Robert Janz was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1932. He is one of Ireland’s most celebrated living artists, with an international reputation stretching from Los Angeles to New York, London, Madrid and Dublin.

For the last 40 years, New York City has been Janz’s canvas. His iconic Bisoman and Chorus Singers are cut and painted, into corporate advertising posters, illegally posted on the street. Janz’s outdoor work is a study in transience, as it typically gets pasted over with the next advertisement poster.

The bottom image is Janz in 1980, at the Berlin wall. Berlin was a divided city, barricaded, scarred and the air was full of tension. Janz ran up to the wall and drew an image of a tight fist, with charcoal. The following day sleet and snow had washed away most of the charcoal. Janz redrew the fist with the fingers slightly opened. He then returned for the next 20 days, to animate the fist slowly opening. On the last day, his hand was fully open as an image of hope and relaxation of tension.

Janz was awarded the Vision Festival lifetime achievement award in 2014.

Website: https://www.janzworkon.com/​

Originally from Germany, Ingrid Laubrock is a saxophonist/composer based in Brooklyn since 2009. Laubrock is interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds.
She’s worked with: Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richards Abrams, Dave Douglas, Kenny Wheeler, Jason Moran, Tim Berne, William Parker, Tom Rainey, Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey, Craig Taborn, Luc Ex, Django Bates’ Human Chain, The Continuum Ensemble, Wet Ink and many others.
Laubrock's main projects as a leader are Anti-House, Sleepthief, Ingrid Laubrock Septet and Ubatuba. Collaborations include Paradoxical Frog, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey Duo and Crump/Smythe/Laubrock. She is a member of Anthony Braxton's Falling River Music Quartet, Nonet and 12+1tet, Tom Rainey Trio and Obbligato, Mary Halvorson Septet, Kris’ Davis Quintet, Nate Wooley’s Battle Pieces and Luc Ex’ Assemblée. She was one of the featured soloists in Anthony Braxton’s opera Trillium J.
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Recent AFA Performances:
June 17, 2020 On_Line Salon w/ Nick Dunston & Tom Rainey

Website: ​http://www.ingridlaubrock.com/

Performed July 28, 2014 at the Clemente, NYC as part of Arts for Art’s Evolving series, New York City, NY... More 

Andrew Drury is a drummer, composer, and organizer who has performed in 30 countries and on 70 recordings, recently recognized by All About Jazz as “one of the most adventurous drummer/percussionists in creative music today, and a dedicated humanitarian.” A long-time student of the legendary drummer Ed Blackwell, he performs as a soloist and leads ensembles of all sizes—most recently Content Provider featuring Ingrid Laubrock, Briggan Krauss, Brandon Seabrook. In addition to his work with Jason Kao Hwang and Ken Filiano he has worked in the last decade with J. D. Parran, Ku-umba Frank Lacy/1032K, Stephanie Richards, Robert Dick, Kris Davis, Alan Braufman, Cooper-Moore, Satoko Fujii, Thomas Buckner, Joseph Daley, Aruán Ortiz, Tomeka Reid, Roswell Rudd, Jack Wright, Bonita Oliver, and many more. 

Recent AFA Performances:
June 10 2020 On_Line Salon

​Website: ​http://soupandsound.org/about/

In December 2016, Arts for Art hosted a holiday fundraiser at the Lowline Lab in NYC featuring Jason Kao Hwang’s Spontaneous River Orchestra performing the compositions “New York” by Leroy Jenkins...More

Rob Brown was born in 1962 in Hampton VA. Rob took up the saxophone at age 12. Early on he was introduced to the music of Charlie Parker and Eric Dolphy by his older brother who also played the saxophone.
 
Rob moved to New York in 1984 and established the musical relationships that came to define his career. Immediately he re-established ties with pianist Matthew Shipp whom he met in Boston in 1982 and continued to develop an improvising language with him. 
 
Rob also began working with William Parker’s many ensembles and has continued to be very active with him for almost 30 years, touring Europe and the US and recording at least 18 albums. 
 
Rob has been collaborating with visual artist Jo Wood-Brown since they met in 1996. Often performing live with Jo’s frequent collaborator dancer/choreographer Miriam Parker and/or creating sound for video and other installations.

Recent AFA performances:
May 8, 2020 On_Line Salon with Steve Swell

Website: https://www.robbrownmusic.com/

Jo Wood-Brown & Rob Brown Artist Diary

​"During sheltering in place, I made several small videos, one at the South Street Seaport and the other in the studio that interfaced two realities, one of which was painted...More

Jo Wood-Brown is a painter and multimedia artist living and working in Lower Manhattan since 1980. She has formed her practice alongside and continues to collaborate with other artists across disciplinary lines. Her imagery that moves from the canvas, to photography and video, to installation and sculpture, coalesces many points of view around her subject.  Exploring cycles of work poetically and archetypally, her creative output is like a living organism that adapts and shifts across time, culture, and collaboration. With a painter’s sense of eternal time, her forms detach from familiar notions of figure-ground to allow for the interweaving of historical and environmental motifs. Wood-Brown’s work, spiritually and collectively, supports the role of art in culture and the creative expansion of ideas within and beyond the community. 
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Jo Wood-Brown, raised in Los Angeles, received her BFA at Otis Art Institute where she was taught by Charles White. In 1976, she moved to NYC, continuing her education at Lester Polakov Studio and Forum of Stage Design. Her formative years in New York City were shaped by process artists and the site-specific concepts around PS1 and influenced by her friendships working at The Kitchen among artists seminal to the multi-arts genre.  In the 1980’s, she was part of the East Village and later Soho gallery scenes, exhibiting her paintings and installations at International With Monument and Lisa MacDonald Gallery and participating in the rogue Pier 34 installations.  For the last 25 years, Wood-Brown has worked closely with Arts for Art, an avant-garde jazz based multi-arts non-profit in NYC, creating works in its annual Vision Festival, notably with musicians William Parker and Rob Brown; poet Fred Moten; choreographers Patricia Nicholson, Miriam Parker, Nancy Zendora and Sally Silvers, to name a few.  In addition, her art has been impacted by artists from the ancient cultures of the Middle East and Egypt; for many years Wood-Brown drew artifacts for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  After 9/11, she founded Artist Exchange International to promote a dialog between artists in different countries around situations of trauma. Exhibitions and panels were held in Belfast, Northern Ireland; Wuppertal and Berlin, Germany and in NYC. She exhibited with Paul Sharpe Gallery in Chelsea and developed InnerCity Projects interdisciplinary environments with Miriam Parker.  Most recently, Parker and Wood-Brown created “Lost Voyage” an installation of evolving performances by a collective of diverse women artists that include rebeca medina, Jean Carla Rodea, Merche Blasco, Asiya Wadud, Tiffany Moore, and Alystre Julian in residency at FiveMyles gallery, Brooklyn.

​https://www.jowoodbrown.com/

​"During sheltering in place, I made several small videos, one at the South Street Seaport and the other in the studio that interfaced two realities, one of which was painted...More

Andrew Cyrille was born in Brooklyn, New York to Haitian immigrant parents. Cyrille’s Haitian background and participation in drum and bugle corps shaped his early musical development. He would soon begin playing with jazz masters like Coleman Hawkins and Mary Lou Williams, before beginning an 11 year tenure with Cecil Taylor from 1964 to 1975. Throughout his career he has committed to investigating the full timbral and melodic quality of the drums, resulting in a series of solo and collaborative percussion albums, including projects with Milford Graves, Rashied Ali, Don Moye, and Kenny Clarke. A highly sought after collaborator for his vision and creative finesse, Cyrille has also worked extensively with dancers, poets, and visual artists.

Recent AFA Performances: October 11, 2020 Vision Festival: Healing Soul
Website: https://www.andrewcyrille.com/

Milford Graves and Andrew Cyrille recount stories on how they first met, and the two drummers continue a decades long collaboration with a duet at Cyrille’s Lifetime Achievement celebration at the Vision Festival..More

Internationally acclaimed, saxophonist, legend, Sir Edward “Kidd” Jordan is one of the true master improvisers who still performs at age 85. Born May 5, 1935 in Crowley, Louisiana, according to Indie Jazz, Jordan is, “probably, the single most under documented jazz musician of his generation, though…one of the busiest in the world.” A multi-reedist, he plays the baritone, soprano, C-melody and sopranino saxophones, as well as the contrabass and bass clarinet. For more than fifty years he has shared his gifts and passion for music. An educator, after thirty-four years, in 2006 Jordan retired as the chairman of the jazz studies program at Southern University in New Orleans (SUNO). Notably, he continues to serve as the artistic director of the Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp since its 1995 inception.
 
Jordan holds a bachelor’s degree from Southern University and a Masters in Music from Millikin University and attended post-graduate summer studies at Northwestern University where he studied with Dr. Frederick L. Hemke. On May 13, 2017, Jordan received an Honorary Doctor of Music from Loyola University. In 1985, the French Ministry of Culture recognized him as a Knight (Chevalier) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the nation’s highest artistic honor given by the French government. He earned two Lifetime Achievement Awards, one from Offbeat magazine, their first, for Music Education and from the, Vision Festival XIII (NYC). The Jazz Journalist Association awarded Jordan their (2013) “Jazz Hero” award. His music contributions have also been documented on CBS’ 60 Minutes.
 
During his tenure at Southern University he organized the first performance of the historic World Saxophone Quartet featuring Hamiet Bluiett, David Murray, Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake. The long list of artists with whom he’s performed range from Cannonball Adderley, Ornette Coleman, Ellis Marsalis, Sun Ra, Ray Charles, Lena Horne, Aretha Franklin to Big Maybelle. Jordan founded the Improvisational Arts Ensemble with Alvin Fiedler, Clyde Kerr, Jr. and London Branch, later adding Alvin Thomas. Originality is Jordan’s legacy, he says, “you’ve got to know yourself and what you’re capable of doing and how you want to do it.” His first recording titled, No Compromise, describes how he feels about his music.
 
Hundreds of students, now well-known musicians, who spent years under Jordan’s tutelage include: Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Donald Harrison, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, Julius Handy, Hurley Blanchard, Maynard Chatters, Jr., Elton Heron, Carl Leblanc, Darrell Lavigne, Tony Dagradi, Jonathan Batiste, Walter Smith, III and Courtney Bryan.
 
Kidd is most proud as a husband to Edvidge Chatters Jordan and father to Edward Jr., Kent, Christie, Paul, Stephanie, Rachel and Marlon. Four are accomplished professional musicians: Kent (flute virtuoso), Stephanie (noted jazz singer), Rachel (acclaimed classical violinist) and Marlon (acclaimed jazz trumpeter).

Website: https://www.kiddjordan.com/​

Born May 4, 1963 and raised in Detroit, Gerald Cleaver is a product of the city’s rich music tradition. Inspired by his father, drummer John Cleaver, he began playing the drums at an early age. He also played violin in elementary school, and trumpet in junior high school and high school. As a teenager he gained invaluable experience playing with Detroit jazz masters Ali Muhammad Jackson, Lamont Hamilton, Earl Van Riper, and Pancho Hagood. While attending the University of Michigan as a music education major, he was awarded a Jazz Study Grant, from the National Endowment for the Arts, to study with drummer Victor Lewis. He graduated in 1992 and began teaching in Detroit where he worked with Rodney Whitaker, A. Spencer Barefield, Marcus Belgrave, Donald Walden, Wendell Harrison, and with visiting musicians Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Kenny Burrell, Frank Foster, Cecil Bridgewater, Ray Bryant, Eddie Harris, Dennis Rowland, Howard Johnson, Diana Krall and Don Byron. In 1995 he accepted an appointment as assistant professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Michigan, and in 1998 also joined the jazz faculty at Michigan State University. He moved to New York in 2002. He has performed or recorded with Franck Amsallem, Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Lotte Anker, Reggie Workman, Marilyn Crispell, Matt Shipp, William Parker, Craig Taborn, Kevin Mahogany, Charles Gayle, Mario Pavone, Ralph Alessi, Jacky Terrasson, Jimmy Scott, Muhal Richard Abrams, Dave Douglas, Tim Berne, Jeremy Pelt, Ellery Eskelin, David Torn and Miroslav Vitous, among others. Cleaver has released two recordings as a leader. His 2001 recording Adjust (Fresh Sound New Talent) was nominated in the Best Debut Recording category by the Jazz Journalists Association.
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Recent AFA Performances: 
June 12, 2020 On_Line Salon w/ Brandon Lopez & Matt Nelson
June 24, 2020 On_Line Salon w/ James Brandon Lewis & Kirk Knuffke

​​https://www.577records.com/gerald-cleaver

Described as a “New Jazz Power Source” by the New York Times, cellist and composer TOMEKA REID has emerged as one of the most original, versatile, and curious musicians in Chicago’s bustling jazz and improvised music community over the last decade. Her distinctive melodic sensibility, always rooted in a strong sense of groove, has been featured in many distinguished ensembles over the years.

Reid grew up outside of Washington D.C., but her musical career began after moving to Chicago in 2000. Her work with Nicole Mitchell and various Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians-related groups proved influential. By focusing on developing her craft in countless improvisational contexts, Reid has achieved a stunning musical fluency. She is a Foundation of the Arts (2019) and 3Arts Awardee (2016), and received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017.

Reid released her debut recording as a bandleader in 2015, with the Tomeka Reid Quartet, a vibrant showcase for the cellist’s improvisational acumen as well as her dynamic arrangements and compositional ability. The quartet’s second album, Old New, released in Oct 2019 on Cuneiform Records, has been described as “fresh and transformative--its songs striking out in bold, lyrical directions with plenty of Reid’s singularly elegant yet energetic and sharp-edged bow work.” Another reviewer noted that “while Reid’s compositional and technical gifts transcend jazz, they exemplify the tradition wondrously.”Reid has been a key member of ensembles led by legendary reedists like Anthony Braxton (ZIM SEXTET) and Roscoe Mitchell (ROSCOE MITCHELL QUARTET, ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO), as well as a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell (BLACK EARTH ENSEMBLE, ARTIFACTS), vocalist Dee Alexander (EVOLUTION ENSEMBLE), and drummer Mike Reed (LOOSE ASSEMBLY, LIVING BY LANTERNS, ARTIFACTS). She co-leads the adventurous string trio HEAR IN NOW, with violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Silvia Bolognesi, and in 2013 launched the first Chicago Jazz String Summit, a semi-annual three-day international festival of cutting edge string players held in Chicago. In the Fall of 2019 Tomeka Reid received a teaching appointment at Mills College as the Darius Milhaud chair in composition.