The Presentation

Acting as a correspondent to an ancestry of people that have expressed an interest in our supernatural raison d’etre, Cisneros reads from seven letters written to the living and dead addressed to such influences as Ravi Shankar, Wilhelm Reich, Thomas Edison, among others.  The letters themselves produce an echo chamber of philosophical inquiry offering a prose-like exploration of topics ranging from messianic science to remote mental broadcast with an almost extra-terrestrial quality. 

Ross Cisneros Bio
Ross Cisneros is a multi-media artist, amateur boxer, and agriculturalist.  Cisneros first came to New York City to pursue a musical career.  He later began experimenting with sound as a condition of space that later developed into a sculpture practice.  He was educated at the Cooper Union School of Art, Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Joan Jonas and Krysztof Wodizcko, and studied hermeneutics at the Harvard Divinity School. Cisneros has exhibited internationally in New York, Boston, Mexico, London, the IX Baltic Triennial in Lithuania, and has a solo exhibition scheduled for The Kitchen in New York.

Musicians

Stan Harrison
Stan Harrison, saxophonist and arranger on "The Great Ash" written by Ross Cisneros, has recorded and toured with Serge Gainsbourg, David Bowie, Radiohead, The Borneo Horns and Duran Duran, to name a few. His own compositions, will be available on his soon-to-be-released album project "The Optimist", a collection of 10 pieces of music combining electronica, acoustic instruments, vocals and improvising.

Erik Friedlander
"Erik Friedlander can do things with a cello that should have a reasonable listener fearing for her life," says PitchforkMedia.com

"Rostropovich one second and Rottweiler the next." A virtuosic veteran of NYC's downtown scene, Friedlander has backed John Zorn, Laurie Anderson and Courtney Love. New York's Erik Friedlander is a unique cellist whose work blurs genre borders. He is a composer and an improviser, a classical musician and a jazzbo. The LA Times put it best when they wrote, "Friedlander's performance clearly positions him as the first potential star performer on his instrument." Erik grew up in a home filled with art and music. He is the son of Lee Friedlander, an art photographer known by musicians and jazz aficionados for the cover photographs he took for Atlantic Records. His passion for r&b and jazz greatly influenced Erik, whose earliest memories are of a household filled with the sounds of his father's subjects--Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, McCoy Tyner, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane. Erik started playing guitar at age 6 and added cello two years later.

Erik was born in New York City in 1960 and grew up in suburban Rockland County, son of the noted artist Lee Friedlander. Along with photographers Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, Lee is recognized as one of the best street photographers of the 1960s. His work can be found in museums around the world. But Lee is also known by musicians and jazz aficionados for the cover photos he took for Atlantic Records. His passion for r&b and jazz greatly influenced Erik, whose earliest memories are of a household filled with the sounds of his father's subjects--Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, McCoy Tyner, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane.

Erik started playing guitar at age 6 and added cello two years later. He began formal lessons at age 12. Erik continued his musical studies at Columbia University in 1978. Upon graduation, he spent the next decade refining his cello technique through long hours of practice, supporting himself by playing in various orchestras and Broadway shows, recording commercial music for jingles and movies, and doing session work with artists like Laurie Anderson, Courtney Love's Hole, and Dar Williams. He also started his first small groups and made his first recordings. Erik came into his own in the 1990s as he became an integral part of NYC's downtown jazz scene receiving notices in publications like the Boston Globe, The Wire, and Billboard which wrote, "Friedlander [is] one of today's most ingenious and forward-thinking musical practitioners."

He has always worked to stake out new ground for the cello in both his compositional choices and his dynamic improvising style. His music blends his vision of what the cello can be pushed to do, while maintaining a firm grasp on traditions, both improvising and classical.

John Petersen
John Petersen has fashioned his arrangements, compositions, and unique brand of sonic landscaping into numerous scores for film and television. Always searching for new sounds to shape his work, he spends a lot of time experimenting with both high and low tech processes to create his original palette. He has written and produced for records, features film, episodic televison shows, documentaries, cartoons and commercials.

Christopher Hoffman
Cellist Christopher Hoffman was born in Evanston, Illinois 1978.  Growing up in a diverse musical family he began studying cello at the age of 5 and later added voice, bass and drums. He studied with Dr. David Cowley and Matt Turner while studying recording technology at the University of Wisconsin.  Following his studies he returned to Chicago and was hired at Chicago Recording Company as an Associate Engineer while performing and recording with artists like Fred Lonberg-Holm, Scott Rosenberg, Terminal 4, Red Moon Theatre Company, Blue Turtle Tea Party, Chris Greene, Vincent Davis Quintet, Howard Levy, Cock ESP, and the Shakera Dance Ensemble.

Moving to New York in 2002 to teach at the New School University Christopher has performed with numerous artists spanning a broad musical palette of Arabic, Jazz, Classical, Experimental, Rock, Noise, Folk, World, Film and Theatre.  He regularly performs with Ryan Scott, Clare Muldaur, Anistar, Kaiku, Olivier Manchon, Jeremiah Cymerman and his own ensembles iosono & trio limpet.  He has also performed with artists like Henry Threadgill, Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, Vijay Iyer, Mat Maneri, Manuel Valera, Umphrey’s McGee (SCI Fidelity), Mark Dresser, Jenny Scheiman(Norah Jones), Lukas Ligeti, and has performed at the JVC Jazz Festival, Fringe Festival and the Fox Valley Jazz Festivals. Christopher’s first record Aberration is available through CDBaby, itunes and many other retailers. His current band iosono is finishing a record very soon.