2014: Sandy Ewen & Jakob Pek

Sandy Ewen is an avant-garde guitar player based in Houston, Texas. She began developing her unique guitar techniques in high school by attending semiweekly improvised music workshops. Upon enrollment in the University of Texas Austin’s School of Architecture & moving to Austin, Texas, Ewen began Spiderwebs, a duo with guitarist Tom Carter, releasing their first album in 2004, followed by 2012’s Brighton Beach LP. Ewen joined experimental rock band Weird Weeds in 2004, performing, recording and touring with the group until 2013. Ewen returned to Houston upon graduating architecture school in 2008, where she began an improvisational collaboration with belly dancer Y. E. Torres and musician/filmmaker Chris Nelson. Ewen also has a close collaboration with bassist Damon Smith and drummer Weasel Walter, recently performing in a quartet with Roscoe Mitchell in Oakland in April, 2014. Ewen also leads an all-female large performance/music ensemble, which recently performed an evening of original text-based scores at Diverse Works. Other notable past performances by that ensemble include a collaboration with filmmaker Rebecca Carlisle-Healy at Austin Texas’ New Media Art and Sound Summit (NMASS), and a performance of Scratch Orchestra pieces in collaboration with Keith Rowe. In addition to these many projects, Ewen has performed in groups with many notable musicians including Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, Tatsuya Nakatani, John Butcher, Michael Zerang, Jason Lescalleet, Roger Turner, Maria Chavez, Jim Sauter (Borbetomagus) and many others. A quartet recording with Jaap Blonk, Damon Smith and Chris Cogburn was released in March of 2014, and other albums lined up for release this year include a duo with Henry Kaiser, a trio with Keith Rowe and Damon Smith, a quartet with Henry Kaiser, Damon Smith and Ryan Edwards; a new Spiderwebs (Tom Carter/Sandy Ewen) album, and a trio with guitarist Ryan Edwards and communist Ronnie Yates. Ewen is scheduled to appear on Elliot Sharp's guitar compilation album Meta Guitar 3.

Jakob Pek is a musical artist based on the West Coast of North America. A multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, and poet; a son, brother, lover, grandchild, and friend; born in B.C., Canada, raised in Las Vegas, Nevada and based in Oakland. Jakob’s deepest musical influences come from diverse realms of the musical world. On the one hand, the great finger-style guitarists of the last century have deeply inspired and guided his musical direction (Lenny Breau, Ted Green). On the other, musical artists who have pushed to the frontiers of musical exploration—the outer limits of musical perception—have also had a profound impact on Jakob’s musical life (Pauline Oliveros, Karlheinz Stockhausen). Jakob’s creative work interweaves and synthesizes diverse realms of culture, music, language and experience so as to give life to art that expands and deepens our current capacity for imaginal perception. He has toured the West Coast extensively, is a part of numerous ensembles based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is active in curating concerts in both California and Nevada. He is co-founder of the Jam at the Barn Music Festival in Blue Diamond, Nevada.

Artist (photo by Photographer)