Michael Bisio:
"...his work has been likened to David Izenzon, Charlie Haden and Mingus and for good reason." - Laurence Donohue-Greene -  All About Jazz New York
In a flurry of activity over the last ten years, Bisio has played and/or recorded with Barbara Donald, Wayne Horvitz, Bob Nell, Andrew Hill, Sonny Simmons, John Tchicai, Bern Nix, Jim Nolet, Joe McPhee, Vinny Golia, Van Manakas, Greg Bendian, Carter Jefferson, Charles Gayle, and Marilyn Crispell. He has crossed the country twice with Gayle and toured the West Coast with his own quartet.Today, Michael Bisio continues to tour and compose music for solo, duo, trio, and quartet. Last summer he returned to his native Troy, NY for a while; while keeping busy playing New York avant-garde jazz scene like the very hot The Stone , he also integrated the Albany scene and plays frequently with George Muscatello, the Brian Patneaude quartet and Nicole Peyrafitte. More info. Times That Bonds:
The structure of this work utilizes rhythmic patterns from some of my favorite melodies, at times condensed. Pitch information is supplied by the performer. The concept deals with the known and the unknown synthesizing into the same thing but not either of the above.

Benjamin Chadabe:
Improvising percussionist and video artist, Benjamin Chadabe has performed with dancers including Min Tanaka and the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company, with voice artist Jaap Blonk, and with other composers and improvisers including Damien Catera, Bryan Kieser, Warren Burt, and Elliott Sharp. He has recently performed in New York City at Tonic, EMF Hip Chips Festival, NYU, and The Stone. More Info.
Secret Keeper:
gutteral        implosive       contracting     aggression     contrasting     resolute     inexact     flowing                dissected      compliment

Pierre Joris:
Pierre Joris   is a poet, translator & essayist. Rain Taxi praised his 2001 collection Poasis for "its physical, philosophical delight in words and their reverberations." Since then he has published two chapbooks of poetry (Permanent Diaspora and The Rothenberg Variations) & A Nomad Poetics, a collection of essays. Recent translations include volumes by Paul Celan & Pablo Picasso. With Jerome Rothenberg he edited the award-winning anthologies Poems for the Millennium . He received the 2005 Pen Award for Translation for Lightduress by Paul Celan (Green Integer).
Website

The Hands of Gargas:
The skeleton of this piece is a poem that engages & meditates on the unknown -- unknowable? -- meanings behind the paintings of hands in the prehistoric caves of Gargas in Southern France. The text plays with the specific strictures of the performance situation: it consists of 4 sections of 40 4-word lines each. The musicians and the vidéaste are invited to hands-on meanders through the weave & woof of this textum as it lines the caves of many hands.

"Nicole Peyrafitte is a brilliant and most original performer. . . .She is in the poetic lineage of Greek tragedy, Café Voltaire antics, of dada and surrealist play, but with a post-modern, hip sensibility. I am transfixed when she's on stage." - Anne Waldman, poet and performer.
Born & raised in Luchon, French Pyrenees, Nicole Peyrafitte left her hometown, where she was a cook, in 1981. In Toulouse & Paris she modeled, cooked and worked in theater and local television. In the U.S. since 1987, she settled first in Southern California, before moving to Albany, NY in 1992. Like the willful child in Marguerite Duras' Les Enfants , she resisted going to school, "because they were trying to teach me things that I didn't know." Each step of her work attempts to fulfill her compulsion to learn through a process of immersion that generates performances incorporating voice/paintings/drawings/ collages/writing & even cooking. Peyrafitte performs locally, nationally and in Europe. For more info: www.nicolepeyrafitte.com

Ride the Line / Chevaucher le Trait:
This is an anniversary piece. Ride the Line was my first artistic response to the fact that Albany & Luchon -my hometown in the Pyrenees- were on the same latitude. It started in 1996 with a series of 11 8 ½ X11 ink drawings that were scanned and processed thru a tacky electronic slide show.