The music video for Neon Magazine was shot in 16 hrs on one, frigid, january day, but it represents months of planning, rehearsal, and endless troubleshooting. The video combined ambitious, technical camera work with dozens of synchronized extras in a sordid Jazz Age speakeasy replete with vice, girls, brawls, and if you look carefully, a dancing bear.
Nautical Almanac has been performing since 1993. Nautical operates with a open membership and has had Harper and Ptak as the core members along with maybe 25 other artists over the years. Nautical operates on the edges of reality and does not fit into any genre of music. In the 90's and early 2000's most of the instruments used by Ptak and Harper were homebuilt or circuit bent electonics. More recently the focus has shifted to lights environments, projected videos, voice and music.
How are these compositions different from other modern classical music? Burt lives in many musical worlds. He grew up on the traditions of classical music and jazz and became involved in experimental improvised music as a teenager. He blends together the rigor and ornate craftsmanship of classical music with the rhythmically-free, spontaneous, and untuned harmonies of improvised music. His work as an educator affords him opportunities to oversee student works that range through all different styles of contemporary popular music.
Lexie Mountain Boys is an all-female experimental a capella performance group. Core members include Alexandra Macchi, Amy Harmon, Katherine Hill, Samantha Garner and Amy Waller, and grows or shrinks depending upon the nature of the project or performance.
Several songs from the self released cassette tape and CD entitled 'Sick Din' by Bethany Dinsick's pop alter ego Sick Din. Written and performed by Bethany Dinsick and produced by Chris Freeland at Beat Baby Studios in 2011. Instrumentation is largely vocal including loops made from overlaid vocals through guitar effects pedals.
Throne and Altar-ed represents a fusion of contemporary thinking towards craft, culture, and creativity with the archaic and medieval. The work intentionally looks like it passed through many hands, or was dug up out of the ground to invoke a Jungian sense of the ancestral self in the viewer in a dark and gritty fashion by feelings passed along on our dominant genes throughout antiquity.
North American Walkabout is the realization of a graphic score that I composed this year as a special project for the Saturday Matinee concert of High Zero 2011. The title is a refers to the movement involved in the piece, where performers are instructed to walk around the room, but is also a reference to the Aboriginal walkabout. The piece is meant to invoke a search for ever elusive meaning and wondering if it is a futile effort.
Since 2007, I have actively engaged in a practice of free improvisation, performing spontaneuos music with countless musicians, movement, and visual artists. In 2010, I became a member of the High Zero Collective,  the organizing body of the High Zero Festival of Exprimental Imropvised Music. This practice has pushed my playing, particularly on the alto saxophone, to new heights, and challenged me to develop a personal vocabulary on my instrument.