Collaborators:
David Mansbach performs with, writes for and records To Box With Man, Trepanning Trio, and the electro-rock/media-art performance group Infinite Number of Sounds. He is the co-founder of Infinite Number of Sounds Recording Company, and www.ExperimentalBehavior.com. He is also an award winning visual artist with a BFA from Bowling Green State University.
David loves his girl Danielle, music, animals, drawing, photography, clay, painting and listening to audio books. He is a proud Clevelander, an Eagle Scout, a Cavaliers Fan, and a cheerleader for the creative community.
A percussionist of 22+ years, Ron Tucker has performed throughout the Midwest and East coast. Throughout his professional career, Ron has performed drum set, vibraphone, percussion and keyboard instruments for a diverse variety of rock, electronic, experimental, jazz, chamber and country groups and ensembles including Infinite Number of Sounds, Trepanning Trio, Racermason and Lost State of Franklin. He has also performed with multi-media performance ensemble SAFMOD.
Now living and working in New York City, Ron performs, composes and records drum set, percussion, keyboards and programs beats and loops for Brooklyn-based indie-rock group, City Breathing. When not playing music he spends the majority of his time studying the NYC mass transit system.
There are two Bob Drakes who build experimental instruments, play banjo, and have a penchant for improvised/avant garde musics. This is the one who used to play in the Whistle Pigs from Zenar and Red Dark Sweet, not the onefrom Thinking Plague and 5UUs. Former luthier, soundpoet, micropress publisher, and intermedia artist. Current projects include Fluxmonkey (with wife Kristen), building analog synths and electro-acoustic installations, and ultramarathons. He has two Cats (both named Spot), and the same number of Excellent Daughters (each of whom has their own name).
Website: www.fluxmonkey.com
Andrew Ludick is an artist living in Ireland where he runs a pottery with his wife Rosemarie. After graduating from Columbus College of Art and
Design in 1999 he became very interested in music and its relationship with
visual art. After taking up drumset he began to explore other percussion
with African origins. At the present he is in a samba band in Ireland
called Visto Pena where he is exploring Brazilian music. As well as a
variety of percussion, Andrew also plays piano, didjeridoo, and ukulele.
Website: www.rosedurr.com
Kris "skinnyk" Morron explores his passion for music by performing, composing, arranging, educating, and recording. This passion for music was instilled in him by his mother at an early age and has continued to grow ever since. Kris has performed with a wide range of local and internationally known musicians and groups. The list of Cleveland based groups he has performed with includes Swank Motel, Rhesus Amok, The Aphrodesiatics (2004 Cleveland Free Times "Best Hip-Hop/R&B/Funk" category winners), SAFMOD, Mifuné (2007 & 2008 Cleveland Free Times "Best Ethnic/World" category winners) and the Buster Backfat Orchestra. Kris has been nominated in the "Best Horn" category by the Cleveland Free Times readers in 2007 and 2008. He has written arrangements for the nationally recognized group, the Lakewood Project and is continually pursuing his dream of writing music for film. Kris has also had the pleasure to record with Mifuné, Replife, Lounge Kitty, and the Trepanning Trio.
In addition to all of his performing and writing, Kris is also an educator. He was the assistant band director at Valley Forge High School from 2004-2006 and became the head band director during the 2006-2007 school year. Currently he is on sabbatical in an effort to further explore his composing and arranging talents. Kris is also married to the most supportive woman he could have ever hoped for, Christine. Together they have a daughter, Alexandra who is a constant source of inspiration and fascination.
Dan Wenninger performs with the Buster Backfat Orchestra (improvisational horns + percussion funk), Thee Scarcity of Tanks (improvisational rock), various jazz and blues groups around Cleveland, and in the past has performed with Fuzzhead, Infinite Number of Sounds, Pureplex, and was a founding member of the Aphrodesiatics. His current project is the Oblique Orchestra, a free jazz trio that explores spontaneous improvisation. Sometimes original compositions are the vehicle for these improvisations, other times the improvisation itself is the composition. They are the house band at the monthly 1Way All Go Signs warehouse event, an event which focuses on multi-media improvisational performances and provides an environment where these experimental works can be debuted and documented. Dan organizes the music end of this event. He holds a B.A. from the University of Toledo and an Associates degree in Jazz Studies from Cuyahoga Community College. He has studied saxophone under Ernie Krivda, Jay Miglia, and Matt James.
David Badagnani holds degrees from Florida State University and Kent State University (in Kent, Ohio, USA), where he is currently a faculty member and Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology and musicology. He serves as archivist for the Egyptian-born U.S. composer Halim El-Dabh, and is writing his doctoral dissertation about the intersection between ethnomusicology and contemporary music in El-Dabh's works. Since 2000 he has assisted El-Dabh in organizing performances of his music around the world, and performed El-Dabh's music in Alexandria, Egypt in March 2002 for the inauguration of the newly reconstructed Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Library of Alexandria). Badagnani's other musical research focuses primarily on intercultural musical collaboration, global rap music, and new music for early instruments, and his articles have been published most recently in Early Music America and The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Since 2004 he has assisted in the building of the archive of the Alan Hovhaness Research Centre in Yerevan, Armenia, dedicated to the late American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000).
As a musician, Badagnani specializes in new and improvised music for english horn and oboe, as well as a variety of wind, string, and percussion instruments from China, Vietnam, and Thailand (including the Chinese sheng, suona, houguan, xun, sanxian, yueqin, and yehu; the Vietnamese kèn; and the Thai jakhe). He is a founding member of the experimental intercultural ensemble Pointless Orchestra, collaborating frequently with dancers, painters, poets, and filmmakers in multimedia performance events. He also performs regularly with the Phong Nguyen Vietnamese Ensemble, as well as with Thai, Chinese, African, Irish, American old-time, and Australian traditional music groups. In 1998 he toured Thailand with Kent State University's Thai Ensemble (the first foreign ensemble to perform Thai classical music there), and in 2003 was invited by Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project to play kèn in the premiere of a new cross-cultural work by Vietnamese composer Tran Thi Kim Ngoc. He has performed with Jin Hi Kim, Joseph Celli, Richard Teitelbaum, George Lewis, Wadada Leo Smith, Phong Nguyen, and Halim El-Dabh, and has recorded for the Without Fear, Manifold, Pointless Music, Yucca Tree, Uphrania, Scattershot, and SRCA labels.
Website: http://www.personal.kent.edu/~dbadagna/
Jeremy Bleich incorporates a wide palette of culture, ancient and modern instruments, traditions and forms as well as electronic manipulation into the creative process of composing, performing and recording music. His approach to the electric bass and the oud have earned him a reputation internationally as an innovator. Jeremy is focused on producing music that captures the essence and meaning behind the process of creating it. He resides in Bisbee, Arizona where he is involved with presenting new music, as well as composing and teaching. He holds a degree in music composition from Cleveland State University.
Jeremy is a member of the critically acclaimed group birth and has performed and/or recorded with Coung Vu (Pat Metheny Group), Joe Maneri, Jeff Coffen (Bela Fleck), Chris Jonas, Carmen Castaldi (Joe Lovano), Brook Martinez (barky!), Kevin McCarthy and Nashville songwriters Rick Elias (Ragamuffins) and Jason White. He has played the oud in collaboration w/ Mustafa Stephan Dill (SAMA trio), Andrew Stoltz (laptop musician/composer), and Rahim Alhaj (Iraqi oudist). He has recorded for MCA Records, Hopscotch Records, High Mayhem and Infinite Number of Sounds Recording Company.
Website: www.jeremybleich.com
Clayton Vaughn was born in Mississippi, where he began studying the cello under the instruction of Debbie Gum at the age of ten. In 1998, Clayton began private studies with Paul York, who was teaching at the University of Southern Mississippi. Clayton also attended the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, where he spent the majority of his high school summers.
In 2000, Paul York left USM and moved to the University of Louisville. Clayton spent the next two years studying with Deiter Wulfhorst and Alexander Russakovsky. He was also a member of the Meridian Symphony Orchestra and the Tupelo Symphony Orchestra. After graduating from high school, Clayton went to the University of Louisville to continue his studies under Paul York. He became interested in Jazz at this time, but Clayton did not have an interest in playing jazz cello. During his sophomore year, he began studying double bass in addition to cello to satisfy his desire to play jazz. He graduated from the University of Louisville in December 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Humanities.
Clayton is currently attending the Cleveland Institute of Music where he plans to earn his Master's degree in cello performance. In the future, Clayton plans on continuing his studies before pursuing a professional career.
Ty Myers
