CMS Presents Billy Martin’s Omnispheric Orchestra

Daniel Carter

Daniel Carter is an American free jazz saxophone, flute, clarinet and trumpet player active mainly in New York City since the early 1970s. Over the past three decades-plus, Daniel Carter has performed with: Sun Ra, Billy Bang, Roger Baird, William Parker, Roy Campbell, Sabir Mateen, Simone Forti, Joan Miller, Thurston Moore, Nayo Takasaki, Earl Freeman, Dewey Johnson, Nami Yamamoto, Matthew Shipp, Wilber Morris, Denis Charles, MMW (Medeski, Martin and Wood), Vernon Reid, Raphé Malik, Sam Rivers, Sunny Murray, Hamiet Bluiett, Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware, Karl Berger, Don Pate, Gunter Hampel, Alan Silva, Susie Ibarra, D.J. Logic, Margaret Beals, Douglas Elliot and Butch Morris.

Marty Ehrlich
Marty Ehrlich is celebrating 30 years in the nexus of creative music centered in New York City. He began his musical career in St. Louis, Mo. while in high school, performing and recording with the Human Arts Ensemble. He graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music with honors in 1977, where his teachers included George Russell, Jaki Byard, Joseph Allard and Gunther Schuller.

Ned Rothenberg
Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 33 years on five continents. He performs primarily on alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet and the shakuhachi – an endblown Japanese bamboo flute. His solo work utilizes an expanded palette of sonic language, creating a kind of personal idiom all its own. In an ensemble setting, he leads the trio Sync, with Jerome Harris, guitars and Samir Chatterjee, tabla, works with the Mivos string quartet playing his Quintet for Clarinet and Strings and collaborates around the world with fellow improvisers. Recent recordings include this Quintet,The World of Odd Harmonics, Ryu Nashi(new music for shakuhachi),andInner Diaspora, all on John Zorn’s Tzadik label, as well as Live at Roulette with Evan Parker and The Fell Clutch, on Rothenberg’s Animullabel.

Poets

Ashley August
Ashley August is an actress, playwright, touring spoken word artist, multipletime Grand Slam Champ, hip­hop junkie, professional shower krumper and NYC’s 2013 Youth Poet Laureate. As an actress, she got her start at 14 in the off­Broadway production of “Love: A Circus in Three Acts” and has since been featured on such great stages as the Apollo, The Great Hall at Cooper Union and The Triad Broadway House. She began her poetic journey in the summer of 2009 at Urban Word NYC where she quickly established herself as a rising star when shebecame a Youth Leadership Board Member, participating in several highly acclaimed competitions, including the Urban Word Grand Slam Finals and the New York Knicks Poetry Slam. In 2012, August landed a spot on the Urban Word Youth Slam team winning a ticket to California to perform at the Brave New Voices national poetry competition. In December of the same year, she was cast in the spirited off­broadway festival Black Ink, where she wrote and starred in her own one woman production, collaborating with award­winning choreographer and director, Nicco Annan.

Bob Holman
The author of 16 poetry collections, most recently Sing This One Back to Me (Coffee House Press), Bob Holman has taught at Columbia, NYU, Bard and The New School. As the original Slam Master and a director at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, creator of the world’s first spoken word poetry record label, Mouth Almighty/Mercury,and the founder/proprietor of Bowery of the Bowery Poetry Club, Holman has played a central role in the spoken word and slam poetry movements ofthe last several decades. A co­founder and co­director of the Endangered LanguageAlliance, Holman’s study of hip­hop and West African oral traditions led to his currentwork with endangered languages. Holman is the producer and host of various films, including “The United States of Poetry,” and “On the Road with Bob Holman.” His most recent film, “Language Matters with Bob Holman,” winner of the Berkeley Film Festival’s 2015 Documentary of the Year award, was produced by David Grubin andaired on PBS in January. “Language Matters” takes viewers around the world: to a remote island off the coast of Australia where 400 Aboriginal people speak 10 different languages, all at risk; to Wales, where Welsh, once in danger, is today making a comeback; and to Hawaii, where Hawaiians are fighting to save their native tongue. Holman worked with language revitalization centers across Alaska and Hawaii 2015, sponsored by the Ford Foundation. He lives in New York City, where he was most recently Creative Consultant at LINES Ballet in San Francisco and teaches at Princeton University.

Mohamad Hodeib
Hodeib is a recent graduate from the Lebanese American Universitywhere he studied political science, international studies, andeconomics. Since graduating from university in the spring of 2012 hehas dedicated his time to cultural activism.

Nkoski Nkululeko
Nkosi Nkululeko has received fellowships from Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Poets House. He has performed for TEDxNewYork and the Aspen Ideas Festival. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and finalist for both the 2016 Winter Tangerine Awards for Poetry and the 2016 Best of the Net anthology. His work is currently published inThe Collagist, Third Coast, Pank,  Apogee, VINYL and more. Nkosi lives in Harlem, New York.

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