Saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist Marty Ehrlich (b.1955) is celebrating over 40 years in the nexus of creative music centered in New York City. He began his musical career in St. Louis, Missouri, performing and recording with the Human Arts Ensemble. He then graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1977, where his teachers included George Russell, Jaki Byard, Gunther Schuller, and Joseph Allard. Since coming to New York in 1978, he has made thirty recordings of his compositions written for diverse contexts, his Dark Woods Ensemble, Traveler's Tales Quartet, Trio Exaltation, The Rites Quartet, Philosophy of a Groove, and the Marty Ehrlich Large Ensemble.He has sustained three collective groups, C/D/E with Andrew Cyrille and Mark Dresser, Relativity with Peter Erskine and Michael Formanek, and the Ray Anderson/Marty Ehrlich Quartet. His compositions rerepresented on 30 recordings with these ensembles, on the Enja, New World, Muse, OmniTone, Palmetto, Tzadik, and Clean Feed labels. As a woodwind multi-instrumentalist passionate about improvisation and interpretation, he has performed and recorded with a who’s who of contemporary composers including Muhal Richard Abrams, Ray Anderson, Anthony Braxton, John Carter, Andrew Cyrille, Jack DeJohnette, Anthony Davis, Mark Dresser, Marianne Faithful, Don Grolnick, Chico Hamilton, Jerome Harris, Julius Hemphill, Andrew Hill, Robin Holcomb, Oliver Lake, Leroy Jenkins, Myra Melford, Modeski/Martin/Woods, Bobby Previte, Rufus Reid, Wadada Leo Smith, and John Zorn, among many others. Ehrlich is the chief researcher for the Julius Hemphill Archive at NYU. His honors include composition grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Chamber Music America, the NEA, and NYFA. The Marty Ehrlich Archive is in the Fales Library of NYU. Ehrlich is Professor Emeritus of Jazz and Contemporary Music at Hampshire College, and will be Interim Director of Jazz at SUNY Stonybrook in 2023.

Navigating the intersections of countless musical forms in a way that is irreducibly his own, trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader Steven Bernstein has fashioned a career unlike virtually anyone in the annals of music. A specialist on the rare slide trumpet, he continues to explore new concepts with Sexmob and the Millennial Territory Orchestra, two of the most inspired and longest-surviving groups of the new millennium. His credits as an arranger run from Rufus Wainright and Lee Scratch Perry to Bill Frisell and Little Feat.

Matt Pavolka has been a fixture of the New York jazz and creative music scenes as a bassist and trombonist for more than a quarter of a century now. In addition to his work as a sideman with Lee Konitz, Guillermo Klein, Ben Monder, Alan Ferber, Magali Souriau, and many others, he has established himself as a composer and bandleader in his own right. He currently leads three working ensembles dedicated to performing his compositions: an acoustic quintet, an electric quartet, and an upright bass duo. In the years leading up to the pandemic he was performing with at least one of these groups on nearly a monthly basis somewhere in New York City, from jazz clubs like Smalls and the 55 Bar to small artist-run spaces like iBeam in Brooklyn. In addition to his own groups, he has been commissioned to compose for other ensembles. recently Brooklyn Wide Open premiered his compositions “Malebolge” and “Today I Wrote Nothing” at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. He has released five recordings of his own music to date: “Something People Can Use”, “The Horns Band”, and “Pavogüchi” I, II, and III. During the pandemic he produced, recorded, and contributed as a player and composer to an album by a composer collective that is scheduled for release in the fall. He was born in Bloomington, Indiana into a musical family. He picked up the trombone at an early age and studied on that instrument with David Baker and Dee Stewart before teaching himself to play bass in high school. He received a full tuition scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston as a trombonist in 1990. He changed his major to bass and won the outstanding performer award on that instrument, as well as the Charles Mingus Composition Award for his work as a composer. He moved to New York in 1994 and quickly became one of the most in-demand bassists there and on the international jazz scene.

Drummer Mark Ferber can be heard on over 200 recordings. Ongoing projects include ECM recording artist Ralph Alessi’s ‘This Against That’, the Marc Copland Quartet, the Brad Shepik Organ Trio, and his twin brother, Alan Ferber’s Grammy nominated big band and nonet. He currently maintains a busy freelance schedule throughout Los Angeles’ and New York’s jazz clubs, recording studios, and international touring circuit. Past work includes tours and recordings with Lee Konitz, Gary Peacock, Jonathan Kreisberg, John O’Gallagher, Don Byron, Fred Hersch, Tony Malaby, Anna Webber, Mark Helias, Pete McCann, Matt Pavolka, Michael Attias and Billy Childs, among others. Mark has taught extensively in the United States and Europe. He has worked as a faculty member for the California Institute of the Arts, the Tavira Jazz Workshop in Portugal, the School of Improvisational Music (SIM), City College of New York, The Maine Jazz Camp and The Lafayette Summer Music Jazz Workshop. He currently is Professor of Drumset at Cal State University, Fresno. He was born and raised in Moraga, CA and received a degree in Biogeography from UCLA. Mark is an endorsing artist for Istanbul Cymbals. He lives in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.