Dafna Naphtali is a sound-artist/improviser-composer from an eclectic background of music-making. A singer/guitarist/electronic-musician she performs and composes using her custom Max/MSP/Jitter programs for sound processing of voice and other instruments that she has been writing since 1992. Besides her composing and improvised projects, she co-leads the digital chamber punk ensemble, What is it Like to be a Bat? with Kitty Brazelton (www.whatbat.org). and has collaborated / performed with Lukas Ligeti, David First, Joshua Fried, Ras Moshe, Kathleen Supovê and Hans Tammen She’s received commissions and awards from NY Foundation for the Arts, NY State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, Experimental TV Center, American Composers Forum, and a residency at STEIM (Holland). She teaches and has given workshops at universities in the US (especially New York University) and in Europe. As a freelancer, she teaches, programs and consults about Max/MSP since 1996, and has done sound design and/or programming work for the projects of Jin Hi Kim, Shelley Hirsch, Pamela Z, Phoebe Legere, Fred Frith, Jim Staley, Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Chico Freeman and others. Dafna can be heard with Mechanique(s) on a forthcoming release on Acheulian Handaxe (Fall ‘08), on Hans Tammen’s Third Eye Orchestra (Innova 2008) and was featured vocalist on Josê Halac’s CD ‘Dance of 1000 Heads’ (Tellus), as well as on her acclaimed release with What is it Like to be a Bat? on Tzadik/Oracles (4 Stars, All Music Guide).
Alex Waterman is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. In New York he performs with the Either/Or Ensemble. Alex has worked with musicians such as Robert Ashley, Richard Barrett, Helmut Lachenmann, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Elliot Sharp, Ned Rothenberg, Gerry Hemingway, David Watson, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, and Michael Finnissy. He has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, and Magpie Music and Dance Company. Waterman has made music for numerous European ballet and modern dance companies including Freiburg Ballett/Pretty Ugly, Scapino Ballet, Nederland Dans Theater III, and others. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels, OT301 in Amsterdam, Miguel Abreu Gallery and The Kitchen. His duo projects with the dancer Michael Schumacher have toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, the Opera of Monaco and most recently in all 5 boroughs of New York in a Joyce Theater production in association with the City Parks Foundation in July of 2008.
In 2007 Alex curated two exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agapê (June 2-July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music (September 7-October 20, 2007) at The Kitchen in Chelsea. Alex is presently working on his PhD in musicology at NYU as well as writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and writer Will Holder. Alex participated in Dexter Sinister’s residency at the Armory for the 2008 Whitney Biennial writing a new work based upon Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. Alex Waterman and Beatrice Gibson’s film, A Necessary Music, narrated by Robert Ashley and with original music by Waterman, premiered at the Whitney Museum ISP show and will be shown in galleries and museums in the US and Europe this fall.
Darius Jones, is an alto saxophonist, composer, and producer. He joined the New York music community in 2005, after living and studying in Richmond, Va. Darius comes from a diverse musical background that has lead to his unique, alternative, and soulful approach to music. Jones has composed and performed in a wide variety of areas such as electro-acoustic music, chamber ensembles, contemporary jazz groups, free jazz groups, modern dance performances, and multi-media events. Darius enjoys playing with a steady group of artists and improvisers. The current bands Jones works with are the Cooper-Moore Trio, Mike Pride’s From Bacteria to Boys, Nioka Workman’s House Arrest Band, William Hooker’s Bliss Quartet, Trevor Dunn’s Proof Readers, and Period. In New York, Darius has produced records for Korean jazz vocalist Sunny Kim and country-folk artist Mary Bragg. Jones has performed in Italy, France, U.S. and Canada. Jones has a band with Travis LaPlante, Ben Greenberg, and Jason Nazary called Little Women, which recently went on a national tour to promote the release of their first record “Teeth” on Sockets (www.socketscdr.com) and Gilgongo Records (www.gilgongorecords.com).
Maria Chavez is an avant-turntablist from Peru, currently living in New York City. She focuses on electro acoustic sound of vinyl and needle and has a collection of needles from immaculate to ruined that she calls her “pencils of sound” and a collection of records that provide the palette.
She has performed with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth in her New York City debut, recorded with London-based laptop artist Kaffe Matthews and performed with Otomo Yoshihide, dieb13, and ErikM as part of the Wien Modern festival of contemporary music in Vienna in November of 2007.
Chavez has created sound pieces for gallery spaces all over the world including STEIM (Amsterdam), El Cervatino (Merida, Yucatan), the Kitchen (NYC), and was an artist in residence with the Issue Project Room (Brooklyn) for the fall of 2006 and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Bard College in June and July 2008 where she had to create and perform a large scale sound piece for the DIA:Beacon museum in Beacon, New York. She performed within one of Richard Serra’s “Torqued Ellipses” along with David Linton, Newton Armstrong and Stephan Moore.
Chavez has been awarded several artist grants, the most recent award came from the Jerome Foundation as an Emerging Artist Grant from Roulette Intermedium in SOHO, NYC.
She currently finished working on a short film score w/ video artist David Gacs and performing artist Matthew Day entitled “Through my Geography” which can be viewed on her myspace page. And is working as an apprentice with BROOKLYN:PHONO, a professional vinyl cutting service under the instruction of Master Lathe cutter Albert Grundy, founder of the Audio Engineering Society.
Author Tara Rodgers has included Chavez in a book entitled “Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound” alongside Ikue Mori, Mira Calix, and Marina Rosenfeld which is due to be published by Duke University Press in 2009.
2009 looks to be a promising year with public performances scheduled in Vienna for the “PhonoFemme” festival in the Spring, San Francisco for the “Electronic Music Festival” in the fall and many more performances to be announced.
For booking Maria Chavez: mariachavez@mail.com