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 various projects, he is well known for his ambient-dub sets as an opening act for Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin (ECM) in Zurich’s clubs, as well as being the mastermind behind the experimental-doom-metal act The Land Of The Snow and part of the noise-industrial duo Mulo Muto.
Joel has also works as a composer and music performer with various theater and dance acts. In this context he has collaborated with partners such as the Ballett Zurich, Swiss dancer Benoît Favre, and the collective House Of Pain.
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 performed with the honest intensity of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Seeing Katie Martin perform is an experience like no other, and her refreshing individuality is one that leaves a lasting impression long after the stage has grown silent. She released her acoustic EP ” Away From Here” with Haney Records in 2011. In 2015, she released “Katie Martin : Live From the Chocolate Room” ft. Tony Brook on slide guitar, and her debut album, “Purpose”. Both were recorded, produced,and engineered by Larry Mitchell at The Chocolate Room Studio. In 2017, she released “Live From The Chocolate Room: VOL. II” and is set to release her 2nd album, “Hope” later this year.
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 Festivals; Y2K Loop Festivals in Providence, Santa Cruz and Mexico; Musical Saw Festivals in Austria, New York and California; trees, phone booths, rooftops, film, and recordings. Cindy has been described as, “She can do more with her voice and saw than you can do with anything.”
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 design. A gifted composer and instrumentalist, Bill’s music has been described as cinematic, adventurous, and innovative. Recently featured in Guitar Player magazine for his collaboration with musician/composer/producer Erdem Helvacioglu on the critically acclaimed CD, “Fields and Fences”, Bill’s Solo Cd “Sanctuary”, also produced by Helvacioglu received a a top 10 pick by online zine Guitar Modern released in 2013. Recent collaborations include work with Hindustani slide master Debashish Battacharya, percussion and table master Subhasis Bhattacharjee, Guitarists Henry Kaiser, and Stephen Thelan of the band Sonar
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 spend the rest of his time on, you will hear the Nature,Life and Mountains in Nara where he grew up.
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 in drum set and world percussion instruments. I also am very interested in making lo fi toy video ‘animations’ for the abstract electronica compositions I make.
I also founded the Annual Y2K Series of International Live Looping Festivals held every third week of October in Santa Cruz California. We’ve hosted 200 artists from 15 different countries in the festivals 8 years of existence.
I live with my talented singersongwriter/multi-instrumentalist/produce wife in Santa Cruz, CA.”
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 chord-melody arrangements, to hard-swinging jazz double bass accompaniment, acoustic and electric funk, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, Carribean, rock, R&B, blues, tango, Indian, and fusion styles, as well as arco (played with the bow) classical and comtemporary interpretations of composed music. He is also known to employ looping and effects to create the impression of a “one man band”.
He brings a fiery improvisational spirit and energy to all the projects he is involved with. Currently co-leading the funk trio Wasabi, he also has an ongoing duo project with distinguished California Poet Laureate Al Young, and plays bass for the Hristo Vitchev Quartet, Joe DeRose & Amici, the Weber Iago Trio, SEVA, Vandivier, the Martan Mann Trio, the BR Jazz Band, and also does solo concerts. He also teaches privately, and for the Monterey Jazz Festival and San Jose Jazz Society, and freelances in studios and venues in the Bay Area and beyond.
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. Steve is the bassist in The Latin Jazz Collective with John Nava. He has played gigs with The Roger Eddy Band, legendary guitarist, Bruce Forman’s group: Cowbop, as well as, Along Came Betty.
Steve was also a featured soloist with the Monterey Bay Jazz Orchestra in 2009 at the 52nd annual Monterey Jazz Festival as well as with The Andy Weis Monterey Jazz Allstars at the 60th Monterey Jazz Festival in 2017.
Virtuoso bassists John Lester and Steve Uccello team up for an all basses, beats, and vocal set as Bass Bureaucracy. Both John and Steve play a wide variety of bass instruments from upright basses to acoustic and electric 4 and 6 string bass guitars. They each bring years of experience as in-demand sidemen in a variety of genres to the stage, as well as being accomplished solo performers.
John Lester has 6 solo albums to his credit and has lent his bass talents to such artists as Gretchen Peters (Country), Peter Rowan (Folk), Full Faith & Credit Big Band (Jazz), and Patti Smith (Rock). He started Bass Bureaucracy as a vehicle for his live looping performances featuring other guest bassists. He has been featured at UK Bass Day and European Bass Day and has worked with some of the world’s leading bassists including Steve Lawson and Michael Manring.
Steve Uccello is no stranger to the Y2K festival having played numerous solo bass sets in the past. His looping excursions include the solo albums “Symmetria”, “Omniform”, and “Archaeus” as well as the “Terrain” a duo album with Nat Grant, under the band name “sung”. Steve has played bass for Keith Greeninger, Dayan Kai, and The Latin Jazz Collective and has collaborated with fellow bass luminaries Jeff Schmitt and Steve Lawson.
“Lester’s USP is his supreme mastery of all possible varieties of
bass guitar and his use of them as lead instruments…
his understated virtuosity demands attention.”
-Maverick Magazine, UK
“…ventures into bass solo territory result in technical displays more than melodic phrasing. Not so with Steve Uccello. To be sure, his technique is worthy of admiration—but, more importantly, his compositions display a focus first and foremost on musicality.”
– Rod C. Taylor, writer for Bass Player Magazine & Bass Guitar Magazine
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.
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 as Looperlative.
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 think of.(Scott Lafaro,Mick Karn, Al Fischer and Michael Manring have probably had the biggest impact)His performances have a strong improvisational element and can cover anything from soundscapes to Be-Bop. Everything emanating from his bass and pedalboard.. He performs on 6,7, 8 and 12 string basses of his own design and is a perennial invitee to the PhilJones Solo Bass Concert/Contest series.
His latest album is a rendition of the gnostic poem “Thunder, Perfect Mind” composed for the artist residency.
His work (besides soundtracks, collaborations and cameos) can be found on YouTube and most all streaming services.
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 direction of maestro Plácido Domingo and singing in the renowned world tour of maestro Andrea Bocelli.
Singer and songwriter in the live looping duo CIAN during six years with which she traveled to Havana Cuba to the ‘Les Voix Humaines’ International festival organized by maestro Leo Brouwer.
Liz has been actively participating in Y2K International Live looping Festivals since 2014 and she was honored with the invitation as Headliner artist in 2019 closing the festival’s main concert at the mythical Catalyst Club. She has recorded two albums and one EP. The albums were in collaboration with an international project: ‘Positive Songs Project’ created in Birmingham U.K. during pandemic with the purpose of creating music that helps people overcome the negative effects of confinement in 2020. She has many long-distance collaborations focusing on experimental music and improvisation with artists like Samuel Hällkvist, Frank Payne, James Sidlo, Bill Austin and Rick Walker. And in Jazz and Folk music with Laura Stavinoha, Mickey Van Gelder and Richard Lomax aka Granfalloon.
With Mexican artists Liz has worked with artists like Leika Mochan, Juan Pablo Villa and Pilla Piano in Free Jazz. She is currently creative in the world of dance, composing original music for three different projects for Zarawato Bus Company and Alonso Noriega Dance Company.
Liz Ruvalcaba is Co-Director of the mexican chapter of the Y2K International Live Looping Festival since 2016.
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. He has collaborated either recording or performing with artists from Mexico, Argentine, Frances, Spain, the Netherlands, and the US.
In addition to his musical activities, he is the founding director along with Lizeth Ruvalcaba of Mexico Y2K International Live Looping Festival, having as one of his main objectives linking the music and culture of various nations, generating an international community of artists that collaborate, dialogue and develop new ways of making music.
He is arranger and musical director of the Mexican productions of the off-Broadway musicals: Sessions, National Pastime and Paparazzi, and part of the project Broadway Without Borders, with which he is fully identified, since it does not only represent a job opening for Mexican artists abroad but more importantly, tear down the walls that divide us ideologically.
Pedeplei is an improvised electronic music project where Israel Peña explores the real time sound manipulation capabilities of the iPad. Israel’s performances are never planned or rehearsed, the music can be created with contact microphones, wine glasses, cans, iOS virtual synths or all of the above. The resulting music can sound like ambient music or EDM or cumbia or folktronica.
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 Production: every piece is played, mixed -and sometime reixed- live.
ecnegrU has played festivals with various local, national and international artists, like Adrian Sherwood or Dub FX.
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 own, containing traces of trip-hop, world-beat and ambient music with jazz overtones.
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 number of important local and international projcets.
Recently performed at: Alternativa-Prague, National Gallery Prague, Cargo train station-Prague,Topolo stazione- Italy, WB Motion- Wittenberg-Germany, Experimental Intermedia- New York, Eyebeam gallery, New York, Expo 2005, Japan etc.
Also activities for the Kunstradio Wien, with Mia Zabelka, Franz Hautzinger, collaboration with Bruno Pisek on a radio piece Sshh, with Maja Ratkje, D.Feyix,R.Malfatti
Collaboration with Michael Northam, residency at Les Bain, Bruxelles 2006
Visual score using a ground plans of former gas container- presented at National Gallery Prague.
CDs: Katalog- 1996, Mayrau- 2009, Tah- 2010, Tok -2017
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 has has been fortunate to have toured Mexico, France, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, & Germany w/ many great friends, sharing his music.
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.
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 on the expressive potential of three-dimensional input in visual music instruments, using devices such as the Microsoft Kinect (in the original Space Palette) and the Sensel Morph (in the newer Space Palette Pro).
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 due to her advanced utilization of sonic gadgetry, and a hyper-tutorial ethos. “I’m not a magician guarding illusionary secrets, I’m a muse-cartographer – aiding seekers with willowy maps into forests of creativity.”
Rejyna has been performing at loopfests since 2013, including Seattle, Portland, Santa Cruz and Long Beach. She is building a looplab in Burbank to showcase group looping using 360 video. She teaches, produces and collaborates, doing shows when time allows. She currently works at the largest localization studio in the world, adapting movies and television shows into every language and access service, where she recently coordinated adding sign-language into cinema using tablets and AR glasses.
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 San Francisco Bay Area as a freelance trumpeter, vocalist, wind synth player, keyboardist, live looper and electronic musician. He featured in the inaugural Y2K festival as well as Y2k festivals in 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018.
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 the host and a rotating chamber of special guests, using a variety of multi-effect sound processors, a studio microphone, a pickens of conventional and unconventional acoustic instruments and mass market software run on a handsome custom built portable computer designed by Happy Guy studio.
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 performed many shows around Asia, Europe and the US – both as a solo performer, in duets and with ensembles. Appearances in general public areas as well as at world famous institutions like the Swedish Norberg Festival, Présences Électronique in Paris and the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam. He is also active as a media music composer, having produced recordings of surround music, mixed records for bands and creative remixing for special record label releases.
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 sound engines for immersive VR and games, his private work has focussed on usage of “emergent systems”, specifically the genetic algorithm, to develop “augmented creativity” tools for himself and other sound and/or visual artists. With this in mind, be forewarned that his infrequent musical performances have a fly-by-night DIY aesthetic where the unexpected may occur for audience and performer alike.
Today’s performance features sampling experiments including a new “mutation loop diver”, granular synthesis, and a recent innovation in “artificial life” sampling…
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 of Art at the Burning Man Festival. After participating in Loopfests in San Antonio and Austin, Texas, Clay formed the Houston Loopers Collective in 2016. The Collective has hosted performances by musicians from Houston and around the United States. His musical interests currently include both instrumental and song-based material featuring live looping. He recently performed at the Y2K18 Live Looping Festival in Mexico City. He also performs ambient music with long-time collaborator Harry Leverette as TheWinklerAndTheHare.
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 most recent compositions.
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 Children of Doña Loope)
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 !”
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, programs and devices by trial and error.
Along with releasing the demo performance and tutorial videos, in 2018 the project featured in CODAME Art+Tech / Intersection in San Francisco, and also gave the presentation and performance at MINT (Music in New Technology) in Nova Scotia.
The latest experience is incorporating a tablet-sized pressure sensor, Sensel Morph, to improve the accuracy and sensitivity getting a new velocity as Twist and Pressure. Accompanied by self-built Puredata Patch, named ChromaticA, it creates new experience of conducting the sound with feedback loops and effects musically and expressively while I paint. Web:
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 Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of the Society for the American Music, and TEMPO, and writes occasionally for Classical Guitar and SFCV. He teaches a wide range of historical and practical music courses at the University of San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz.
Giacomo is a member of Ninth Planet New Music (the chamber group formerly known as Wild Rumpus), and an occasional performer for New Music Works, sfSound, and other Bay Area organizations. He has served as a curator for the Center for New Music since 2019, and as the vice-president of the Northern California Chapter of the American Musicological Society from 2015 to 2019.
Katja Šulc is a singer, songwriter and musician from Slovenia. Moving between contemporary folk, chanson, traditional and experimental music, her work is characterized by poetry set to music and emotional, hypnotic atmospheres produced by loop pedals, effects and vocal processors.
Katja studied music in Slovenia and US (New School, New York – Jazz & Contemporary Music Program) Her debut album MILA (Sanje, 2008) is featuring poetry by Slovenian actress and poetess Mila Kačič. TWISTED DELIGHT (Celinka, 2013) set to music Katja’s own lyrics written at poetry workshops in New York. KAMLISAJLAN (Casete México, 2016) presents Rromani poetry from Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Complex, outstanding and critically acclaimed album reached several international radio stations (BBC, IMER, WFMU, RNE) and has been presented regionally and further, in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, France, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Nepal, China, United States, Mexico, Guatemala. Katja’s latest album CARICIAS (Casete México, 2021) is inspired by Mexico, including contemporary, folk and indigenous poems and songs. Having spent a major part of the decade in the country, Katja delivers a subtle homage to Mexico drawing from personal stories, old traditions and contemporary flows.
‘Caricias is fascinating, not fitting into any neat genres or boxes. You get the drift: this is fieldwork turned into contemporary, experimental folk song.’ – Songlines
‘Minimalistic layers that open up a mystical dimension with the spirit of magical realism.’ –Mladina
‘The magic lies in whispering, tender chirping and murmuring that revive traditional Rroma poetry in a modern, accessible form.’ – Radio Student
‘Otherworldly voice filled with warmth and power.’ – Music Traveler
