The Great Lakes Improvising Orchestra features Wisconsin-based composers and improvisers including Amanda Schoofs (voice), David Collins (tenor saxophone), Chris Burns (guitar), Rick Ollman (bass clarinet, clarinet, flute), Jim Schoenecker (electronics), Chris Rosenau (guitar), Kevin Schlei (electronics), Steve Schlei (electronics), Linda Binder (violin), Steve Nelson-Raney (soprano saxophone, piano), Jon Mueller (percussion), Jeff Klatt (cello), Hal Rammel (conductor).  Organized by Hal Rammel in December 2011, the ensemble explores collective large ensemble improvisation.



Composer/performer of experimental electronic music. Audio production designer & engineer.

Up next:

April 1-8, 2020: Midwest tour with Al Margolis (If, Bwana). Performing at Rhizome DC, Kendal at Oberlin,  Robinwood Concert House (Toledo), Frequency Fridays (Columbus OH), Mahall's Apartment Space (Cleveland), Gallery on Phelps (Youngstown), Red Room (Baltimore). 

April 16, 2020: "City of Vorticity" at Good Shepard Chapel (Seattle)

April 18, 2020: "City of Vorticity" on Extradition Series (Portland OR)

May 21-24: Music director for Robert Ashley's opera "eL/Aficionado" at New York Live Arts.

Some recent projects:

Wednesday, May 15, 2019: "City of Vorticity" at Sunview Lunchnet, 221 Nassau Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11222.. With soloists David First, Jeff Hollie, Tania Caroline Chen,  and Joe Moffett.

Thursday, September 20, 2018: High Zero festival at Roulette, Brooklyn NY. Group performance with Amirtha Kidambi, CK Barlow, and John Berndt.

Saturday, September 22, 2018: Dave's Waves at The Sunview Luncheonette, Greenpoint, Queens. Performance with Al Margolis superimposed on David First's drone material.

Sunday, October 14:  Electronic music event at Muchmore's, Brooklyn, NY. Various combinations of artists T. Hamilton, D. Marcheschi, A. Neumann, M. Ostrowski, H. Tammen.

Sunday, June 3, 2018: "City of Vorticity" at Woodland Pattern, Milwaukee. With soloists Rick Aaron, Marielle Allschwang, Jon Mueller, Steve Nelson-Raney.

July 9-16, 2016: Sound Symposium festival in St. John's Newfoundland. "City of Vorticity" presented each day at the Eastern Edge gallery as an installation with performances. 

Wednesday, July 1, 2015 at 8pm: Fast Forward, Jon Gibson & Tom Hamilton at The Stone, NYC.

Saturday, March 28, 2015: Ab Uno Pluribus series at The Three Jewels, 61 4th Ave, 3rd fl. (btw 9th & 10th), NYC. With Kevin Bud Jones, John Dunlap. Live visuals by Katherine Liberovskaya.

 Friday, July 25, 2014: Concert with Al Margolis (If, Bwana) at Panoply Lab, Brooklyn NY.

June 12, 2014:  concert with Doug Theriault (electronics & guitar) and Matt Hannefin (perc) at The Waypost, Portland OR.

April 24, 2014: Presented new work "City of Vorticity" at Roulette/Interpretations, Brooklyn, featuring Al Margolis (If, Bwana), Peter Zummo, Meaghan Burke, Alan Zimmerman, Nate Wooley.

April 2014: Midwest tour with Al Margolis (If, Bwana). Performed at Abandoned Store (Pittsburgh),  Robinwood Concert House (Toledo), Frequency Fridays (Columbus OH), New Arts Program (Kutztown PA). 

April 2014: Music director for Robert Ashley's last opera "Crash" at the Whitney Biennial.

Jacob Felix Heule is an improvising percussionist with a special interest in friction techniques. His music is shaped by intuition, listening, and following where the sounds lead. He embraces limited instrumentation - like a single drum and a single cymbal - as a commitment to exploring the depth of his instruments.

Heule frequently collaborates with Danishta Rivero, Guro Moe, Haavard Skaset, Kanoko Nishi-Smith, Matt Chandler, Chris Cooper, Kevin Corcoran, Kyle Bruckmann, Tom Djll, and Bill Orcutt. He also organizes the monthly Active Music Series, and facilitates a monthly improvisation workshop, Doors That Only Open in Silence.

Heule's practice is informed by his work as an audio engineer. In addition to regularly doing live sound, he has worked on albums by artists such as Burmese, Las Sucias, and Black Spirituals.

oboist/electrician
composer/performer
improviser/interpreter

Please check out my website for comprehensive info on collaborations, performances, discography. 
Here's where I experiment with connecting, sharing, posting free tracks and works in progress.

Pleased to make your acquaintance.

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Composer/performer Kyle Bruckmann's work extends from a Western classical foundation into genre-bending gray areas encompassing free jazz, electronic music and post-punk rock. Appearances on more than 50 recordings have led to his recognition as “an excellent composer, striking the right balance between form and freedom” (Signal to Noise), “a modern day renaissance musician" (Dusted) and "a seasoned improviser with impressive extended technique and peculiar artistic flair” (All Music Guide).

He has been active since his teens in the DIY noise rock underground while simultaneously establishing a thorough pedigree as an orchestral oboist. This unusual intersection leads him to creative work driven by an 'ethnomusicological' mindset, focusing on the social aspects of how music and musicians work in the world. His varied projects delve into the cracks between different roles, contexts, and aesthetics, seeking deep structures uniting disparate subcultures, genres, and practices. 

Shortly after moving to the Bay Area in 2003, he became a member of the new music collective sfSound (a winner of the 2008 Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming) and Quinteto Latino (a woodwind quintet specializing in Latin American composers). He has worked with the San Francisco Symphony and most of the area’s regional orchestras, performed contemporary concert music with the Eco Ensemble and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and accompanied 20th century opera productions with Ensemble Parallèle. He has simultaneously become firmly enmeshed in the vibrant local improvised music community; current working groups include Shudder (with Lance Grabmiller and Phillip Greenlief), Addleds (with Tony Dryer, Jacob Felix Heule, and Kanoko Nishi), and Pink Mountain (an avant-rock band with Sam Coomes, Gino Robair, Scott Rosenberg, and John Shiurba).

From 1996 until his westward relocation, he had been a fixture in Chicago's experimental music underground, with frequent collaborators including Jim Baker, Jeb Bishop, Olivia Block, Guillermo Gregorio, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Robbie Hunsinger, Ernst Karel, and Michael Zerang. Long-term projects include the electro-acoustic duo EKG (“a fine example of the kind of genre hybridisation that typifies early 21st century music,” Wire), the Creative Music quintet Wrack (“dazzling proof that intricately arranged, angular modern jazz can be accessible and enjoyable," Wire) and the avant-punk monstrosity Lozenge (“one of the most criminally underrated outfits in alt.rock”, Signal to Noise).


Seth Warren-Crow is a sound artist, sound designer, composer, percussionist, and university instructor based in Lubbock, Texas.  Seth composes music locally and nationally for dance and theater performances and regularly collaborates with performance artist Heather Warren-Crow as warren-crow+warren-crow.  Seth received a BA in English and Religious Studies from Lawrence University in Wisconsin and a MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in California.  Seth is an Assistant Professor of Sound Design at Texas Tech University.  He teaches courses in sound design, music for dance, audio drama, collaboration in the arts, digital media, and plays music for dance technique classes.

Leonardson is a composer, radio artist, sound designer, instrument inventor, improviser, visual artist, and teacher, who has devoted a majority of his professional career to unorthodox approaches to sound and its instrumentation, with a broad understanding of texture, atmosphere and micro-tones. As a practicing artist and educator he has an interest in the elusive lines that separate art media and disciplines; the promise of technology to enable new possibilities in art, discovering connections between physical action, sensory perception, and ideas.

Leonardson performs regularly on the Springboard, an electroacoustic percussion instrument made from readily available materials. Applying his percussion skills and a piezo pickup to coil springs, wood, plastic combs, and rubber bands he creates rich tones and timbres that, in the words of Nicolas Collins, “evoke the sound world of a Balinese Gamelan orchestra.” Others compare these sounds to industrial vibrations and animal voices. 

G.L.I.O. is following