Human improviser meets machine improviser. After encountering this strange double of human musical interaction in live performance, the human improviser is invited to discuss their experience of engaging with a musician made from computing machinery. How did the machine compare to a human player? In what ways did it satisfy human expectations? In what ways did it fail? In what ways did it succeed? And in what ways does its playing resemble, for better or worse, how human improvisers get along with one another? Opening set by the great Chicago cellist, Fred Lonberg-Holm.

Composer, cellist, and improviser Fred Lonberg-Holm studied composition at Brooklyn College (BS) and Mills College (MA) and was active during that time in the downtown New York improvised music scene. Since 1995 he has been based in Chicago where he has led his own groups, including his trio Stirrup and the Lightbox Orchestra, the Valentine Trio, Terminal 4, and Seval, and participated in numerous projects, including the Peter Brötzmann Tentet and the Vandermark 5. Currently, he is a member of Joe McPhee’s Survival Unit III, the NRG Ensemble, Fast Citizens, Party Knüllers, Boxhead Ensemble, and Ballister among many other projects. Fred has appeared and/or had works performed in numerous festivals around the world, including Saalfelden, Kongsberg, Moers, A L’Arme, Chicago, Morelia, Tokyo, and Newport. He has worked with a wide variety of improvisers, including Lotte Anker, Jaap Blonk, Peter Brötzmann, John Butcher, Axel Dörner, Peter Evans, Mats Gustaffson, Shelly Hirsch, Charlotte Hug, Mazen Kerbaj, Ikue Mori, Don Moye, Paal Nilssen-Love, Rob Mazurek, Avreeayl Ra, and Michiyo Yagi, as well as numerous others. His extensive discography includes free improvised and free jazz recordings for Delmark, Clean Feed, Trost, NotTwo, Atavistic, Emanem.

A recipient of the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer/vocalist/sound artist who is currently an Associate Professor at UC Berkeley. Ueno’s music has been performed by distinguished performers and ensembles such as Kim Kashkashian, Robyn Schulkowsky, Mayumi Miyata, Teodoro Anzellotti, Aki Takahashi, Wendy Richman, Greg Oakes, BMOP, Alarm Will Sound, Steve Schick and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Nieuw Ensemble, and Frances-Marie Uitti. His music has been performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MusikTriennale Köln Festival, the Muziekgebouw, Ars Musica, Warsaw Autumn, Other Minds, the Hopkins Center, Spoleto USA, Steim, and at the Norfolk Music Festival. He has performed as soloist in his vocal concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in New York and Boston, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and with orchestras in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and California. Ken holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A monograph CD of three orchestral concertos was released on the Bmop/sound label. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music.

Maxine is an improviser made from computing machinery created by Ritwik Banerji in 2009. Since then, she has been Banerji’s co-ethnographer of norms of social interaction in various scenes of free improvisation. Their research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, Fulbright Germany, the Berlin Program for Advanced German Studies, and the Berkeley Center for New Media and published in the Springer Human-Computer Interaction Series, Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Ethnomusicology and Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference. With Banerji, the duo released a recording on pfMentum in 2014. Besides Banerji, Maxine has worked with Rob Frye, Aram Shelton, Theresa Wong, Teddy Rankin-Parker, Darren Johnston, Emilio Gordoa, Liz Allbee, Hilary Jeffrey, Gregor Siedl, Lucie Vitková, Tomomi Adachi, Matthias Müller, and Joel Grip. Maxine has performed at Ausland (Berlin) Khoj Artists Studios (New Delhi), Ibrasotope (São Paulo), das Wiener Konzerthaus, the Institute for Intermedia (Prague), and (CNMAT). Over the years, Maxine has been subjected to variably ruthless and insightful criticisms from various improvisers, a set of critiques which inspired Banerji in the creation of Bob, a virtual improviser built in the sonic image of the great improvisers of Berlin’s Echtzeitmusik scene.