david jensenius

Polish Club is an improvisation based duo.

spurse is an open-ended group of individuals and organizations that work together as a type of experimental consultation service towards the development of new forms of enaction, situated knowledges, and modes of being of the world. spurse’s endeavors often take the form of a temporary research institute/laboratory or intervention, and have included temporary restaurants, microbiological laboratories for museums, housing and clothing systems for migration, musical performances, the recording and archiving of oral histories, and publishing in a variety of media. Recent and upcoming projects include Micromobilia: Machines for the Intensive Research of Interior Bio-Geographies which is part of “Experimental Geography,” a traveling exhibition curated by Nato Thompson and circulated by Independent Curators International, and “DeepTime RapidTime” at Grand Arts in Kansas City.

Carl Testa (born 1984, Chicago, IL) is a composer and instrumentalist based in New Haven, CT and New York City. Originally from Chicago, Testa studied music with Donn DeSanto, at the U of C Lab School, as well as at the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) School of Music. In 2002, he moved to Connecticut to study music and sociology at Wesleyan University with Anthony Braxton, Neely Bruce, Alvin Lucier, Ron Kuivila, Roy Wiseman, Jay Hoggard, and Charles Lemert.

In October 2008, he released his debut album Uncertainty featuring his compositions for clarinets, percussion, and electronics. He currently studies composition with Edgar Grana in NYC, leads his own groups, and participates in a wide variety of side projects most notably with Anthony Braxton's Septet and 12+1tet. Testa's compositional interests are currently focused on writing for his clarinet ensemble, for electronics, and in writing an extended piece for voices and chamber ensemble. Please visit http://carltesta.net for more information.

Charles Céleste Hutchins was born in San Jose, California in 1976, and makes hir home in Berkeley, CA. Ze is a member of the board of directors of Other Minds, an organization that produces an annual festival in San Francisco.

Hutchins attended Mills College in Oakland, California, where ze studied with Maggi Payne and acquired a love for the sound of analog electronics. In 1998 ze graduated with a dual B.A. in music and computer science. In 2005, Charles graduated from the M.A. program at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, where ze studied computer music and Supercollider with Ron Kuivila and improvisation with Anthony Braxton. Following that, ze attended the year long course at CCMIX in France and then the Sonology course at the Royal Conservatory of the Netherlands. Ze is currently a PhD student at the University of Birmingham in England.

Ze has performed in North America – in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Canada and Connecticut – and in Europe- in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. Hir music has been played on European and American radio.

Ze is exploring using her computer to do things that hir analog synthesizer cannot do, including just intonation and granular synthesis. Hir most recent work involves text sound pieces with found material. Ze believes progressive politics and experimental music are natural allies.

Argentinian pianist, composer and improviser, Walter Frank has performed, composed and taught music in three different continents. He holds a B.Mus from the Conservatorio Municipal de Musica “Manuel de Falla”, graduate studies in Israel, and an MA from Wesleyan University in Composition and Piano Performance. He performed the Argentinian premieres of William Duckworth’s music for piano and the world premiere of Duckworth’s Meditations on Satie as part of his involvement in the epic webcast
Cathedral.

His Piano Quintet, No More Series, was performed by the Flux Quartet in November 2004. In early 2005 he commissioned piano pieces from Wesleyan graduate composers and subsequently performed the program at the Renee Weiler Concert Hall in New York City. The ensemble WesWinds premiered “Paysage”, a piece for woodwind ensemble commissioned by the conductor in 2005.

Mr. Frank has recorded over 100 improvisations, and in a recently released double CD set of duos with Anthony Braxton his playing is said to “...revolve closer to instant composition than free improvisation...” (Francois Couture). In March of 2005, Mr. Frank was a visiting artist at Bucknell University where he performed the music of William Duckworth alongside pianist "Blue" Gene Tyranny. Mr. Frank is the recipient of awards and grants from the Institutional Auspice of the Main Directorate of Cultural Affairs of the Argentine Consulate, The Blumenthal Wolff Foundation (Israel), EMBA (Escuela de Musica de Buenos Aires), the Bank of Boston Foundation and Meet the Composer Organization.