Y2k24 Performers

  • Juan Carrizo’s dada – Argentina

    Juan Carrizo’s dada – Argentina

    dada is a journey to spontaneous composition. Starting with a chord, a strum, a hit, a word, an image or a memory, the whole musical-sonic-visual journey unveils for the audience. The tools involved are live looping, improvisation, experimentation and the experiences of more than twenty years of breathing music, images and sound (and travels, people, cities…

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  • Bill Walker – USA

    Bill Walker – USA

    Bill Walker is a guitarist of uncommon stylistic range who blends a world of influences in to a unique and lyrical personal voice. His solo performance creates a rich tapestry of layered sounds, blending electric and acoustic guitars, lap steel guitars, and percussive guit-boxing techniques, with state of the art live looping techniques and sound…

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  • Trianna Feruza – USA

    Trianna Feruza – USA

    Singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist out of Santa Cruz CA. Givin’ a new school twist on Pop-Funk fusion with an R&B twist. Imagine Erykah Badu and Amy Winehouse’s lovechild. Coming from a family embedded in the Folk-World Music scene, Trianna has a diverse musical background, setting the stage for her unique sound and engaging performance. https://www.triannaferuza.com/ https://www.instagram.com/triannaferuza/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100007398421234

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  • Philipp Zuercher – | PHIL & ZOIA – Switzerland

    Philipp Zuercher – | PHIL & ZOIA – Switzerland

    PHIL is Philipp Zuercher, a Swiss musician and music producer. Philipp plays original instrumental compositions and improvisations, juxtaposing progressive rock, modal jazz, modern classical and electronic music. In the late 1980s, he was one of the first electric guitarists in Switzerland to make live loops an integral part of his solo repertoire – inspired by…

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  • Ryan Price – USA

    Ryan Price – USA

    Ryan Price is a multi-instrumentalist out of Santa Cruz, CA who has melded an array of genres spanning from Funk, to R&B, to Jazz and on into a unique style of his own. He is known for looping bass, guitar, vocals, and percussion all on the spot in front of a live audience. www.facebook.com/RyanPriceGrooves Ryan…

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  • Henry Kaiser – USA

    Henry Kaiser – USA

    Henry Kaiser is an American guitarist and composer, known as an idiosyncratic soloist, a sideman, an ethnomusicologist, and a film score composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. http://www.henrykaiserguitar.com/

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  • Rick Walker – USA

    Rick Walker – USA

    Live looping artist Rick Walker is an electronic music composer, percussionist, trapset drummer, multi-instrumentalist and found sound musician. “I am a found sound/live looping/abstract electronica/world percussionist/drummer/lo fi toy digital video filmaker/multi media inventor living in Northern California with my wife, the talented multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, Chris Wedertz. I’m a found sound/live looping/abstract electronica/multi-instrumentalist who specializes…

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  • Oskar Elek – Visuals

    Oskar Elek – Visuals

     Oskar Elek is a cross-disciplinary scientist specializing in complex systems simulation, artificial life, data modeling and visualization, currently based at the University of California in Santa Cruz and the Open Source Program Office therein. His work has theoretical and applied aspects. On the theoretical side I explore novel algorithms for bio-inspired emergent network reconstruction and interactive 3D visualization of the resulting datasets. On the…

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  • Denise Gallant – Visuals

    Denise Gallant – Visuals

    Denise was the first to do live visuals on the West Coast – LA in the 1980’s,  SF in the late 1970s. She started editing at NBC LA in 1977. Here is a visual synopsis that explains it all:

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  • Tim Thompson – Visuals

    Tim Thompson – Visuals

    Tim Thompson is a software engineer, musician, and interactive installation artist. His wide-ranging artistic work over four decades includes a programming language for MIDI, interactive installations at Burning Man and other festivals, musical performances with Playstation dance pads and QWERTY keyboards, and realtime video looping and processing with a handheld security camera.  Recently, Tim has…

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  • David Tristram – Visuals

    David Tristram – Visuals

    David Tristram is an experimental musician and visualist.  David has provided visuals for the Y2K International Live Looping Festival for many years using custom software and instruments of his own design.  His live improvisational electronic ambient music ensemble Autumnal Rune performs regularly, and he releases music as Ancient Sponge.  David has worked internationally and with…

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  • Tripform – USA

    Tripform – USA

    Formed by Pablo Manzarek and Norm Reed in the year 2019. Tripform is based in Santa Barbara California. Tripform forged their far reaching musical style during their journey through the darkest of Covid lockdowns. Through it all, Tripform thrived! Composing by way of spontaneous, looping improvisation in real time, often videoing, or streaming live on Youtube, Instagram…

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  • Dominika Belanska – Slovakia

    Dominika Belanska – Slovakia

    I am a tree with diverse fruits: an artist, poetess, singer-songwriter, dancer and creative facilitator. I grew up in the middle of Europe and was trained as an architect, but what I build nowadays is rather relationShips. I reconnect people with themselves, their community and the place they inhabit. The power of art is that it…

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  • MORTICAI – USA

    MORTICAI – USA

    Morticai, the creative persona of sound designer and musician Jeddy Grant, immerses audiences in ambient soundscapes and ethereal rhythmic melodies that transcend genre. Making use of bass and baritone guitars along with an array of effect pedals, Morticai weaves intricate, nonlinear compositions that transport listeners to realms of introspection and empathy. Their latest album, “Please…

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  • Third Wave

    Michael Peters – Michael Frank – Rick Walker

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  • Max Scott Bortnick – USA

    Max Scott Bortnick – USA

    Max Scott Bortnick is a Santa Cruz-born multi-instrumentalist whose music reflects a deep connection to the diverse influences that shaped him. Growing up immersed in punk rock, Hip Hop and reggae, Max developed a love for guitar and drums, playing in bands and creating energetic, raw sounds. Over time, his musical journey evolved to include…

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  • Pirate Doctor Lazer Monkey – USA

    Pirate Doctor Lazer Monkey – USA

    Pirate Doctor Lazer Monkey was born when Devon Brockopp-Hammer and Keeva Yvester chained their personal RC-505’s together and began to stream their completely improvised two-person jams online, continually improving upon their approach and bringing new gear, techniques and ideas into the mix with each iteration of their 2+ hour sets. What’s developed since is a…

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  • Paul Scott – England

    Paul Scott – England

    Originally hailing from Northumberland in North-East England, Paul Scott has been living and making music in the Santa Cruz area for over 15 years now. He plays out in a singer-songwriter style Project Shooting Coal, a Britpop / Indie Covers and Originals band Common People, and previously as a male & female vocal led acoustic…

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  • Matt Herman – USA

    Matt Herman – USA

    Originally from the East Coast, I’ve resided in CA for much of my adult life and have played guitar in experimental groups in San Francisco.  I began looping sometime around 2000, creating a feedback loop on my 4-track with cascaded digital delays in the effects send, embracing the decreased fidelity of each subsequent repeat (due…

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  • Michael Peters

    Michael Peters

    Michael Peters is a guitarist from Cologne, Germany (he lives east of Cologne in the countryside now, close to the place where Karlheinz Stockhausen spent most of his life). Most of his musical output veers from the mainstream and has been difficult to categorize (WIRE magazine has reviewed two of his albums in their “Outer…

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  • Michael Frank

    Michael Frank

    Michael Frank was born in 1957 in Cologne. He has been playing guitar since 1971 and engages in all kinds of music between psychedelic rock, jazz and classical music. He co-founded the band The Absurd in 1984 which still exists playing a wide range of music. Michael has continually used looping pedals for improvisation and…

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  • Joel Gilardini

    Joel Gilardini

    Experimental guitarist and sound designer, Joel Gilardini is based in Zurich (Switzerland). Guided by the urge and the will to experiment with sounds, Joel followed a very peculiar path which lead him over a broad range of soundfields, touching different musical attitudes and genres like metal, ambient, doom, dub, noise and even blues. Involved in…

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  • Katie Martin

    Katie Martin

    Performing across the Southeast since 2006, Katie Martin’s unique blend of blues, folk, and soul mesmerizes audiences in a way that has to be seen to understand. Her agelessly soulful vocals soar effortlessly above a rich propulsion of acoustic blues guitar reminiscent of Muddy Waters combined with the beautiful folk guitar of James Taylor, all…

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  • ROTTESØSTRE!

    ROTTESØSTRE!

    ROTTESØSTRE! – The Multimedia Adventure Duo!!! ROTTESØSTRE! reunites the fabulous Punk Rock Orchestra’s RAT SISTERS, Multi-Instrumentalist/Vocalist Cindy Sawprano and Improvisational Vocalist and Sonic Explorer Laurie Amat. They have recently returned from command performances before the crowned heads of the Multiverse, Universe and a private concert for Oppy, to grace the stage of an even more incredible and…

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  • Rejyna – USA

    Rejyna – USA

    Festival Headliner. A multidisciplinary sound, visual and word artist, enticing inspiration from fortuity and improvisation and assembling them onto paper, photo, video and sound recordings. Rejyna’s lyrics, drawings, songs and stories are the foundation of a dozen releases by prog folk/symphonic metal band, Citadel. She’s an endorsed DigiTech artist, referred to as a JamMan guru…

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  • George Demarest – USA

    George Demarest – USA

    George Demarest earned degrees in trumpet performance and computer science from the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, studying trumpet with Raymond Mase of the American Brass Quintet. He has performed with the Cincinnati Ballet, Carmen McRea, the Santa Cruz Symphony, Ensemble Monterey, New Music Works and many others. He regularly records and performs in the…

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  • ecnegrU

    ecnegrU

    The project ecnegrU was born 2011. Before that, Romain Couillaud had many musical experiences between France and Italy, first as a player (in bands such as Otakatroi), as a live sound engineer and finally as a producer in his own home-studio. ecnegrU is therefore a mix of all these experiences, a kind of multi-instrument Live…

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  • Liz Ruvalcaba

    Liz Ruvalcaba

    Singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist live looping artist from Guadalajara. Her main instrument is her voice which makes her music sound atmospheric and ethereal deep rooted in mexican tradition.  Specialist in choir and vocal ensembles and participating in opera galas, concerts with several orchestras around Mexico for more than 20 years, some of them under the…

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  • Martin Janíček

    Martin Janíček

    Soundartist, sculptor and musician investigating acoustic qualities of various materials and spaces. Creates original sound instruments, interactive objects and installations, radiocompositions, spatial compositions. Studied at Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, 1990-1997 and later assisted at conceptual department of prof. M.Šejn–till 2002. Often site specific works, since 2000 member of mamapapa c.a., where with T.Žižka relised…

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  • Bob Amstadt – USA

    Bob Amstadt – USA

    Bass player, Looping inventor: drawn to bass guitar 30 years ago, and the new wave/punk/post-punk (now termed dark wave) musical styles before that, Bob was intrigued by what could be done with the early looping technologies. In 1994, he decided to create his own looping technology based on his own needs. This is now known…

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  • Dan Robbins

    Dan Robbins

    Dan Robbins has played and recorded in settings ranging from solo, duo, trio, etc. to big band and orchestra, and is known for driving, creative, harmonically and melodically rich background and lead parts on bass. He doubles on both acoustic bass, and four, five, six, and seven-string electric bass, in styles ranging from solo jazz…

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  • Steve Uccello

    Steve Uccello

    Steve Uccello is an upright/electric bassist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. He has playing experience in many genres including jazz, blues, folk, bluegrass, R & B, mariachi, and classical. In addition to being a musician for hire, Steve also produces his own compositions. As a bassist Steve plays gigs around the Monterey & San Fransisco Bay areas.…

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  • Bass Bureaucracy

    Bass Bureaucracy

    Bassist/vocalist John Lester has been utilizing live looping since the late ‘90’s when he won his first “Song of the Year” award from West Coast Songwriters for “The Ways of a Woman”. That song was performed on fretless 6-string bass using a Line 6 DL-4 for looping. Over 20 years later John’s live looping project…

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  • Scott Kungha Drengsen

    Scott Kungha Drengsen

    Scott has been performing as a solo looping “bassartist” since 1998’s “Bassapes” CD . And, he was a part of the first International Looping Festival in Santa Cruz, California. He continues to explore and expand the parameters of the instrument, being influenced by Indian music, Spectralism, post-classical, Jazz and most any great bassist you could…

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  • Per Boysen

    Per Boysen

    The Stick is like a space instrument from the future! In my instrumental solo Stick concerts I’m blending Scandinavian ethnic music from past centuries with original compositions and space age interactive electronics. I design my own performance system as a “meta-instrument” that allows me to instantly compose and arrange on the spot. Per Boysen has…

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  • Tim Thompson

    Tim Thompson

    Festival Headliner. Tim Thompson is a software engineer, musician, and interactive installation artist. His wide-ranging artistic work includes a programming language for MIDI, interactive installations at Burning Man and other festivals, musical performances with Playstation dance pads and QWERTY keyboards, and real-time video looping and processing with a handheld security camera.   Recently, Tim has focused…

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  • Christer Fredriksen

    Christer Fredriksen

    Norwegian guitarist Christer Fredriksen is an ambient solo jazz guitarist filled with wonderful space and melody.  After years of session work Christer has mainly focused on his solo-project, resulting in four self titled albums. Utilising loops, ambience and the jazz idiom as an anchor, Christer creates a vast improvisational soundscape. liveclip: https://youtu.be/g9NZzvQO728?si=kWu3qtOmqIK5H68K web: https://www.christerfredriksen.no/ latest…

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  • The Daisy-Chain Repetitive Project

    The Daisy-Chain Repetitive Project

    The Daisy-Chain Repetitive Project is all about surviving on stage using some unsophisticated set up and random instruments to deliberately maximize the number of failed parameters. Because, well, let’s face it gearheads, functionality is no longer a safe bet when reality is heading towards complete chaos and you’re not even sure you’ve got electricity. Better…

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  • Donata Greco – Italy

    Donata Greco – Italy

    Donata Greco is a wind player, multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer. She was born and raised in Naples, Italy. Her music is a mix between the nostalgia she learned from the classical neapolitan music and a bit of funk. She loves to experiment with various genres and to reinvent the role of her chosen instruments. Everything…

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  • John Connell – USA

    John Connell – USA

    Festival Headliner. John Connell AKA Future Cassette is an electronic/experimental/live looping musician from Santa Cruz, CA. John infuses his modular synth & iOS sound design with many influences, including the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, early industrial music, and UK Bass. John has performed at the Y2K International Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz since 2008, and…

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  • Hideki Nakanishi – Japan

    Hideki Nakanishi – Japan

    Hideki Nakanishi (aka MANDOMAN) is a live looping electric mandolin player/luthier from Osaka, Japan. Hideki uses most of him time in his Sol Anemo workshop building special order handcrafted stringed instruments for superior musicians with fine touch, and when that touch comes to music he creates with many looping pedals and one electric mandolin to…

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  • Greg Bryant

    Greg Bryant

    Greg Bryant is a multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles interested most generally in improvisation both in the context of groups, as well as through solo live looping. He has been playing, composing, and recording music for over 30 years influenced by a range of styles including punk/indie/noise rock, experimental soundscapes, musique concrete, psychedelic rock and…

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  • Wayne Jackson

    Wayne Jackson

    Engineer worker drone by day, Wayne Jackson uses his shreds of free time to dabble in the arts. He has hosted, promoted, and performed in experimental music events in the Santa Cruz area for 20+ years (Woostockhausen 1998-2007, µHausen 2010-present, Electron Salon, Looping Festivals, R Duck Show). While his professional audio development has centered on…

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  • Mikko Biffle – USA

    Mikko Biffle – USA

    The nine-year-old son of a rabble rousing, ukelele playing Mother, I had begged for a drum set for months, having fallen in love with Sandy Nelson’s song, “Let There Be Drums”. That very same year, I joyously discovered a set of drums on Christmas day and proceeded to drIve my Mother absolutely mad the following…

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  • The Winkler (Clay Bowman)

    The Winkler (Clay Bowman)

    Clay Bowman is a guitarist and electronic musician from Houston, Texas. Growing up on the Gulf Coast in the 1960’s, Clay brings regional influences to his sound. His musical career began in the 1980s with post-punk and new wave bands. He has since performed in dive bars, art galleries, performance halls, and on the Avenue…

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  • Gary Regina

    Gary Regina

    Berklee College of Music alumnus Gary Regina live-records layers of music, producing trance-like grooves of increasing beauty and complexity, one piece at a time until the sound is that of a much larger band. His instruments include woodwinds, ethnic flutes, saxophones, percussion, guitar, wind synthesizer,vocals and a drum machine. His sound is very much his…

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  • Carl Weingarten

    Carl Weingarten

    Carl Weingarten is an American guitarist, photographer and founder of the independent music label Multiphase Records. Described as “one of the best indie musicians working today” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Carl is best known for his atmospheric sound and his innovative use of the slide guitar and Dobro. Weingarten has played a signi#cant role…

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  • Eliud Ernandes – Mexico

    Eliud Ernandes – Mexico

    Festival Headliner. Eliud Ernandes began his artistic training at the young age of four years old. He has received awards and recognition from institutions such as Yamaha in Mexico and Japan, the Consulate of Mexico in Houston, Texas, the office of Master Leo Brouwer in Havana, Cuba, and the Mayor’s Office of Santa Cruz, California.…

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  • R Duck – USA

    R Duck – USA

    The R Duck show is a cooperation between man and machine in order to sculpt organic, improvised electronic music. The show nods its head toward old time variety shows and modern radio -life in the day- spoken dry as the coastal sands at low tide. Tune in for live improvised electronic music drama, performed by…

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  • Cindy Sawprano

    Cindy Sawprano

    Cindy Webster is a Board Certified Music Therapist/Therapeutic Musician working in the San Francisco East Bay. She also plays the musical saw, amplified egg beaters and other gadgets. An admirer of avant-garde music, she creates soundscapes using found objects, found sound and effects. She has appeared in San Francisco, Dublin, Zootown and Grass Valley Fringe…

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  • Philippe Ollivier

    Philippe Ollivier

    Philippe Ollivier has had a diverse musical career, from traditional music to contemporary circus. A genuinely iconoclastic bandoneon player who mixes acoustic technique with electronics, this self-taught musician and programmer creates original compositions for films, theater, contemporary circus or installations. In association with Christophe Baratay, he invented Logelloop, a looper software that’s essential to his…

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  • Los Hijos de Doña Loope –  aka Marcos Garcia Fregoso (Mexico)

    Los Hijos de Doña Loope – aka Marcos Garcia Fregoso (Mexico)

    Marcos García Fregoso is an experimental guitarist from Guadalajara Jalisco who likes to use music as a vehicle to explore the inner-self. He is well versed in traditional regional Mexican song traditions and creates a strong combination of modern live looping sensibilities and Mexican roots music. Marcos performs as “Los Hijos de Doña Loope” (The…

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  • The Rhythm Method 3.0 – USA

    The Rhythm Method 3.0 – USA

    The Rhythm Method 3.0 is a duo experimenting with a blend of western blues, rock and funk combined with African melodies and rhythmic improvisation.   The Rhythm Method 3.0 are: Djidé “Mont-Kamerun” Koffa is a native of Cameroon, a country in Central Africa, that is also called Africa in miniature because Africa in terms of its…

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  • Daniel Lewis

    Daniel Lewis

    Daniel Vee Lewis is bassist from Santa Cruz California. A former MCA recording artist and local performer for over 35 years. Jaco Pastorius , Mick Karn , among many others Bass players have been inspirational in his development. “The first looping I ever saw/heard was Jaco , performing ‘Slang’ , so magical and inspiring !” 

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  • EToOto (aka Yasushi Matsui)

    Painting with Sound EToOto is romanized Japanese, which means “Painting with Sound”. Yasushi Matsui aims to establish new and innovative techniques that fuse together painting with sound since technological developments have made possible the unity of a brush stroke with a sound. This project started the end of 2013, and got evolved with new technologies,…

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  • Giacomo Fiore

    Giacomo Fiore

    Italian-born guitarist and musicologist Giacomo Fiore has premiered more than two dozen new works for justly-tuned, electric, and classical guitars, and released several recordings for Populist, Cold Blue, Pinna, Spectropol, Paper Garden Records, and his own impressum. As a scholar his research focuses on U.S. experimental music, intonation, and performance; he has published articles in…

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  • Katja Šulc – Slovenia

    Katja Šulc – Slovenia

    Singer, songwriter and musician from Slovenia, intertwining poetry, folk and traditional heritage drawing from songs and storytelling.  After studying music at New School in New York (Jazz & Contemporary Music), Katja Šulc released five studio albums – Mila (2008), Twisted Delight (2013), Kamlisajlan – Homage to Rromani poetry (2016), Caricias (2021), West Wind Blow From Your Prairie Nest (2024) – and presented her music throughout…

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  • Grant Stoner – USA

    Grant Stoner – USA

    I’ve been looping for at least 10 years. I enjoy how it enables a “one man band” person like me to bring that to a live situation. I grew up back east, but have resided in California for the last 25 years. I’ve always been into music. I’m primarily a guitarist, but I attempt to…

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  • Otros Cronopios

    Otros Cronopios

    From Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. https://twitter.com/otroscronopios

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  • ANI – USA

    ANI – USA

    ANI (Amy Lee) is a multi-instrumentalist who makes DJ-style dance and funk music with wild synth solos and pumping beats. But this year, she is bringing a special guitar: a Rick Turner Model 1. Hear her latest half hour set that blends pop, R&B, and metal in a continuous mix looped on a BOSS RC-600 pedal.…

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  • Daniel Thomas – USA

    Daniel Thomas – USA

    A busy musician, recording engineer, and producer, Daniel has contributed to dozens of CDs, soundtracks, and video game titles. His work includes chart topping albums for international recording labels, original compositions for film and television, and genre defining sound design work for major instrument manufacturers. Daniel has travelled the world supporting many international recording artists…

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