Eris 136199

Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park has been crossing borders and performing fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, always traditional, open improvised musics for twenty years. He has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and (ad-hoc) alternative spaces across Europe, Korea and the USA.

Park is the mastermind behind ensembles including Eris 136199 with Catherine Sikora and Nick Didkovsky; and Sirene 1009 with Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh; and has a duo with Richard Barrett. He is the constructor of the machine improviser io 0.0.1 beta++, and instigator of Metis 9, a playbook of improvisative tactics. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Dunmall, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, Pauline Oliveros, Josh Sinton, Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen, Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, Andrew Drury, Pat Thomas and Franziska Schroeder.

His ensembles have appeared at festivals including Jazz em Agosto (Lisbon), Freedom of the City (London), Brilliant Corners (Belfast), ISIM (New York), dialogues festival (Edinburgh) and Sonic Acts (Amsterdam). His recordings have been released by labels including SLAM Productions and DUNS Limited Edition. Park taught improvisation at University College Cork, and founded and curated Stet Lab, a space for improvised music in Cork.

“Guitarist Han-earl Park is a musical philosopher…. Expect unexpected things from Park, who is a delightful shape-shifter….”

— Brian Morton (Point of Departure)

“Though short, percussive, hard-to-notate sounds dominate Han-earl Park’s sound, he does utilize the totality of the guitar’s sonorities—just not in the proportions demanded by the nostalgic (retrospective, reactionary, etc.) owners of major media….”

— Stanley Zappa (The New York City Jazz Record)

Nick Didkovsky is a guitarist, composer, and computer music programmer. His non-didactic approach to combining human and machine creativity is a unique musical fingerprint. Didkovsky has composed new music for Kathleen Supove, Ethel, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Meridian Arts Ensemble, New Century Players, ARTE Quartett, his own bands Doctor Nerve, Vomit Fist, Häßliche Luftmasken, and others. His compositions and guitar performances appear on more than 50 records.

For over 30 years, Doctor Nerve has fueled Didkovsky’s intricate compositions with the energy of rock, often challenging the boundaries between heavy metal, contemporary music, and improvisation. Doctor Nerve has released nine albums of more than 50 of his compositions. The band has performed at numerous festivals including FIMAV, the Moers Festival, Musique Action, Creative Time, MIMI Festival, and ‘Whitney Live’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

As a guitarist and composer, Didkovsky was a member of the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, contributing twelve compositions to its repertoire. Didkovsky’s electric guitar compositions continue to be performed by newer ensembles such as Dither Quartet, E-Werk, and Fracture Guitar Quartet, and by soloists such as Kevin Gallagher, Marco Cappelli, and Wiek Hijmans. As a soloist, he has performed at numerous events such as Bang On A Can festival, Guitarévolutions in Montreal, New Ballet festival at the Miller Theatre, and John Zorn’s East Asian Bar Bands. His 2015 Residency at The Stone in NYC resulted in numerous premiere performances of new works.

Collaborating with computer music pioneer Phil Burk, Didkovsky began developing Java Music Specification Language in 1997.

“Musicians (and listeners) who approach Didkovsky’s work find that part of the challenge derives from his mastery of unpredictability.”

— Linda Leseman (The Village Voice)

Tenor and soprano saxophonist, improviser and composer Catherine Sikora was born in West Cork, Ireland. Self taught initially, she moved to New York City to study and play with great improvisers. Sikora works in a broad range of settings, from highly complex composed music, to folk songs, to free improvisation.

Regular collaborations include those with Eric Mingus, Brian Chase, Han-earl Park, Enrique Haneine, Christopher Culpo, Ursel Schlicht and Ross Hammond, as well as actively pursuing solo performance. Sikora has toured in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico and Australia. She was a featured soloist in Eric Mingus’ radical reimagining of Tommy by the Who presented at Australia’s Adelaide Festival in 2015, and on the critically acclaimed Mode records release The Dreamkeeper (2017), a recording of the poems of Langston Hughes featuring Eric Mingus and David Amram, and was artist-in-residence at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. Sikora traveled to Kassel, Germany during Documenta 14 in July 2017 to present concerts and masterclasses, and collaborated with refugee musicians to present a joint concert with an intercultural program with pianist Ursel Schlicht.

Catherine’s first solo album Jersey, a set of improvisations for tenor saxophone, was released on Relative Pitch Records in July 2016, and a second solo work Warrior on soprano sax, was released in August 2019. In 2018, Sikora was featured on five new releases; duo recording ‘untitled: after’ with Brooklyn based drummer Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Drums and Drones), Chrysalis, a duo with Eric Mingus, The Spectral Life of Things with Paris based pianist Christopher Culpo, ‘Eris 136199’ trio with Han-earl Park and Nick Didkovsky, and The Mind’s Mural with Enrique Haneine and his quartet.

“Sikora is a virtuosic firebrand whose star is on the rise”

— The Brooklyn Rail

“Catherine Sikora est une révélation, son jeu oblique, sensible et lumineux offrant un contrepoint idéal aux élucubrations crépusculaires de ses partenaires. Le ténor adopte une approche décidément tonale et mélodique, et néanmoins exploratoire. D’un bout à l’autre un set sans concession aucune, dont on ressort essoré, mais ravi que de telles expériences soient tentées. Art music”

— Jazz Magazine, France