Beard Farm is a collaboration between Thomas Bruce and Karl Fury. Utilizing, hardware and software synths, ipads, guitar and effects.
Beard Farm was born at an earlier NEEMfest when Tom and Karl improvised a set of music. Drawing on classicelectronic music, world music, jazz and rock they create an exotic blend of styles.
“Semi-improvised offerings, both challenging and pleasing, both tonal and beyond with elements of jazz, rock, neoclassical, cinema, ambient and experimental. Graphics by Girl with Octopus greatly amplify the experience.”
From the age of four when he first heard the grannies in Sunday school plunking out hymns on a beat-up old upright, composer David Berends has been spellbound by the harmonies, melodies and structures of this mystical aural artform we call music.
Classically trained in piano at Peabody Conservatory and the Westminster Choir College and in music theory at UPenn and Princeton, his informal training came though countless gigs and jams with artists ranging from guitarist Stanley Jordan to Rock’n’Roll pioneer Chuck Berry to prog rockers Tank and New Wave band The Name.
Over the years, Berends has released four CDs of his original piano compositions on classical labels Albany Records and I Virtuosi Records while also briefly leading a straight-ahead piano trio performing many of his jazz charts. Recently, much of his musical focus has been on recording and performing with numerous jazz, fusion, and electronica musicians throughout the Northeast. Berends is also a founding member of Two Bald Wizards (ongoing) featuring the brilliant hand percussionist, Michael Mironov.
As a solo electronica artist, Berends creates music both challenging and pleasing, be it tonal or not, with elements of jazz, rock, classical, cinema, ambient and experimental.
About TOM: when he was about 15, he attended the first two Mother Mallard concerts in Ithaca, New York. One of his friends, Linda Fisher was playing in the group at that time. The first concert did works by Jon Hassell and Daniel Lentz; and it was the first time that he’d heard “In C”.
Not long after that, acquiring two of Morton Subotnick‘s albums, “The Wild Bull” and “Silver Apples of the Moon“, and a Karlheinz Stockhausen album; that were instrumental to Tom’s music appreciation and development in the Electronica music genre.
Fast-forward to 2015; Tom bought a Yamaha WX-5 wind controller, and was using it to record music; and it’s first use was for a show he performed on Halloween the same year..
After retirement in 2019, he hooked up with a lot of musicians around the country for music collaborations; and has performed live for shows in Asheville (twice), Ithaca, New York City, at the Rotunda in Philadelphia, and at least 5 or 6 shows at the Cosmic Crossings Concert Series.
Tom was also the photographer and sound engineer for the last two Mother Mallard concerts in Ithaca, New York, one in Sage Chapel, and the other performance space under the Johnson Art Museum.
Since the pandemic, Tom mostly uses iPads to play and compose music; the instruments involved are generally quite inexpensive and versatile. With this new Ipad array of instruments, he has worked remotely with Jim Spitznagel, Karl Fury, and Jair-Rohm Parker Wells; performed in concerts in Ithaca with Jair-Rohm Parker Wells, Josh Oxford, and Charles Shriner.
Currently Tom Bruce has issued albums from some of his collaboration, as with James Spitznagel as DFLT, Karl Fury as Beard Farm, Charles Shriner as WPS aka Walmort Portrait Studio, Rob Snyder as High Anxiety Cabaret which “The Hidden Side of Scandinavian Living“, recorded by them won fourth prize in an international competition run out of Sydney, Australia.
Tom has also managed the NEEMfest 2019 and 2022 events, and in 2024, Tom was inducted into “Who’s Who in America”.
“…minimalism, Croatian folk traditions, and American popular music.”
James Budinich is a Croatian-American composer writing music inspired by minimalism, Croatian folk traditions, and American popular music. An artist who welcomes collaboration in his process, he composes for performances, films, and installations, using both acoustic instruments and electronic sound design. James currently serves as Lecturer in Composition and Music Creation Technologies at Binghamton University, New York.
“…Ambient and Experimental artist and Field Recording enthusiast from Binghamton, NY”
Robert Dorschel
Tonight’s show: “KNOW THYSELF”
“…Robert will be talking to himself, and you get to hear what’s on mind and in his head for thirty minutes. It’s mostly sounds and music mixed with absurdist takes on existentialism. With synthesizers.”
For decades now, Robert has been doing his best attempt at to put melodic pieces and moral-of-the-story tales together, usually with midi-triggered video with little to no budget to speak of. All of the money was already spent on gear. No one told him it’s okay to stop yet.
“ellipses is an ambient artist based in upstate New York. Utilizing field recordings and synths, they create lovely drones and textures to get lost in.“
ellipses is an ambient artist based in upstate New York. ellipses finds the spark for their music in the beauty of nature, the vastness of space, the strength and camaraderie found in loved ones and community, and the organic music that the world creates all on its own. They hope their music can help you slow down, be present in your world, and find your own inspiration
Experimental Trash
Jeffrey Campbell
“…Multimedia artist specializing in audio visual ambient/ experimental analog soundscapes and vhs video exploration.“
“…a space in which joyful sonic communication may occur.“
Feedback Exchange, a collaboration between composer-performer Reed Wixson and percussionist June Cummings, is a performance project that uses analog feedback, improvisation, and an awareness of local context to create a space in which joyful sonic communication may occur.
Reed Wixson (they/he) is a composer-performer and sound artist who makes ecologically-informed compositions using found objects, field recordings, and simple analog electronics. His work invites attention to small sonic details, as well as an awareness of the broader environmental and historical contexts in which the pieces are created and staged.
Finite Element
Rich Kennicutt
Finite Element is Rich Kennicutt, a keyboard-based electronic musician from upstate NY. Rich’s music is a blend of 70’s style berlin school, ambient, dark ambient, industrial, and minimalist new age. Influences include Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Ashra, Brian Eno, and Michael Hoenig, Tangerine Dream, Ashra, Brian Eno, and Michael Hoenig.
Karl’s improvised style of electronic music utilizes hardware and software synths, noise boxes, and guitar. Rich’s Berlin School approach uses hardware groove boxes, hardware synths, samples, and sequences. Together they are the definite uncertainty and undetermined order that is Quantum Bingo.
Karl Fury is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from New Jersey. His musical background ranges from rock to jazz, world music, ambient, electronic and free improvisation. He has performed at numerous venues including the Trenton Avant Garde Festival, Artworks, the Cosmic Crossings and Event Horizon concert series, NEEMfest, eeemfest, Mountain Skies 19, Columbia and Princeton University and live radio broadcasts from WPRB, WTSR , WDVR and WLFR. He performed and recorded for several years in the world music duo Near East and the electronic music trio The Melting Transistor.
He continues to collaborate and record with the Equinox Project an improvisational electronic music trio. Karl also collaborates with Dr. Brad Garton from Columbia University, NYC, on an irregular basis. Karl is also involved in three new musical duos, Beard Farm with Tom Bruce, Oblique Strategists with Mario-enrigue Paoli and Quantum Elf with Floyd Bledsoe. He also records and performs solo as both Karl Fury and Tars Obscura and currently has a solo release on the da/73 label. Karl plays a number of different stringed instruments, electronic controllers such as the Linnstrument and the Sensel Morph, homemade noise boxes, and utilizes computers and the Ipad as sound sources and processors in his music.
Girl with Octopus is known for her legendary visual composition to the music of her partner David Berends. Friends call her Emily, who has become a major actor of NEEMFest since 2018, and has performed visuals for other performing artist since NEEMFest 2024.
Dan Gitlin
Abstract Noise/Drone/Soundscape pulled from Chapman Stick, synthesizer, and electronics.
Dan Gitlin is a Chapman Stickist, guitarist, synthesist, and sample manipulator performing a combination of structured improvisation and composed music. Gitlin currently performs as a solo artist, as a member of the Martin Bisi Collective and in various other collaborations.
Structured improv and composed pieces for Chapman Stick and electronics in the drone/noise/experimental zone.
“Minimalist storytelling with electronics, curious noises, and voice.”
Kantoendrato is the experimental ambient and improvisational music project of artist Joe Belknap Wall. The name comes from the Esperanto phrase meaning “a song in a wire”. His work blends live electronic elements, field recordings, and atmospheric soundscapes.
Maxx Klaxon
“Electronic songs about love, power, and technology, set against hypnotic 3D video imagery“
Maxx Klaxon is an audiovisual artist and aspiring dictator who creates electronic songs about love, power, and technology, set against hypnotic 3D video imagery. He fights enemy mind control with his better, stronger mind control from a secure, undisclosed location in New York City. Tune into his transmissions online at:
The CNY breaks mad scientist…Lab has been a staple in the CNY underground scene since the early 2000s with consistent annual event productions and breaks sets sure to set a dancefloor on fire. Nuskool Breaks and Florida Funky and Electro Breaks.
LowTech
Matt R.
techno and acid house
Nominal Shift
Dan Micholychak
“…dark, melodic soundscape…”
Nominal Shift utilizes samples, semi-modular synths, and live guitar to express a dark, melodic soundscape rooted in industrial, techno, and thrash influences.
Phantasmagorical Cannibal Animal is an improvisational psychedelic industrial dub band. Members include Deftly-D, Alien Touring, David Clark and Jeff La. Combining a wealth of influences and instrumentation ranging from modular synthesizers to Chinese hammered dulcimer.
“The guitar and dulcimer improv against industrial percussion here is such a vibe. It’s a weird Wax Trax meets prog rock sound, like early Pink Floyd meeting RevCo in a dark alley” – Chris Castiglione (Ukuphambana, Zero Times Infinity)
d Deftly-D – modular synths, drum sequences, percussion, effects, loopers, conducting a Alien Touring – modular synths, drum sequences, guitar, bass c David Clark – electronic percussion p Pneumagnosis – synths j Jeff La – hammered dulcimer, bass, guitar, and just about any other instrument he gets his hands on. New album at:
“…the definite uncertainty and undetermined order…”
Quantum Bingo is an improvised collaboration between Karl Fury, Rich Kennicutt and Harris Thor
Karl’s improvised style of electronic music utilizes hardware and software synths, noise boxes, and guitar. Rich’s Berlin School approach uses hardware groove boxes, hardware synths, samples, and sequences. Together they are the definite uncertainty and undetermined order that is Quantum Bingo.
Karl Fury is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from New Jersey. His musical background ranges from rock to jazz, world music, ambient, electronic and free improvisation. He has performed at numerous venues including the Trenton Avant Garde Festival, Artworks, the Cosmic Crossings and Event Horizon concert series, NEEMfest, eeemfest, Mountain Skies 19, Columbia and Princeton University and live radio broadcasts from WPRB, WTSR , WDVR and WLFR. He performed and recorded for several years in the world music duo Near East and the electronic music trio The Melting Transistor.
He continues to collaborate and record with the Equinox Project an improvisational electronic music trio. Karl also collaborates with Dr. Brad Garton from Columbia University, NYC, on an irregular basis. Karl is also involved in three new musical duos, Beard Farm with Tom Bruce, Oblique Strategists with Mario-enrigue Paoli and Quantum Elf with Floyd Bledsoe. He also records and performs solo as both Karl Fury and Tars Obscura and currently has a solo release on the da/73 label. Karl plays a number of different stringed instruments, electronic controllers such as the Linnstrument and the Sensel Morph, homemade noise boxes, and utilizes computers and the Ipad as sound sources and processors in his music.
Rich Kennicutt (Finite Element), a keyboard-based electronic musician from upstate NY. Rich’s music is a blend of 70’s style berlin school, ambient, dark ambient, industrial, and minimalist new age. Influences include Klaus Schulze.
Harris Thor is a seasoned performer/composer: guitarist/bassist/lap steel. Electronic experimenter/pedal designs/builds. Owner HG Thor Guitar Lab- customization, repairs, upgrades, Epoxy Fretless mods. His music Spacey/meditative (maybe) improv. Standard, classic and unusual effects, Theremin, and a “The Muse”.
redgreenblue is the electro-ambient project of Shane King. Using a variety of hardware, software and controllers redgreenblue creates cinematic music that crosses genres and periods of electronic music with the focus being on the music, not the electronics. Live, rgb presents a compelling performance that defies expectation of how live electronic music can be presented.
Zachary James Ritter celebrates his new record ‘care’ – a collection of songs and ambient soundscapes about anxiety and actualization, about being stuck in survival mode and finding a way out of it. About wanting to take care of someone you love and not knowing how. About rest — honest, deep, necessary rest — and what it takes to actually get there. The album moves between lo-fi and ambient worlds built from layers of vocal processing–and that range is deliberate. He has spent years working in contemporary classical music and live ambient performance, and Care finds a way to hold both of those practices at once. The result is something that feels both crafted and unhurried — tracks that reward close listening but never demand it. Put it on and let it do its work
Zachary James Ritter (he/they) is a composer who strives to create works that resonate with his collaborators and audience through shared human experience. Zach’s work incorporates the voice, electronics, and the quintessentially human aesthetics of failure. He is influenced most by electronica, minimalism, and traditional music of Ireland and America.
Spare, raw musical landscapes invite calm, meditative listening experiences punctuated by layered textures with playfully unpredictable rhythms. He likes to make music people want to listen to, music made in sincerity.
As a performer, Zach has provided electronics and vocals in NYC’s most vital cultural institutions including MoMA, National Sawdust, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and Brooklyn’s finest basements. Ritter holds an MM in classical composition from Purchase Conservatory and a BA in Music from Binghamton University. He has written for ensembles including Unheard-of//Ensemble, Ficino Ensemble, Quartetto Zuena, Choral Chameleon, The Cassatt Quartet, Fifth House Ensemble, Opera Elect, ModernMedieval, Contemporaneous, Momenta Quartet, and Yarn/Wire. He has also arranged works for Unheard-of, Contemporaneous, Choral Chameleon, Present Music, Infrasound, and the Binghamton University Symphony Orchestra.
“Experimental and conceptual noises with homemade instruments and ham sandwiches“
Jess Rowland is an artist, composer, and educator working with sound, multimedia, and experimental technologies. Her work often focuses on exploring concepts of the body’s relation to consumerism and American culture. Her experimental practice aims to find cracks in the pavement to reveal the profound within the absurd and the absurd within the profound, inviting a deeper look at the systems that shape how we experience our strange world.
Margaret Anne Schedel is a composer and cellist specializing in the creation and performance of ferociously interactive media whose works have been performed throughout the United States and abroad. As an Associate Professor of Music atStony Brook University, she serves as Co-Director of Computer Music and is theDirector of cDACT, the consortium for digital arts, culture and technology. Her research focuses on gesture in music, the sustainability of technology in art, and sonification of data. In her spare time she curates exhibitions focusing on theintersection of art, science, new media, and sound.
“…a mix of techno, dub techno, acid house, and ambient.”
Stepwriterun (Jason Leifer) performs an all improvised set of live techno influenced by the sounds of Dub Techno, Jamaican Dub, Acid House, Ambient, and the Detroit/Berlin electronic music scenes of the past and today. Jason uses a mix of hardware, software, and modular devices to create an experience for the crowd. No two performances are alike. You can find his music on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Apple Music.
Symmetry is an audio-visual artist that blends electronic music and ambient sound with futuristic imagery. It takes listeners on an emotional journey through dark, industrial rhythms with syncopated noise, captivating soundscapes, and rich textures. A celebration of symmetry in music, blending art and technology seamlessly. Immerse yourself in this unique experience and travel to the farthest reaches of sonic space.
The Plane(s)
“The improvisational act is untamed, clocked up, sound/image quick lifts, pivots, collisions and unions. The Plane(s) are sonic elocutions and architectures with lo-fi stagecraft.”
“Has anyone ever groped their way through totally unexplored territory, such unknown darkness, with such assurance? Shapes bubble up from silence as surprised to be there as you are to hear them. Are they physical objects in space, perhaps even living tissue, or are they purely virtual, mere sonic images? Is there a difference? This is how the world sounds now, if you can hear it.” Ian Downey of “Maybe I’m Wrong” on WAYO 104.3
The Plane(s) is the solo project by Rebekkah Palov. Since June 2023, the Plane(s) livestream features over nineteen hours of performances. Each week the show has new sound and video recordings for real-time improv using original computer programs. The Plane(s) Extended are sound / sound+video for in-person audiences. The improvisational act is untamed, clocked up, sound/image quick lifts, pivots, collisions and unions. The Plane(s) are sonic elocutions and architectures with lo-fi stagecraft.
Since 2012, Rebekkah has been a member of Carrier Band, founded by Pauline Oliveros, featuring Harald Bode Vocoder and archive recordings. Performances with Carrier Band include The Stone (Ave C) and Experimental Intermedia. Starting 2021, she has been a member of the NowNet Arts Hub under Composer, Conductor Sarah Weaver. Rebekkah has played in garage, math-rock pop and heavy metal bands, playing with Tim Green (louder Studios, Fucking Champs, Nation of Ulysses), Rachel Carns (The Need, Kicking Giant), Christina Billotte (Slant 6) and others. Rebekkah also is moving image artist and has worked on projects by Stephanie Barber (lighting), GB Jones (actor), Eiko Otake (camera), Larry Gottheim (edit assist, post). She is a former Bike Collective member and a retired University Professor in time-based experimental arts. Rebekkah lives in Hornell, NY.
“…ambient and tonal compositions and soundscapes…“
Thorny, the project of Vermont musician JD Ryan creates ambient and tonal compositions and soundscapes that fuse elements of ambient, drone, cinematic and Berlin School, created with synthesizers and process fretless 6 string bass.
Thorny is the ambient music project of Vermont synthesist and bassist JD Ryan. Working from a deep palette of hardware synthesizers and processed bass guitar, he creates immersive, slowly evolving soundscapes — music that lives in the spaces between tension and stillness, shaped by the fog, silence, and shifting light of the Green Mountains.
His 2025 solo longform A Long Dusk was nominated for a Schallwelle Award for Best Ambient Album, and his album Flood — a reflection on the devastating 2023 Vermont floods — was praised by the Seven Days arts weekly as “a fascinating study in musical reaction to environmental stimuli.” His discography also includes See No Sky (2023), his debut Mostly Gray (2022), and collaborative work with ambient guitarist Matt Borghi, including Fragments of Distance and A Long Dusk: The Borghi Remixes.
Thorny has become an active presence on the New England electronic and ambient music scene, with performances at the New England Synth Fest (Boston), Sound X Light X Movement (Somerville, MA), Sound in Air (Cambridge, MA), and Stage 33 Live SynthFest (Bellows Falls, VT). His live sets blend hardware synthesizers, processed fretless bass, and Ableton Live into long-form, evolving pieces.
His earliest musical roots were in bass guitar, playing rock, blues, jazz, and funk before a chance encounter with the Hearts of Space radio program opened the door to a different kind of music entirely. The discovery of artists like Brian Eno, Steve Roach, and Manuel Göttsching — particularly Ashra’s Blackouts — planted the seed for what would eventually become Thorny: the realization that sound itself could be the composition.
JD lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont with his wife and dogs. When not making music, he can usually be found on a bike or cross-country skis.
“…ambient and tonal compositions and soundscapes…“
Based out of Boston, MA, Robyn Alman a.k.a TotoRobyn loves the exploration of electronic music using a mix of hardware and modular synths. She primarily composes ambient, downtempo, and dance music – you can typicallyfind TotoRobyn streaming online at Twitch as well as performing out live.
Her recent album, interstellar melancholy, dives into an electronic journey that spans various genres and moods of modular exploration. All of her album releases can be found on Bandcamp and other streaming platforms
Johnny Tomasiello presents a new iteration of Deriving Synchrony, his real time brainwave to music translation system. This new work expands the system’s physiologically responsive generative framework, pairing that process with deliberate performative intervention and positioning the artist as both subject and performer.
Johnny is a dedicated transdisciplinary artist and composer-researcher, with a deep interest in expanded conceptualizations of sound and time. His work employs methodologies across media, and is informed by research into neuroscience, psychophysics and biofeedback. Focused on the relationship between perception and the mechanics of physiology, his immersive works, compositions, and performances reveal otherwise invisible processes in physiological and technological systems. His artistic explorations frequently lead to formalized research, creating a mutual exchange between science and artworks. Drawing on custom-built instruments and software, his work references mechanisms of expression and experience through data sonification, biofeedback, and reciprocal physiological systems.
As a performer, Tomasiello has produced live immersive performances and lectures featuring his visual and sound works. His work has been presented worldwide at institutions and festivals, and have been supported by, Ircam, NYU, Liquid Sky Music, modularsquare, Kunsthall Gallery, Masa7a Gallery, and Backslash.lit, among others.
He holds an MS in Digital Imaging and Design from NYU and a BS in Psychophysics from Rutgers/UMDNJ, as well as the completion of the thesis program in Electronic Music composition and Production, and a fine arts foundation with emphasis in painting, from Maryland Institute, College of Art (MICA). Tomasiello continues his work in interactive computer-assisted compositional performance systems and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) that create, manipulate, and deconstruct audio and visuals, as well as physiological responses. He has lectured on the subject, staged live performances, scored films, and shown canvases and sound works in galleries and at institutions around the world.
This performance will be part of my larger ongoing project “Deriving Synchrony: A Real Time Interactive Brainwave-to-Music Translation System”. It is a generative and interactive work whose primary purpose is to explore the reciprocal relationship between electrical activity in the brain and external stimuli that has been generated and defined by those same physiological events, through use of a Brain-Computer Music Interface (BCMI). This methodology allows for the sonification of the data captured by an electroencephalogram, which is translated into musical stimuli in real time.
The project can be expressed in multiple ways. It can help teach participants how to affect a positive change in their own physiology, by learning to influence various functions of the autonomic nervous system through neurofeedback.
It also functions as an interactive computer-assisted compositional and performance system that translates electrical activity in the brain into musical compositions in real time, while allowing the user intentional control over this translation process, and the resulting generative sonic output within a musical framework.
When used as a compositional and/or live performance system, with practice, the user can exploit the brainwave mappings to purposefully change the content and dynamics of the musical feedback. So this system then expands beyond a dynamic proving ground for influencing your own physiology, and becomes a powerful and effective real-time generative system for writing and performing live music.
This piece will be the latest example of the system in use. He has also recently used this project to score a feature length film. That process involved recording the musical feedback generated by my brainwaves, in real-time, as he watched the film for the first time. This captured a visceral physiological and emotional response to the film as it was viewed, providing a personal score directly related to the experience of watching it. For NEEM Fest this year, He will be crating both a live generative soundtrack and accompanying visuals, as extension of the system’s use as a narrative and storytelling device.
Twyndyllyngs are an electronic music chamber ensemble playing spacemusic that is suitable for everything from planetarium presentations to deep inner thought explorations. This duo consists of Howard Moscovitz and Bill Fox. They have been performing improvised electronic chamber music together since 2003. They have performed at electronic music festivals in Europe and North America. They perform weekly on the internet radio station electro-music.com. Twyndyllyngs’ experimental work is in many diverse styles ranging from neoclassical to experimental.
“Music exploration that relates to Architecture in its structure and spatial construction, Painting with sounds colors and Poetry with its message of consonance and dissonance.”
Italian-born Gianni Intili has been involved with the fine arts throughout his life. Starting as a painter, color theorist, sculptor and poet, he would infuse his art into architecture, planning and interior design. As a teen, Hendrix guitar riffs and distortions were music to GI; the sound of the Moog played by Keith Emerson, ecstasy. Jazz Rock Fusion, Prog Rock, Jazz and Electronic Music, was the music he enjoyed and transmitted in his radio show at FDU 440 AM College Radio.
He wanted to play an instrument, but it was not until his early 50’s that he got his first Yamaha keyboard. Guided by many of his seasoned musician friends, that he jammed and learned improvisation. Then he started learning Music and Piano under the tutelage of Andrew Kadin. GI played with SPARSE, an Avant-garde Abstract Quartet who played the MusiXplore Summer Solstice Concert in Paterson NJ, along with ATONAL, Symmetry and ArtCrime. And other side projects like the ‘NONAME’ Trio, the duets of Bellagio and Tremezzo. Gianni is currently involved in a new collaboration ’LA ELECTRONICA‘ with Mario-Enrique Paoli, ‘CANOPUS RESONANCE’ with Ed Clark Cornell, and ME! Aka MONTCLAIR ELECTRIC! with Simon Pride.
Gianni is also a founding member and the president of TE-MP0 aka The Electro-Music Performers Organization, a non-profit 501c3 which fosters and promotes the Development of the Electro-Music ethos through the organization and presentation of Live Performances, Seminars, Lectures, Exhibits and gatherings.
“…a mixture of classical and ambient musi with unusually intricate harmonies.”
The music of Puerto Rican guitarist and composer Federico Balducci can be described as a mixture of classical and ambient music with unusually intricate harmonies. Federico has a Bachelor’s Degree in Filco mostly works on film score for short films and documentaries.
David Berends
“…structured and somewhat improvised tonal, octatonic and atonal pieces heavy on looped layers and soaring solos…“
Composer, pianist and electronic musician David Berends received his formal musical training at the Peabody Conservatory, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and the Westminster Choir College. His informal training came though countless rock, jazz, fusion and solo piano gigs with various artists including prog rockers Tank, jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan, Rock’n’Roll legend Chuck Berry, New Wave band The Name, jazz ensemble The Jack Furlong Quartet, and piano jazz group The Jersey Jazz Trio. David Berends will perform somewhat structured and somewhat improvised tonal, octatonic and atonal pieces heavy on looped layers and soaring solos. Pieces will be accompanied by an eclectic group of videos curated and edited by visual artist Wei-Hwei Su a.k.a. Girl with Octopus.
Girl with Octopus
“Mesmerizing Visuals“
Girl with Octopus is known for her legendary visual composition to the music of her partner David Berends. Friends call her Emily, who has become a major actor of NEEM Fest since 2018, and has performed visuals for other performing artist at NEEM Fest 2024.
Thomas Bruce
“Journey to the center of the unconscious”
About TOM: when he was about 15, he attended the first two Mother Mallard concerts in Ithaca, New York. One of his friends, Linda Fisher was playing in the group at that time. The first concert did works by Jon Hassell and Daniel Lentz; and it was the first time that he’d heard “In C”.
Not long after that, acquiring two of Morton Subotnick‘s albums, “The Wild Bull” and “Silver Apples of the Moon“, and a Karlheinz Stockhausen album; that were instrumental to Tom’s music appreciation and development in the Electronica music genre.
Fast-forward to 2015; Tom bought a Yamaha WX-5 wind controller, and was using it to record music; and it’s first use was for a show he performed on Halloween the same year..
After retirement in 2019, he hooked up with a lot of musicians around the country for music collaborations; and has performed live for shows in Asheville (twice), Ithaca, New York City, at the Rotunda in Philadelphia, and at least 5 or 6 shows at the Cosmic Crossings Concert Series.
Tom was also the photographer and sound engineer for the last two Mother Mallard concerts in Ithaca, New York, one in Sage Chapel, and the other performance space under the Johnson Art Museum.
Since the pandemic, Tom mostly uses iPads to play and compose music; the instruments involved are generally quite inexpensive and versatile. With this new Ipad array of instruments, he has worked remotely with Jim Spitznagel, Karl Fury, and Jair-Rohm Parker Wells; performed in concerts in Ithaca with Jair-Rohm Parker Wells, Josh Oxford, and Charles Shriner.
Currently Tom Bruce has issued albums from some of his collaboration, as with James Spitznagel as DFLT, Karl Fury as Beard Farm, Charles Shriner as WPS aka Walmort Portrait Studio, Rob Snyder as High Anxiety Cabaret which “The Hidden Side of Scandinavian Living“, recorded by them won fourth prize in an international competition run out of Sydney, Australia.
Tom has also managed the NEEMfest 2019 and 2022 events, and in 2024, Tom was inducted into “Who’s Who in America”.
“…glitchy circuit bent soundscapes with an Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI) and a saxophone…”
Bent Noise (AKA Scott Armstrong), emanating from the Philadelphia region, creates glitchy circuit bent soundscapes with an Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI) and a saxophone case filled with Eurorack Synthesizer modules plus supporting electronic gadgets.
Bent Noise first performed live at NEEM Fest 2019 in Homer, NY. Since then he has performed at synth meetups in Philadelphia and at Smithville Synth Night (Smithville, NJ). He has also live streamed on Electrozone (Ithaca, NY), Nick’s Virtual Garage (NJ), Algorave and Bent // Broken Circuit Bent festival streams since 2022. He also plays outdoors in the park at Modular on the Spot (MOTS) Philly and open mic venues.
His obsession is experimenting in circuit design and circuit bending to generate interesting sounds. The Noisy Alien Communicator (NAC) circuit he has used in past performances is documented and illustrated in a science fiction short story collection entitled The Noisy Alien Communicator: and The Visible Spectrum.
“structured songs with a twist of oddball sense of humor”
Robert Dorschel is one of those nondescript GenXers that does work and stuff to get by, but thoroughly enjoys tinkering in music composition and gear-touching as his all-encompassing pro-hobby. Robert also was a former organizer of NEEMFest (2017-2019). One could suppose that Robert also has plenty more to add here, “but that’s looking backwards,” said Robert. Robert is an old-fart multi-instrumentalist who never settled into any one particular genre or style. What Robert does do onstage for giggles is perform structured songs with a twist of oddball sense of humor, whilst attempting to do the trigger-video-by-MIDI thing, whereas the video content tends to have a moralistic twist. Perhaps. Also, there will be cake. Maybe. Most of Robert’s musical catalog is either floating around on old deleted websites, 20+ year old CDs, and occasionally these sites: https://www.youtube.com/robertdorschel https://soundcloud.com/robertdorschel https://robertdorschel.bandcamp.com/
EUDAYA
EUDAYA, aka Ashlan Genzlinger, make chillwave, synthwave, bitwave, fluid DnB , and psychadelic electronic indie rock inspired tracks. Influences for electronic music include Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Postal Service, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Tycho, Tipper, Boards of Canada, Bird and the Bee, psychadelic electronic jam influences include Tauk, Yes, Lemon Jelly.
For 30 yrs Jeff Campbell has been creating soundscapes under the name Experimental Trash. Using field recordings and analog equipment along with his own modular visuals that are manipulated sound.
Finite Element is Rich Kennicutt, a keyboard-based electronic musician from upstate NY. Rich’s music is a blend of 70’s style berlin school, ambient, dark ambient, industrial, and minimalist new age. Influences include Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Ashra, Brian Eno, and Michael Hoenig, Tangerine Dream, Ashra, Brian Eno, and Michael Hoenig.
Abstract Noise/Drone/Soundscape pulled from Chapman Stick, synthesizer, and electronics.
Dan Gitlin is a Chapman Stickist, guitarist, synthesist, and sample manipulator performing a combination of structured improvisation and composed music. Gitlin currently performs as a solo artist, as a member of the Martin Bisi Collective and in various other collaborations.
Maxx Klaxon
“Electronic songs about love, power, and technology, set against hypnotic 3D video imagery“
Maxx Klaxon is an audiovisual artist and aspiring dictator who creates electronic songs about love, power, and technology, set against hypnotic 3D video imagery. He fights enemy mind control with his better, stronger mind control from a secure, undisclosed location in New York City. Tune into his transmissions online at:
‘…evolving, improvised, all-hardware live sets, using a combination of modular and outboard synths and drum machines.’
As a musician, The Killer Bee Relay Team is known for their evolving, improvised, all-hardware live sets, using a combination of modular and outboard synths and drum machines. As a visual artist, The KBRT laces together found 8mm footage, physical objects, live camera feeds, and video synthesis to create an improvised backdrop for others’ musical performances.
The Killer Bee Relay Team has been making electronic music since they were old enough to break a keyboard.
Andrew Koenig
Andrew Koenig’s musical tastes are relentlessly eclectic. In addition to being a NEEM Fest regular, he has recently been performing with the Chester (NJ) Baroque Orchestra and is a long-standing member of the Early Music Players of New Jersey. He has also played with a variety of impromptu rock, jazz, and folk ensembles. His main instruments are MIDI wind controllers, bass, guitar, and (in Baroque and early-music contexts) recorders and capped reeds (krummhorn, kortholt, etc.) The music he plays at NEEM Fest typically starts with a sound palette and an overall structure, and then consists of improvization within that palette and structure. It is based on classical notions of harmony and rhythm, but expressed in ways that can only be realized electronically.
BOB LUKOMSKI
“Music for Voice and Electronics – contemporary art song and instrumental performance”
The Plane(s)
“The improvisational act is untamed, clocked up, sound/image quick lifts, pivots, collisions and unions. The Plane(s) are sonic elocutions and architectures with lo-fi stagecraft.”
“Has anyone ever groped their way through totally unexplored territory, such unknown darkness, with such assurance? Shapes bubble up from silence as surprised to be there as you are to hear them. Are they physical objects in space, perhaps even living tissue, or are they purely virtual, mere sonic images? Is there a difference? This is how the world sounds now, if you can hear it.” Ian Downey of “Maybe I’m Wrong” on WAYO 104.3
The Plane(s) is the solo project by Rebekkah Palov. Since June 2023, the Plane(s) livestream features over nineteen hours of performances. Each week the show has new sound and video recordings for real-time improv using original computer programs. The Plane(s) Extended are sound / sound+video for in-person audiences. The improvisational act is untamed, clocked up, sound/image quick lifts, pivots, collisions and unions. The Plane(s) are sonic elocutions and architectures with lo-fi stagecraft.
Since 2012, Rebekkah has been a member of Carrier Band, founded by Pauline Oliveros, featuring Harald Bode Vocoder and archive recordings. Performances with Carrier Band include The Stone (Ave C) and Experimental Intermedia. Starting 2021, she has been a member of the NowNet Arts Hub under Composer, Conductor Sarah Weaver. Rebekkah has played in garage, math-rock pop and heavy metal bands, playing with Tim Green (louder Studios, Fucking Champs, Nation of Ulysses), Rachel Carns (The Need, Kicking Giant), Christina Billotte (Slant 6) and others. Rebekkah also is moving image artist and has worked on projects by Stephanie Barber (lighting), GB Jones (actor), Eiko Otake (camera), Larry Gottheim (edit assist, post). She is a former Bike Collective member and a retired University Professor in time-based experimental arts. Rebekkah lives in Hornell, NY.
“…the definite uncertainty and undetermined order…”
Quantum Bingo is an improvised collaboration between Karl Fury and Rich Kennicutt.
Karl’s improvised style of electronic music utilizes hardware and software synths, noise boxes, and guitar. Rich’s Berlin School approach uses hardware groove boxes, hardware synths, samples, and sequences. Together they are the definite uncertainty and undetermined order that is Quantum Bingo.
Karl Fury is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from New Jersey. His musical background ranges from rock to jazz, world music, ambient, electronic and free improvisation. He has performed at numerous venues including the Trenton Avant Garde Festival, Artworks, the Cosmic Crossings and Event Horizon concert series, NEEMfest, eeemfest, Mountain Skies 19, Columbia and Princeton University and live radio broadcasts from WPRB, WTSR , WDVR and WLFR. He performed and recorded for several years in the world music duo Near East and the electronic music trio The Melting Transistor.
He continues to collaborate and record with the Equinox Project an improvisational electronic music trio. Karl also collaborates with Dr. Brad Garton from Columbia University, NYC, on an irregular basis. Karl is also involved in three new musical duos, Beard Farm with Tom Bruce, Oblique Strategists with Mario-enrigue Paoli and Quantum Elf with Floyd Bledsoe. He also records and performs solo as both Karl Fury and Tars Obscura and currently has a solo release on the da/73 label. Karl plays a number of different stringed instruments, electronic controllers such as the Linnstrument and the Sensel Morph, homemade noise boxes, and utilizes computers and the Ipad as sound sources and processors in his music.
Rich Kennicutt (Finite Element), a keyboard-based electronic musician from upstate NY. Rich’s music is a blend of 70’s style berlin school, ambient, dark ambient, industrial, and minimalist new age. Influences include Klaus Schulze,
redgreenblue
“electro-ambient goodness“
redgreenblue is the electro-ambient project of Shane King. Using a variety of hardware, software and controllers redgreenblue creates cinematic music that crosses genres and periods of electronic music with the focus being on the music, not the electronics. Live, rgb presents a compelling performance that defies expectation of how live electronic music can be presented.
Sean Anderson makes very synthesizer heavy music that is dancy but not EDM, more on the experimental side with lots of complex melodic content.
https://seantherobot.com
Sean has been making electronic music for 25+ but have been very shy. But he finally released a debut EP and have been working on live music for several years now.
( )
“( ) instrument is a reactive video system that is the basis of an ongoing exploration of my interest in video as an instrument.“
( ) Instrument is an ambient/reactive video performance by Jeremy D. Slater
Notes are assigned to video clips that react to live electric guitar (MIDI) in this improvised/reactive performance. ( ) instrument is a reactive video system that is the basis of an ongoing exploration of my interest in video as an instrument.
( ), aka Jeremy D. Slater is an intermedia artist and composer working in the areas of sound, video, computer art, performance, and installation. He was born in Reading, England and a graduate of both SUNY College at Buffalo and School of Visual Arts with an MFA in Computer Art. Performances include sound and live performed video that is ambient and sometimes interactive/reactive. His sound work consists of field recordings as a base to create compositions with guitar, objects, ambient noise, environmental sound, and other instruments. Video work includes single and multiple channel videos for screening and installations with sound and ephemeral sculpture. He’s curated numerous performance events and gallery shows in NewYork including “A Sound Show” at Front Room Gallery, the sound/video performance series “kere.u” and “FLOW”, “Sun Khronos” at Millennium Film Workshop, and “Video as an Instrument” at The Tank and Supreme Trading Gallery, and “sonic front“, a series exploring electroacoustic improvisation, electronic music, and sound art. Jeremy D. Slater is also known as ( ) and is a member of music projects Plan 23, The Principle String Quartet, ROTC (Rubaiyats of the Cicadas), Frogwell, EMP, and tū. He was one of the 1999 recipients of the Computer Art Fellowship from the New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) and has attended the Experimental Television Residency, was guest musician at the Watermill Center and HERE with Cave/Leimay, and was artist in residence at Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon in Seoul, South Korea. He has exhibited and performed in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, and Japan.
James Spitznagel has been working in the visual arts and music fields for the last 50 years. His recent digital music explorations are part of a cohesive artistic statement that stretches the imagined uses synths, iPads and gaming devices to fit his abstract vision of thoughts, dreams, and reality
“…slowly evolving soundscapes and harmonic structures.”
Staticer is the solo Dark Ambient project from Jim Wells. Fall into slowly evolving soundscapes and harmonic structures. Destination guaranteed but not explained. Keep your arms inside the car for the duration of the ride.
Staticer has been the solo project of Jim Wells since 2017. Electronic Dark Ambient music composed for live performance. Jim lives in Ithaca, NY and is also part of the Dark Ambient duo His Divine Shadow.
Stepwriterun
Live performance on a Eurorack modular system and other gear playing a mix of techno, dub techno, acid house, and ambient.
Symmetry
Symmetry is an audio-visual artist that blends electronic music and ambient sound with futuristic imagery. It takes listeners on an emotional journey through dark, industrial rhythms with syncopated noise, captivating soundscapes, and rich textures. A celebration of symmetry in music, blending art and technology seamlessly. Immerse yourself in this unique experience and travel to the farthest reaches of sonic space.
Johnny Tomasiello
“Deriving Synchrony: A Real Time Interactive Brainwave-to-Music Translation System.”
Johnny Tomasiello is a dedicated transdisciplinary artist and composer-researcher, with a deep interest in expanded conceptualizations of sound and time. His work employs methodologies across media, and is informed by research into neuroscience, psychophysics and biofeedback. Focused on the relationship between perception and the mechanics of physiology, his immersive works, compositions, and performances reveal otherwise invisible processes in physiological and technological systems. His artistic explorations frequently lead to formalized research, creating a mutual exchange between science and artworks. Drawing on custom-built instruments and software, his work references mechanisms of expression and experience through data sonification, biofeedback, and reciprocal physiological systems.
As a performer, Tomasiello has produced live immersive performances and lectures featuring his visual and sound works. His work has been presented worldwide at institutions and festivals, and have been supported by, Ircam, NYU, Liquid Sky Music, modularsquare, Kunsthall Gallery, Masa7a Gallery, and Backslash.lit, among others.
He holds an MS in Digital Imaging and Design from NYU and a BS in Psychophysics from Rutgers/UMDNJ, as well as the completion of the thesis program in Electronic Music composition and Production, and a fine arts foundation with emphasis in painting, from Maryland Institute, College of Art (MICA). Tomasiello continues his work in interactive computer-assisted compositional performance systems and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) that create, manipulate, and deconstruct audio and visuals, as well as physiological responses. He has lectured on the subject, staged live performances, scored films, and shown canvases and sound works in galleries and at institutions around the world.
This performance will be part of my larger ongoing project “Deriving Synchrony: A Real Time Interactive Brainwave-to-Music Translation System”. It is a generative and interactive work whose primary purpose is to explore the reciprocal relationship between electrical activity in the brain and external stimuli that has been generated and defined by those same physiological events, through use of a Brain-Computer Music Interface (BCMI). This methodology allows for the sonification of the data captured by an electroencephalogram, which is translated into musical stimuli in real time.
The project can be expressed in multiple ways. It can help teach participants how to affect a positive change in their own physiology, by learning to influence various functions of the autonomic nervous system through neurofeedback.
It also functions as an interactive computer-assisted compositional and performance system that translates electrical activity in the brain into musical compositions in real time, while allowing the user intentional control over this translation process, and the resulting generative sonic output within a musical framework.
When used as a compositional and/or live performance system, with practice, the user can exploit the brainwave mappings to purposefully change the content and dynamics of the musical feedback. So this system then expands beyond a dynamic proving ground for influencing your own physiology, and becomes a powerful and effective real-time generative system for writing and performing live music.
This piece will be the latest example of the system in use. He has also recently used this project to score a feature length film. That process involved recording the musical feedback generated by my brainwaves, in real-time, as he watched the film for the first time. This captured a visceral physiological and emotional response to the film as it was viewed, providing a personal score directly related to the experience of watching it. For NEEM Fest this year, He will be crating both a live generative soundtrack and accompanying visuals, as extension of the system’s use as a narrative and storytelling device.
Harris Thor
Spacey/meditative (maybe) improv. Standard, classic and unusual effects, Theremin, and a “The Muse”.
Twyndyllyngs are an electronic music chamber ensemble playing spacemusic that is suitable for everything from planetarium presentations to deep inner thought explorations. This duo consists of Howard Moscovitz and Bill Fox. They have been performing improvised electronic chamber music together since 2003. They have performed at electronic music festivals in Europe and North America. They perform weekly on the internet radio station electro-music.com. Twyndyllyngs’ experimental work is in many diverse styles ranging from neoclassical to experimental.
VISHWANATH_GI
“Music exploration that relates to Architecture in its structure and spatial construction, Painting with sounds colors and Poetry with its message of consonance and dissonance.”
Italian-born Gianni Intili has been involved with the fine arts throughout his life. Starting as a painter, color theorist, sculptor and poet, he would infuse his art into architecture, planning and interior design. As a teen, Hendrix guitar riffs and distortions were music to GI; the sound of the Moog as played by Keith Emerson, ecstasy. Jazz Rock Fusion, Prog Rock and Electronic Music, was the music he enjoyed and transmitted in his radio show at FDU 440 AM College Radio.
He wanted to play an instrument, but it was not until his early 50’s that he got his first Yamaha keyboard. Guided by many of his seasoned musician friends, that he jammed and learned improvisation. Then he started learning Music and Piano under the tutelage of Andrew Kadin. GI played with SPARSE, an Avant-garde Abstract Quartet who played the MusiXplore Summer Solstice Concert in Paterson NJ, along with ATONAL, Symmetry and ArtCrime. And other side projects like the ‘NONAME’ Trio, the duets of Bellagio and Tremezzo. Gianni is currently involved in a new collaboration ’LA ELECTRONICA‘ with Mario-Enrique Paoli, ‘CANOPUS RESONANCE’ with Ed Clark Cornell, and ME! Aka MONTCLAIR ELECTRIC! with Simon Pride.
Gianni is also a founding member and the president of TE-MP0 aka The Electro-Music Performers Organization, a non-profit 501c3 which fosters and promotes the Development of the Electro-Music ethos through the organization and presentation of Live Performances, Seminars, Lectures, Exhibits and gatherings. http://te-mp0.org/
“Stand-up autobiography accompanied by abstract live soundtrack.“
Worst Night Ever
“multi-dimensional soundscape inspired by contrasts and similarities, and the places where the two intersect.”
Ambient duo Worst Night Ever newest piece Other Forms is an otherworldly, multi-dimensional soundscape inspired by contrasts and similarities, and the places where the two intersect. This exploration of contrasts expands into original projection art that pairs the stark, abstract photography of Charles Nickles with found footage of the natural and human worlds unfolding in ordinary and extraordinary ways.
Worst Night Ever’s Daniel Giachetti and Arthur Fleischmann have been writing and performing music together since grade school. Between the two of them they’ve received a 2025 NYFA/QAF sound art grant, licensed songs to multiple TV series, soundtracked a runway show for Neiman Marcus, won the 33 1/3 book series home recording contest, played Carnegie Hall with Jon Batiste, charted on college radio, and toured everywhere from the UK to Dubai.
