This Way to the EGRESS cascades onto the stage in a breathtaking explosion of sound and color that’s equal parts unruly vaudeville, ebullient world beat band and three ring circus. The six-person troupe plays a swooning, crooning, swinging amalgamation of styles that catapults the audience through time and space with unexpected shifts of styles, costumes and time signatures. Confetti snowstorms, tuba farts, Balinese chanting, fire wielding evangelists,  and puppets sweep across the stage creating a jubilant, anything goes atmosphere, anchored by the band’s superlative songwriting skills and sterling musicianship. Accordion, violin and tuba aren’t instruments you usually find fronting a rock band, but This Way to the EGRESS uses them to give the music unexpected textures, while retaining a propulsive beat and generating enough energy to light up a small city.

“We always have a hard time figuring out what genre we fit into,” says Taylor Galassi, the accordion wielding bon vivant who founded EGRESS, with the help of his partner, piano plunker, fiddler and leading lady Sarah Shown. “We’re surfing on a hard-hitting wave of many colors. Gypsy, punk, ska, ragtime, Klezmer, blues and Balkan beats all wrapped up into one crazy foot stomping good time. We let the music take us where it will, regardless of genres and geography.”


An aggressive synthwave band, dancing between darksynth, cyberpunk, post-industrial, and synthwave metal.  Although they view themselves as a progressive electronic rock band, calling their style "synthrock".

Collaborator. Plays the singing saw, writes lyrics, sings/writes songs.

Collaborators past and present:
Sphynx Business Papers, ON, The Well Behaved, Torcher Chamber Ensemble, Yael Kraus, Ryder Cooley, Yula & The Extended Family, Shayfer James 


Dust Bowl Faeries is an accordion-driven Dark Carnival band based in N.Y. and founded by  artist/musician Ryder Cooley and her taxidermy spirit animal, Hazel the Ram.

Tastemaking, music curation, opinion, new releases, musings on Pop & R&B.

"Brooklyn's Balkan Vocal Pyrotechnics"

Affectionately dubbed a “punk rock version of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares”, Black Sea Hotel’s distinct yet unified voices create a harmonic blend that is often called otherworldly, haunting, even spellbinding. Black Sea Hotel (Sarah Small, Shelley Thomas, and Willa Roberts) gathers songs from master singers, archival field recordings, and large mid-century choral arrangements, and boldly reimagines them. The woman have carved out an unusual niche for themselves at the nexus between between Balkan folksong and new music. Repertoire ranges from lilting, chillingly sparse, and achingly beautiful to strident, tightly dissonant, packed, and unpredictable.

The trio was featured on Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble’s GRAMMY winning album, Sing Me Home (Best World Music Album of 2017). Other highlights include collaborations with Kronos Quartet, Kremena Stancheva (soloist, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares), The Knights, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Shara Nova (The Decemberists, My Brightest Diamond, Sufjan Stevens), beat-boxer Adam Matta (Carolina Chocolate Drops), and a myriad of brass bands. The group has written and recorded works for film and live installation, including for Josephine Decker’s psychological thriller feature, "Butter on the Latch”, which landed on The New Yorker’s “10 Best Movies of 2014”, and Dirt Empire’s 90’ diameter, 40-channel speaker, immersive ARC Dome. The work premiered at NYC’s Panorama Festival (2017).

Black Sea Hotel's live performances and recordings have been praised by The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Public Radio, and David Byrne. Their first record debuted at #2 on iTunes World Music’s top albums, and the trio has since been broadcast live on Public Radio International’s The World Global Hit Segment, on John Schaefer’s Soundcheck WNYC, as well as on WFMU, WNYC, WAMU, KUNM, KSFR, and Sirius XM Radio. The group tours regularly and leads classes, workshops and lecture-demos in Balkan singing across the U.S. Most recently, they toured and taught in Scandinavia (Fall 2018), where they headlined the Lund Choral Festival. They are currently arranging works for their third album and are planning their second European tour for Fall 2019.

You've never heard violin like this!  The world's premier visionary violinist, Dixon's life mission is to inspire people - and he has done so across North America, including giving four TED talks/performances, over ten years at Burning Man and Electric Forest, plus radio, TV, and film appearances.  A former technology leader and symphony violinist, Dixon walked away from a distinguished career to follow his dream full-time, and invented a whole new music genre.  Dixon now improvises on a 5-string electric violin with a looping system he developed to create an all-live one-man symphony, guided by his remarkable personal story of life transformation.

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