Okkyung Lee A Korean native, Okkyung Lee has been developing her own voice in contemporary cello—performance, improvisation and composition. Using her solid classical training as a springboard, she incorporates jazz, sounds, Korean traditional music, and noise with extended techniques to create her unique blend of music. Since moving to New York in 2000, she has performed and recorded with such artists as Derek Bailey, Nels Cline, Anthony Coleman, Sylvie Courvoisier, Mark Dresser, Mark Feldman, Fred Frith, Shelley Hirsch, Susie Ibarra, Vijay Iyer, Eyvind Kang, Miya Masaoka, Min Xiao-Fen, Thurston Moore, Ikue Mori, "Butch" Morris, Larry Ochs, Jim O'Rourke, Beth Orton, Zeena Parkins, Marc Ribot, Matthew Shipp, and John Zorn to name a few. In addition to frequent solo performances and leading her own ensembles, she frequently collaborates with turntablist/video artist Christian Marclay, film maker Andrew Lampert, and artist Guy Richard Smit's rock band Maxi Geil! and Playcolt. Okkyung’s debut album, Nihm (TZA 7715), a compilation of her compositions on Zorn's Tzadik label with an array of NY’s most adventurous improvisers, was met with enthusiastic reviews from Wire magazine (UK), the Baltimore City Paper, TimeOut New York and All About Jazz. The first CD track, “On a Windy Day,” was featured on WGBH’s radio program “Art of The States,” which is broadcast to over 50 countries. The year 2006 has seen the following recordings: a solo cello CD on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label; a 30-minute companion CD of her own compositions in collaboration with artist Colin Stinson for his art book Dust to Dust; and a duet recording with Marclay on the My Cat is an Alien label's split LP series, released in January. Past notable appearances include the Kontra.com Festival (Austria), the Moers Festival (Germany), the 2006 Whitney Biennial (NY), the International Festival Musique Actuelle (Victoriaville), the Off New York! concert series (Germany), the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the Taktlos Festival (Zürich and Basel), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), and the Time Based Arts Festival (Portland, Oregon). Okkyung holds dual BA degrees in Film Scoring/ Contemporary Writing & Production from the Berklee College of Music, and an MA degree in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory of Music. Visit Okkyung Lee's Web site Peter Evans Peter Evans has been a member of the New York musical community since 2003, when he moved to the city after graduating Oberlin Conservatory. Peter currently works in a wide variety of areas, including solo performance, chamber orchestras, performance art, free improvised settings, electro acoustic music and composition. As a performer, Evans has been working to break through the technical barriers of his instrument, and enjoys playing with steady configurations of improvisers; each band explores a specific concept or style as much as possible. Current bands include the Peter Evans Quartet, Moppa Elliot's terrorist bebop band Mostly Other People Do the Killing, the duo Sparks (with Tom Blancarte), the Histrionics, the free-jazz quintet Carnivalskin (with Klaus Kugel and Bruce Eisenbeil), the Language Of with Charles Evans, as well as a sustained interest in solo performance. In New York, Peter also performs contemporary notated music with groups such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Continuum, Nextworks, and Ensemble 21. He has continued to perform on piccolo trumpet in baroque settings, performing Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 at the Bargemusic series, and in Bach’s Mass in B Minor at St. Peter's Church. Other recent collaborators include Mary Halvorson, Dave Taylor, Mark Gould, Perry Robinson, Fred Frith, Brian Chase (drummer for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Nate Wooley, Zach Hill (drummer for Hella), Dave Reminick, Briggan Krauss and Chris Speed. Evans has toured the U.S., Canada, Italy, and England, and has just released his first solo trumpet album, More is More, on psi records. Lukas Ligeti and Raoul Björkenheim Raoul Björkenheim and Lukas Ligeti have been playing duo improvised music for guitar and drums since 2003. Their CD, "Shadowglow", was released by TUM Records (Finland) in 2004 and has received much critical acclaim. They have toured the Eastern U.S. together, performed at the Tampere Jazz Happening in Finland, and at the Rochester International Jazz Festival, and have occasionally expanded their duo into a trio by inviting such guests as Ned Rothenberg and Elliott Sharp. Their music draws on their openness to and interest in a vast number of musical styles, especially traditions of Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, mixed with contemporary-music and jazz influences. Los Angeles-born, New York-based Finnish guitarist Raoul Björkenheim gained recognition on the international scene with his own band Krakatau, recording two CDs for ECM, and performing at many major European festivals. The shamanistic intensity in his playing reflects the influences of Hendrix, James Blood Ulmer and Ayler, and led to collaborations with Finnish drummer Edward Vesala, Toshinori Kondo, Bill Laswell, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Paul Schütze. Currently, he co-leads the Scorch Trio (with Ingebrigt Haker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love), which has several releases on the Rune Grammofon label, and is working on a variety of compositions for big band, chamber ensembles, and symphony orchestras. Born in Vienna, Austria, Lukas Ligeti has lived in NYC since 1998, and in Hell's Kitchen since 2000. He has received composition commissions from the Ensemble Modern, Kronos Quartet, and others; currently, he is composing a piece for the Bang on a Can All Stars to be premiered in NYC on March 1, 2007. As an improvisor, he has worked with Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Pyrolator, John Tchicai, Gary Lucas, Wadada Leo Smith, Michael Manring, Daniel Carter, Benoît Delbecq, etc., and he often performs solo on electronic percussion. Since 1994, he has worked frequently in Africa; he co-founded the experimental ensemble Beta Foly with traditional musicians in Côte d'Ivoire and has worked in Egypt, Zimbabwe, etc. In 2006, he was a visiting professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa; his band Burkina Electric, creating an innovative blend of dance electronica and traditional rhythms, is based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Visit Lukas Ligeti's Web site Visit Björkenheim's Web site Visit TUM Records Mari Kimura Hailed by The New York Times as "a virtuoso playing at the edge," the composer/violinist Mari Kimura is widely admired for her revolutionary extended "Subharmonics" technique, and for her diverse solo performances, including her work with interactive computer music. She has won numerous awards both in her native Japan and in the U.S., and has been invited to play around the world at such events as Spring in Budapest, the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, the International Bartok Festival, the International Festival Cervantino in Mexico, the International Symposium of Electronic Arts, ISCM World Music Days, and the NIME at IRCAM in Paris. New Music Connoisseur says, "Mari Kimura is to the violin what perhaps Henry Cowell and later John Cage were to the piano in the 1920s and '30s." Ms. Kimura’s works have been supported by grants from the Jerome Foundation, Arts International, the Japan Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts, and this year she was awarded a prestigious Artist's Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Ms. Kimura has been teaching a graduate class in Computer Music Performance at the Juilliard School in New York City since September 1998. Visit Mari Kimura's Web site Kinan Azmeh Born in Damascus, Syria, in 1976, Kinan Azmeh became the first Arab to win the top prize at the 1997 Nicolai Rubinstein International Competition held in Moscow. A clarinetist and composer, Azmeh is a graduate of Juilliard, the High Institute of Music, and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (Damascus). He is currently working towards his doctoral degree at the City University of New York, studying with Charles Neidich. Azmeh has performed both as a soloist and a composer at such noted venues as the Tchaikovsky Grand Hall (Moscow), Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall (NY), the Royal Albert Hall (London), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), and at the inaugural concert of the Damascus Opera House. He has shared the stage with Marcel Khalife, Daniel Barenboim, Elliott Sharp, Katia Tchemberdji, Kani Karaca, and Kevork Mourad, among many others. His compositions include several works for film and live visual arts, as well as solo, orchestral, chamber, and electronics pieces. His recordings include 2 CDs with his Arabic jazz group, Hewar, and several sound tracks for film and dance. Visit Kinan Azmeh's website. James Spaulding Alto saxophone/flutist James Spaulding is one of the many fine artists to come out of the Indianapolis, Indiana area. He is a composer and consummate performer who has recorded with many of jazz’s elites, and can be heard on many classic recordings. James has been a member of the Freddie Hubbard Quintet, the Sun Ra Arkestra, the David Murray Octet & Big Band, and had a short stay with the World Saxophone Quartet, to name a few. During a career spanning over thirty-five years, the range of his performance experiences extends from national and international concert stages, to jazz clubs, colleges, street fairs, and to such influential venues as the Montpellier and Saalfelden (Austria) jazz festivals. Mr. Spaulding returned to school in 1975, under the GI Bill, and earned his Bachelors Degree in music from Livingston College, Rutgers University, in New Jersey, where he also taught flute as an adjunct professor. While attending school, his original music — a suite entitled A Song of Courage — was performed by him with a full orchestra and choir at the historic Voorhees Chapel at Rutgers, funded by his grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Spaulding has played as a sideman on over 100 recordings, created 6 CDs as leader on the Muse and HighNote labels and, most recently, has produced and recorded a live 2-volume CD Blues Up & Over (vol. 1) and Round to It (vol. 2) on his own Speetones Music Co. label. Visit James Spaulding's Web site