (Fuenfundvierzig, 2000), and for avantgarde vocalist Ellen Christi's Alienstalk (Sargasso, 1998)

He has also released a few collaborations with percussionist Mani Neumeier under the moniker Tiere Der Nacht, namely Hot Stuff (Recrec, 1992), Wolpertinger (Recrec, 1994), Evergreens (Captain Trip, 1997), Sleepless (Captain Trip, 1998); the free-noise improvisations for rock quartet (Marin Gantenbein on drums, Max Oliver Schmid on drums, Jan Schlegel on bass) of Erbsline (Mass & Fieber, 1996); the improvisations with drummer Martin Gantenbein and cellist Bo Wiget credited to Affront Perdu on Fin de Siecle (Mass & Fieber, 1997); Low Tide Digitals (Rune-Grammofon, 2001) and Low Tide Digitals II (Rune-Grammofon, 2005), which were further collaborations for Archetti on guitar (and electronics) and Bo Wiget on cello (and electronics); a collaboration with bassist Jan Schlegel, Silent Surface (Unit, 2003). The two volumes of Low Tide Digitals, in particular, were (untitled) studies for Eastern-inspired distortion-laden chamber electroacoustic music (the second track of the second volume) and ominous black holes of "musique concrete" (the ninth and the eleventh tracks of the second volume).

The shamanic music of the Hulu Project (HBL, 2000) was born of a collaboration with electronic musician Hubl Greiner and Siberian singer Stepanida Borisova. The singer dominates the proceedings. Her voice occupies the higher layer and gives each piece its dramatic quality. Below it, the second layer is taken by the percussion, that are played in a non-rhythmic fashion besides the usual timekeeping fashion. They "embellish" the harmony. The electronic background is actually the lowest layer, and rarely intrudes in the dialogue between the human voice and the percussion instruments. A few tracks try to jump on the transglobal dance wagon, but they are the minority.

The 15 Transient Places (Unit, 2004) are electronic vignettes mostly in the droning/microtonal style. tones are created, floated around, slowly mutated or made oscillate, sometimes detonated or disintegrated. Sometimes they achieve the symphonic intensity of Gordon Mumma's installations, sometimes they decay into quantum void, and sometimes they mumble and chatter like a council of tiny animals. The nine-minute eighth track embodies the psychological aspect of Archetti's research, as the sounds are manipulated and sequenced in such a way as to generate maximum suspense and terror.

One of his most abstract and intense works, Februar (Unit, 2005) is basically an atonal "concrete" symphony in 14 movements. The original sources are scientifically decomposed by the electronic manipulation and the resulting extreme audio range is used to sculpt a narrative stream of sound.

The core of Tiere Der Nacht's Krauter & Weltmeister (Captain Trip, 2005) is hypnotic, mildly dissonant and highly percussive pieces (Falling Streamheater, All Yomo). Occasionally danceable (Krauter & Weltmeister) and occasionally romantic (Zap Love), the ritual culminates with the dilated and introspective jazz-rock of New Kabuki.

Null (Die Schachtel, 2010) and Null II/III (Die Schachtel, 2012) compiles a massive electronic work.

Silent Surface II (2012) documents a collaboration between Luigi Archetti (on guitar and electronics) and Jan Schlegel (on bass and electronics)."