Abena Motaboli (she/her) is a Basotho – Ghanaian, educator, interdisciplinary artist, natural dyer, and writer based in Chicago – the unceded territories of the Three Fires Confederacy: Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. She grew up in Lesotho, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, before moving to the U.S where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at Columbia College Chicago and at L’institut Catholique de Paris in Paris, France. She is currently engaged with the Center For Humans and Nature as a Land Reciprocity Program Developer and in Land access research with the Kalliopeia Foundation. With a strong commitment to social and environmental justice work in the Chicago Land area and being an immigrant, her artwork explores themes of belonging, interconnectedness, and more. Central to her values is Ubuntu – our shared connection to land , each other, and this place we call home and she invites her audience to experience spaces to contemplate through installation, abstract work, or through vivid bright colors in mural work. She has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibits such as Confluence at Heaven Gallery – Chicago, The Other Art Fair Chicago, SOFA, Chicago, Bhavan Gallery – based in London, Woman Made Gallery – Chicago, DIFFA Pop-Up Gold Coast Gallery, and Aqua Art Miami to name a few. Her work is also placed in private collections throughout the U.S. Motaboli also has a few poems published with Northeastern Illinois University’s annual SEEDS Literary and Visual Arts Journal.

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Carole McCurdy is a Chicago-based artist whose work addresses grief and anxiety, duty and resistance, and the absurd mysteries of embodiment. She received a 2016 Lab Artist award from the Chicago Dancemakers Forum and was a Fall 2016 Sponsored Artist at High Concept Laboratories. She created and directed an ensemble piece, Waver, with support from CDF, HCL, and 3Arts Chicago. She has performed at spaces including the Chicago Cultural Center, Epiphany Dance, Links Hall, Hamlin Park, High Concept Laboratories, Defibrillator Gallery, and Movement Research (NY). In 2014 she danced under viaducts in downtown Chicago and then toured Indonesia with Nicole LeGette’s blushing poppy Dance Club. In 2008–09 she was awarded a six-month artistic residency at Links Hall, where she created and showed her ensemble piece Alas. For Redmoon Theater’s 2006 Twilight Orchard event, she created A Cure for Scurvy, a performance installation one reviewer described as “an example of the way dread can be created virtually out of thin air.”

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Harald Kisiedu is a saxophonist and improviser who studied with Ornette Coleman and Oliver Lake. He has performed with Branford Marsalis, George Lewis, Henry Grimes, and Hannibal Lokumbe and made recordings with the improvisational band Burnt Sugar, the Arkestra Chamber. Kisiedu is also a music historian and holds a PhD from Columbia University. He is a lecturer in jazz history and jazz studies at the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, Germany and has written on Peter Brötzmann, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, and Muhal Richard Abrams. His book European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany, 1950–1975 was released in 2020.

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Rodney Waschka II (composer, performer, filmmaker, poet, visual artist) is perhaps best known for his music made with compositional algorithms and his theatrical pieces including three unusual one-act operas. Internationally recognized for his work in computer music, Waschka also performs as a narrator / vocalist / actor — often with electronic music. His works are regularly presented across the world and recorded by labels in the USA, England, Portugal, Canada, Poland, and Australia. Waschka welcomes commissions and other opportunities.

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Sergio Castrillón is a Colombian-Finnish cello performer and composer working in the fields of experimental music and improvisation. His work displays the connection between the traditional and the contemporary, using elements from different music and sound traditions, as well as all sorts of electronic devices. His music has been performed all over Europe, The Americas, Australia and Japan. (Photo by Daniel Malpica)

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Gabriel Dharmoo’s artistic practice encompasses composition, vocal improvisation, drag, interdisciplinary performance and research. His works have been performed in Canada, the U.S.A, Europe, Australia, Singapore and South Africa. He explores mixed-identity, brownness, queerness, imaginary culture, satire as well as the interplay between tradition and subversion. Key projects include his album Quelques fictions, his mockumentary performance Anthropologies imaginaires, his opera À chaque ventre son monstre, and his new solo stage production with original songs as their drag persona Bijuriya (@bijuriya.drag). He is based in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke (Canada). (Photo by Civitella Ranieri 2021)

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Malina Rauschenfels is a soprano, composer, multi-instrumentalist and now aerialist who moved to Cleveland after 11 years in New York City. Praised by the New York Times for her “compelling” performances and as “remarkable” by the Village Voice, she loves performing both new music and early music.  She has performed with Quire Cleveland, Marble Sanctuary Choir, North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, Nuove Musiche, Toby Twining Music,  Trinity Chamber Singers, Alarm Will Sound and C4 – the Choral Composer Conductor Collective. She attended the Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School for her BM and MM in cello performance and composition. Recently Malina decided to move to Mérida, México where she is teaching English, yoga, starting orchestras, and building an aerial dance studio. She is very excited about her budding school/community center designed to bring the people in her neighborhood together with friends visiting from the US.

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Krystee Wylder is a singer, songwriter, improviser and collaborator. She creates over 100 songs a year and has the privilege of collaborating with some very creative and talented humans. She currently most frequently sings and improvises with the baritone ukulele, piano, 80s mini Casio, and tracks made by friends. She has sang in choirs, rock bands, solo in an acoustic setting , and with groups of musicians that were making it up as they went along. She has one studio album called Two of Two of Two of Hearts that was recorded in Chicago at Wholesome studios with orchestrations by Elisabeth Blair.

Nana Pi Aabo-Kim is a Copenhagen-based saxophone player, composer and conductor working mainly within the experimental jazz scene. She has developed her own unique vocabulary on the saxophone using objects and extended techniques and holds a master degree at the Music Conservatory in Malmö, Sweden. Her latest release “Sentiment” (Barefoot Records) was nominated for “DMA JAZZ” 2021 in the main category “Jazz Release of the Year” and was in April 2021 selected for “The Best Jazz On Bandcamp” by Dave Sumner. In addition to playing the saxophone, she is known for conducting improvisation with her music sign language “Extemporize”, for which she received the P8 Jazz Award “Fiery Soul Of The Year” in 2020. You can hear her in bands like Nezelhorns, Tactical Maybe, Extemporize Orchestra, Hey Nana I’m Halym, Platons Prank, Skärmtid and Coriolis.

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