Joel Harrison has been awarded grants by the Guggenheim Foundation, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, New Music USA, Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, Doris Duke, and Flagler Cary Trust. He has appeared on the “Rising Star” Downbeat Magazine poll for many years. His twenty albums as a leader showcase his prowess as a shapeshifting composer, including works for orchestra, big band, string quartet, solo cello, and percussion, small group jazz, and voice. Harrison is the founder and director of the Alternative Guitar Summit, a yearly festival devoted to new and unusual guitar music.

Henry Kaiser is a guitarist, ethnomusicologist, and composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is an influential figure on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. In 1977, together with Rova Saxaphone Quartet’s Larry Ochs and Greg Goodman, Kaiser founded Metalanguage Records. He has travelled around the world recording roots music and collaborating with such artists as the Malagasy Musicians. His other musical collaborators have included Fred Firth, John French, Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Wadada Leo Smith, Nels Cline, Mike Keneally, Steve Smith, John Medesky, Elliot Sharp, and many others. Kaiser has appeared on more than 300 albums and scored dozens of TV shows and films, including Werner Herzogs Encounters at the End of World . He has been nominated for both Grammy and Academy Awards for his work.

Nels Cline is a guitarist and composer. He has been the guitarist for the band Wilco since 2004. In the 1980s he played jazz, often in collaboration with his twin brother Alex Cline, a percussionist. He has worked with musicians in punk and alternative rock such as Mike Watt and Thurston Moore. He recently released his 3rd Blue Note album titled  Share the Wealth, a double album. His long-running project The Nels Cline Singers feature saxophonist and punk-jazz iconoclast Skerik, keyboardist Brian Marsella, bassist Trevor Dunn, longtime collaborator and drummer Scott Amendola, and Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. His recording and performing career — spanning jazz, rock, punk and experimental — is well into its fourth decade, with over 200 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader.  Cline has received many honors for his work including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 “new guitar gods” and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.

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