Chris Jonas 

Santa Fe-based Chris Jonas has been a long time and very active artistic figure in the creative music world, working as a collaborator in video, conducting and performing with Anthony Braxton (with whom he has recorded dozens of albums, conducted orchestras, produced operas and large scale events, and toured extensively), Cecil Taylor (1996-98 as performer and musical director), William Parker (as a member of Little Huey 1992-2001), and touring across the EU as a member of the Anthony Braxton Saxophone Quartet in 2022 which was just released as a four record set Sax QT (Lorraine). He is currently working throughout the EU and US with an array of projects, including 2025 work with bassist Sylvia Bolognese with a 30 person creative orchestra in Pisa, tours with Desert project ensembles in Italy, Germany, UK and Sweden, with Myra Melford on a series of video and music pieces about painter Cy Twombly, and with Anthony Braxton in a variety of ensembles, including a concert at the Library of Congress March 8, 2025. He is co-founder of the Santa Fe-based multi arts non-profit, Little Globe (www.littleglobe.org) and won the United States Artists Award in 2009.  www.chrisjonascreative.com

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Jonas

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Rob Wallace

Writer, musician, and teacher Rob Wallace holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His recordings can be found on the pfMentum, Ambiances Magnétiques, and Nonessential record labels. He is the author of Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism (Bloomsbury) and co-editor (with Ajay Heble) of People Get Ready: The Future of Jazz is Now! (Duke). He is an Associate Teaching Professor at the Honors College of Northern Arizona University, where he teaches courses on poetry, improvisation, popular and “world” musics, global studies, comic books, and intermedia arts, as well as leading an experimental/improvised music ensemble. He is a part of many ensemble projects including Summit Dub Squad, Wall of Skulls, and the NAU Faculty Jazz Combo, and is the co-curator of the Interference Series. Wallace has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians from around the globe.

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David Menestres is a time terrorist (double bassist) amongst other things. David is/was/will be available for concerts, lectures, workshops, and other forms of interactions throughout time and space.

 

“…one of the most unpredictable free music sessions you are likely to encounter.” Derek Walmsley, The Wire (June 2024)

 

“Serene and unhurried, but somehow also full of sturm and howl, scree/n is a perfect metaphor for our age’s listless anxiety, our ceaseless striving to make sense and beauty out of accumulated sensory inputs.” – Jennifer Kelly, Dusted (December 22, 2023)

“There’s clear sympathy in their playing together, Menestres’s double bass particularly seductive on Plays A Word for Sun, oscillating between vibrating string scrapes and fluid stretches of note splay.” – Jon Dale, The Wire (February 2023)

https://davidmenestres.com/information/

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Catherine Sikora

Tenor and soprano saxophonist, improviser and composer Catherine Sikora was first electrified by the sound of air vibrating in a metal tube when, as a child, she heard the wind playing tones and overtones in a metal gate. She has devoted her life to researching the magic of that sound with her saxophones.

 

In 2024, Catherine’s duo album with Susan Alcorn was released on Relative Pitch Records, and she toured the east coast of the US with bassist David Menestres. In October 2024, she was a featured artist at the October Revolution
in Jazz 60th Anniversary Celebration ’24, Los Angeles, CA.

 

Sikora’s body of recorded work is substantial and rapidly growing, with 16 releases as leader, as well as albums on Relative Pitch Records, Tripticks Tapes (both US), Fort Evil Fruit (Ireland), and others. She has toured in the US, Europe and Australia with Elliott Sharp, Eris 136199, Brian Chase, Eric Mingus and Ursel Schlicht, and is firmly committed to the art of practice as a lifelong meditative path. Sikora was twice awarded residencies  at the prestigious Centre Cultural Irlandais in Paris, France in 2016 and again in 2020. Also in 2020, she was a resident artist at l’Atelier de la Main d’Or in Paris. Her duo with Brian Chase received a grant from the Irish Arts Council in support an island-wide tour of Ireland in 2019, and she was commissioned to contribute a composition to the sound installation piece “Vespers for the Feast of St Patrick” at the CCI in Paris in 2020. Her work is regularly featured on “Freeness” (BBC radio), Free Jazz Blog (Berlin), Avant Music News (Chicago) and A Jazz Noise (Barcelona). In addition to performing at innumerable tiny spaces that are the beating heart of improvised music, she has played several major festivals, including the Vision Festival (New York City) the Adelaide Festival of the Arts (Australia), Jazz em Agosto (Lisbon, PT), Documenta 15 (Kassel, DE), and was one of the performers at the BAM/Silkroad 1:1 Concerts event in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in May 2021. 

 

Sikora has long running collaborations with many artists, including Brian Chase, Susan Alcorn, Ursel Schlicht, Eric Mingus, Ethan Winogrand, Ross Hammond, Christopher Culpo and Enrique Haneine. She is proud to be one third of the joyful rowdiness that is Eris 136199, with Han-earl Park and Nick Didkovsky, and a member of Sam Newsome’s Chaos Theory quartet of 4 soprano saxophones. She has worked as a featured soloist with significant large improvising ensembles, including Karl Berger’s Creative Improvisers Orchestra and Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber.

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David Forlano is a multi-disciplinary performance and visual artist. His commissioned sound design supported dance and theater throughout the 90’s in Philadelphia.  He was often found teaming with percussionist Toshi Makihara on many performances as well as their own collaborations in free improvisation.  After relocating to Santa Fe in 2005 he took a 10 year break from all performance and sound work. David is currently renewing his passion for collaboration in performance and sound. He currently holds regular sessions in his studio with local musicians and performs in a variety of ensembles.  David is one of the cofounders of sandboxmusic.org , a monthly series presenting new creative music to the Santa Fe area. The series is dedicated to providing a forum for music that utilizes creative new techniques, ranging from electronic, experimental acoustic, new jazz, modern classical, and more. The series will feature local musicians as well as touring artists.

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Gregg Koyle is a percussionist by trade and performs with Chatter, Santa Fe Pro Musica and the Santa Fe Opera.  He has appeared as a soloist, chamber and orchestra musician throughout the U.S., Europe, and Japan where he toured and recorded with famed Japanese marimbist Keiko Abe.  Gregg appeared at the Spoleto Festival and jumped headfirst into the world of free improvisation while a graduate student at the University of Michigan, performing at Detroit’s Post-Industrial De-Constructionist Café.