Cellist, Composer, Soundpainter, Improviser. All are words which describe Gil Selinger, a musician at the forefront of 21st century music making.

 As a cellist, Gil’s background is in Classical, Jazz, and Free Improvisation. All of which he has merged into a style called Classical Improvisation. As a soloist Gil has appeared with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Amalgammes Orchestra of Paris in improvised versions of St. Saens & Shostakovich cello concertos together with Conductor and Soundpainter Christophe Mangou, and he has recored together with the Modern Chamber Orchestra the Haydn Cello Concerto in C major, both as written and as an improvised composition with Soundpainter Walter Thompson  whom he enjoys a long and close association of over 10 years. He has appeared in every major music space in New York City including Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and downtown at Tonic, the Knitting Factory and others. Gil has appeared on tour throughout Europe, the USA, Australia, New Zealand. He is also an active Soundpainter, and gives workshops on Improvisation and Soundpainting at colleges, universities, and teaches both cello and improvisation for classical musicians privately as well. He has recordings and DVD’s available on Dane Records, MSR Classics, Novodisc and Peacock Records. He has collaborated with great musicians including Marilyn Crispell, Assif Tsahar, Anthony Braxton, Daniel Carter, Archie Shepp, Richard Davis, Sonny Murray, Marvin Hamlisch and many others.

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 Evan Mazunik is a composer/performer raised on the prairies of Iowa and rooted in Queens, NY. Fluent in Soundpainting, a sign language for live composition, Mazunik is composer/director for ZAHA, his experimental chamber ensemble. His compositions include commissions for jazz band, chorus, theater, dance, and film, and his work was featured in a documentary for the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Mazunik has performed with Anthony Braxton, Walter Thompson, Carla Bley, Robin Eubanks, Danielson, and Sufjan Stevens, and has played at creative music venues such as Roulette, The Stone, Barbes, and Galapagos. He received a Bachelors degree in piano performance and a Masters in jazz studies from the University of Iowa and has taught improvisation at the University of Indiana and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Mazunik currently serves as music director at Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, where he infuses ancient liturgy with contemporary innovation.

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 Internationally recognized as a soloist as well as a chamber musician, Viennese violinist Olivia De Prato has been described as “flamboyant….convincing” (New York Times) and an “enchanting violinist” (Messaggero Veneto, Italy). After moving to New York City she has quickly established herself as a passionate performer of contemporary and improvised music, breaking boundaries of the traditional violin repertoire and regularly performs in Europe, South America, China and the United States.

Her chamber music activities include appearances at the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City, the David Byrne Perspective Series at Carnegie Hall, the Lucerne Festival with Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble Modern Festival (Austria), “June in Buffalo” and the Ojai Festival with Steve Reich and Brad Lubman.

Olivia is a member of New York contemporary music ensembles SIGNAL and Victoire, and is the co-founder and first violinist of the MIVOS string quartet. Recent projects include a recording of Ned Rothenberg’s Clarinet Quintet with MIVOS quartet on Tzadik and a full-length album with Victoire on New Amsterdam Records. She has also recorded with Sunnyside, Mode, Cantaloupe and Porter Records.

Olivia has closely collaborated with well-known composers such as Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Anthony Braxton, Chaya Czernowin, Peter Eötvös, Beat Furrer, Michael Gordon, Helmut Lachenman, David Lang, Brad Lubman, Philippe Manoury, Benedict Mason, Meredith Monk, Krystof Penderecki, Steve Reich, Todd Reynolds, Ned Rothenberg, J.G Thirwell, Julia Wolfe, and Evan Ziporyn.

Olivia De Prato grew up in Vienna and Italy. She studied at the University of Music and Arts in Vienna and holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music.

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 Educated at Ithaca College, Yale University and University of North Texas, tubist, composer, improvisor Jay Rozen has had a diverse career. From 1978-1980, he was tubist with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. During his “Texas years” (1984-1999), Rozen played and recorded with the Creative Opportunity Orchestra (jazz ensemble), The Capital of Texas Brass Quintet, the Austin Klezmorim and the European Tuba Quartet.  Since moving to New York in 1999, Jay has performed with many ensembles, including the American Symphony Orchestra, the SEM Ensemble and the LOW FREQUENCY TUBA BAND. He has performed with jazz greats Ray Anderson, Burton Greene, Perry Robinson, Wadada Leo Smith, Hamiett Bluiett and Charli Persip. Rozen currently performs with Anthony Braxton and can be heard on several of his recent recordings, including the ground-breaking 9 CD/1 DVD set 9 COMPOSITIONS (Firehouse 12 Records). A champion of new music, Rozen has had works written for him by Virgil Thomson, David Lang and Howard Skempton, among others. Jay appears on many recordings, including his own KILLER TUBA SONGS and David Lang’s ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? on which he plays the electric tuba. He is currently recording his second solo CD.

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 Walter Thompson - Soundpainter - has been Soundpainting for the past 35 years. He conceived the Soundpainting language in Woodstock, New York, in the early 1970s. To date, Thompson has developed Soundpainting into a multidisciplinary live composing sign language comprising more than 1200 gestures.

Thompson has composed Soundpaintings with many contemporary orchestras in many cities, including Barcelona, Paris, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Oslo, Berlin, Bergen, Lucerne, Copenhagen, and Reykjavik, among others, and has taught Soundpainting at the Paris Conservatoire; Eastman School of Music; Iceland Academy of the Arts: University of Michigan; Grieg Academy in Bergen, Norway; University of Iowa; Oberlin College-Conservatory of Music; and New York University, among many others. Thompson is founder of and Soundpainter for The Walter Thompson Orchestra and The SP4tet, both based in New York City.

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 Hailed by Billboard Magazine as “one of New York’s fastest-rising composers and instrumentalists”, and by the New York Times as “an eclectic with an ear for texture… strikingly original and soulful”, Ljova (Lev Zhurbin) was born in 1978 in

Moscow, Russia, and moved to New York with his parents, composer Alexander Zhurbin and writer Irena Ginzburg, in 1990. He divides his time between performing as a violist in diverse groups ranging from his own,Ljova and the Contraband, to string quartets, jazz combos and Gypsy bands; studying and arranging music for Yo-Yo Ma, the Kronos Quartet, Jay-Z, Gustavo Santaolalla, Osvaldo Golijov, Alondra de la Parra and others; and composing original music for film, TV, dance, and the concert stage.

Ljova is the author of more than 70 compositions for classical, jazz, and folk ensembles, as well as scores to four feature and over a dozen short films. In 2005, Ljova was one of six composers invited to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Film Composers Lab. His music has been licensed by HBO, PBS, BBC, CNBC, and NHK networks, among many other independent projects. In 2007, Ljova worked as assistant to composer Osvaldo Golijov on his score to Francis Ford Coppola’s film “Youth Without Youth”, to which Ljova also contributed an original track, “Middle Village”. In 2008, Ljova was guest faculty at The Banff Centre in Canada, focusing equally on composition, arranging, and viola performance. More recently, Ljova has guest-lectured on film music at New York University, taught at Mark O’Connor’s String Camp, as well as at the Blaine Jazz Festival in Washington state.

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 Associate Professor of Horn Jeffrey Agrell joined the faculty of the University of Iowa a decade ago after a first career as a symphony orchestra musician. At the UI School of Music he currently teaches horn, Creativity in Music, Improvisation for Classical Musicians. He is a member of the Iowa Brass Quintet, and improvising chamber groups Cerberus and the Latitude Ensemble.

Professor Agrell has won awards as both a writer and composer, with some one hundred published articles and many compositions published, recorded on CD, and performed on concerts stage, competitions, and festivals, and broadcast on radio and TV worldwide. He is on the faculty of the prestigious Kendall Betts horn camp, and has been on the faculty of the Asian Youth Orchestra in Hong Kong. He frequently gives concerts, workshops, and lectures nationally and internationally. Recent recordings include the CD “Repercussions” with pianist Evan Mazunik, “Mosaic” with Duende (horn, cello, piano) on MSR Classics, and “Side Show Tim” with Cerberus (horn, trumpet, tuba) on Dane Records. He is the author of Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians and Improv Games for One Player, both published by GIA Music.

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David Grunberg enjoys a broad career as violinist, conductor, and software creator. A graduate of Cornell University and the Berklee College of Music, he has performed in a variety of genres and venues throughout the U.S. and Europe, from rock clubs in Boston to opera halls in Italy. As music director and founder of Spectrum Symphony in New York, he commissioned, conducted and recorded Peter Alexander’s Concerto for Electric Violin and Orchestra. He authored algorithmic composition software code-named “ThousandChimps,” utilizing serial microtonal techniques and recursive pseudo-random processes. Born in New York City, David studied jazz improvisation with violinist Matt Glaser, and has performed and recorded with Walter Thompson’s Soundpainting ensembles since 2000.

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Jason Kao Hwang (composer, violin/ viola) has created works ranging from jazz, classical, “new” and world music. This fall of 2011, Mr. Hwang will release two CDs: Symphony of Souls (Mulatta), performed by his improvising string  orchestra

 Spontaneous River, and Crossroads Unseen (Euonymus), the third CD of his jazz quartet EDGE. EDGE will tour Poland this October. Downbeat Magazines Critics Poll recently voted Mr. Hwang as #2 Rising Star of 2011 for Violin. Commitment, The Complete Recordings, 1981-1983, from a collective quartet that was Mr. Hwang’s first band, was voted as “2010 Reissued Recording of the Year” by All About Jazz/ New York. His octet Burning Bridge, commissioned by Chamber Music America/ New Jazz Works, recently performed at the Chicago World Music Festival, the Freer Gallery (Washington, D.C.), and Edgefest (Ann Arbor, MI). Mr. Hwang’s chamber opera, The Floating Box, A Story in Chinatown (New World Records), presented by the Asia Society in 2001, was named one of the “Top Ten Opera Recordings of 2005” by Opera News. Mr. Hwang has also received support from US Artists International, the American Music Center, Meet the Composer/New Residencies, the National Endowment for the Arts, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and others. As violinist, Mr. Hwang has worked with Reggie Workman, William Parker, Anthony Braxton, Vladamir Tarasov, Henry Threadgill and many others.

Photo credit: Bartosz Winiarski