DOUG CARROLL explores the world of sound as a recordist, composer and cellist. He has studied composition at the Royal Conservatory in Den Hague with Karlheinz Stockhausen and at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. At Mills College, Carroll studied composition with Lou Harrison and Anthony Braxton and received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media. As a cellist, Carroll has performed in Europe and the US and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the world premiere of “Ocean.”
He will feature Improvisations on cello accompanied by taped animal sounds.
THEM NATIVES are a communal family band born under the shadow of Red Mountain in Birmingham, Alabama. They have been playing together since 2004, evolving a type of music they sometimes call “Appleasian Blackgrass.“ Cross-cultural and ritualistic, their music approximates the balladesque tones of ghost country hill music as performed by indigenous peoples of Indonesia or Natives on the warpath. It is much like field recordings of ancient music injected into the technological wilderness of today. Instrumentation will often include banjo, guitar, fiddle, flutes, percussions and bewildering electronic devices. The group began to gain notoriety during the period of 2006-2008 when they inhabited a house/venue in Southside called the “AC Temple,” where they held regular performances and recording sessions that expanded the core group of Important Eagle, Jasper Justice Lee and Turner Braintan Williams into a nexus that included at times Jason Pratt, Bryan Martin, Lance Simmons, Liz Hamilton, Kathleen Hairston, Matt Goethe and others. They have toured the East Coast and Midwestern United States, and have performed with the likes of Acid Mothers Temple, MV & EE, and Arthur Doyle among many others. During their time in Birmingham they hosted traveling groups from many parts of the United States as well as Australia. Recently Them Natives have been living and performing in Montevallo and at guerrilla noise shows in Tuscaloosa.
THEM NATIVES will be performing at "Spaceship Saturn: A Tribute to Sun Ra" at Pepper Place on Aug. 14 and again on Aug. 18.
Hunter Bell (aka Hunt Rx LeBelle)
Hunter Bell is a spoken word artist, wordsmith, experimental musician
(from percussion to severe guitar, power electronics, cosmic drone
creator, etc.), sound manipulator and designer, composer, music and
film producer, promoter, visual artist (currently focusing on
"industrial folk art"), taxidermist, thrift store connoisseur ,
technological tactician/theorist, creator of sound generators,
multimedia journalist, curator, emcee, He is also a social and
anti-social activist, philosopher, an avid explorer of the human
condition, universal religions, spirituality and most especially, an
existential extremist.
Hunter Bell is a founding member of Portal Dementia, The Hunt Rx
LeBelle Experience, khasma, DIAS, Awake and Dreaming, numerous other
projects and bands, as well as a collaborator with (and contributor
to) various multimedia projects.
Often compared to Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, as well as Lustmord, Throbbing Gristle, Steve Roach and other experimental musicians, Portal Dementia is an ongoing electronic experiment using analog and digital synthesizers, primitive live effect(s), sound generators, tape machines, samplers, spoken word(s), found sounds and other devices to create constantly evolving layers of sonic experience.
Dark and paranormal soundtracks, soundscapes, dreamscapes, ambient electronic extensions via the evolving surroundings, a performance ranging from intense chaos to trances Portal Dementia explores the unknown, ghostly aliens, and futuristic seeds planted in the human condition. The apocalypse upon and within humanity, reality, surrealism, conditionalism, space, and the idea of time resonates within every stratum Portal Dementia inflict - - featuring Hunter Bell (khasma, the Hunt Rx Lebelle Experience, Spaceship Saturn, etc.) and Andrew Douglas (founder of Dreamwind) with various special guests including Adam Guthrie (ex Pain guitarist) (All music and performance is 100% improvised)
Spencer Leffel
SPENCER LEFFEL played drums up and down the East Coast before moving to Birmingham in the early 1990s. He has played a wide variety of styles and genres, including work with the bands Lost in the Mail (reggae/calypso), with whom he played around the Southeast and in Jamaica; The Charlottons (eclectic rock); the Alex Lacy Trio/Quartet (jazz); and Partial to Mabel (jam band/bluegrass). Spencer has worked with guitarist John English in multiple settings, including the improv trio Phantom Limb with composer/trumpeter/guitarist Rick Nance. He has pursued free improvisational music for many years, performing with LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, Philip Gelb, and Craig Hultgren, among others. He has played West African drum music with John Scalici, and has operated a drum-teaching studio for more than 10 years. He has performed in numerous Birmingham Improv festivals, City Stages, and at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
John English
From his high school days of acoustic folk and garage rock, JOHN ENGLISH has evolved into a passionate guitar player who draws upon his love of traditional and avant garde musical styles. English has played acoustic and electric guitar in the blues band Terraplane, blues/jazz band The Charlottons, and improvised music trio Phantom Limb. He has also been a guest artist with the University of Alabama at Birmingham MIDI Ensemble and written/performed soundtracks for documentary film “Treebark” and two Birmingham “Sidewalk Scramble” short films. As a percussionist, English played the bodhran and congas for the contra dance band, Waxwing.
John plays with Spencer Leffel and Rick Nance in Phantom Limb, Saturday, Aug 7.
Craig Hultgren
Cellist CRAIG HULTGREN plays in Luna Nova and is a Birmingham resident. He teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and Birmingham-Southern College where he directs the BSC New Music Ensemble. He is currently Chair of the Board of Directors for the Metropolitan Youth Orchestras of Birmingham. Hultgren is a CAMA artist (Collaborating Artists Manifesting Adventure) with the St. Louis New Music Circle and will be presenting programs there for three seasons. He has been active in the local free improvisation since the 1990's- when he was President of BAA- and was a key figure in creating the Birmingham Improvisation Festival.
DAVID APPEL is a choreographer, performer, and teacher whose work has been presented throughout North America, Europe, and in Mexico since 1973. He has also performed with Simone Forti, City Dance Theater of Boston, several dance/music collaborative groups, and many individual artists in a variety of media. For the past 17 years he has been active primarily as a solo artist, exploring the processes and possibilities that arise out of cultivating more intimate and detailed dancing, celebrating the body’s innate and quirky musicality, investigating how we mediate and move fluidly between our inner landscape and being “in the world,” and evolving a movement language that is paradoxically singular and familiar, idiosyncratic yet somehow connects. (www.youtinydancer.com)
The Concept - Shooting from the Hip!
Dance is an extraordinary form of expression that connects ideas and intentions through a medium other than the written or spoken word. Dance can entertain, communicate and inspire. It can be said that the dancer's instrument of communication is his or her own body and the words are the movements and movement phrases. A style of dance that exemplifies the use of non verbal communication, visual cues and body language is Movement Based Improvisation.
SYLVIA ""SYCAMORE"" TOFFEL is a lifelong performer, movement specialist, improviser and earthtender from Birmingham. She will be featured in a performance by a quartet consisting of herself and choreographers/dancers David Appel, Mary Foshee, and Ann Law at the Children's Dance Foundation on Sunday, August 15, as well as a collaborative dance performance showcase at Children's Dance Foundation on August 20.
Juanita Suarez
JUANITA SUAREZ, associate professor at the College at Brockport is a recipient of the Rockefeller Grant for US-Map Fund for Culture. She conducted research in Dujiangyan, China and her research on Latina/Chicana dance making will be in “Fields in Motion: Ethnography ‘at home’ in the Art Worlds of Dance,” published byWilfred Laurier. A co-founding member of Latina Dance Project, she also co-created Be Here Now!, an improv ensemble with composer Mark Olivieri.
DOUG CARROLL explores the world of sound as a recordist, composer and cellist. He has studied composition at the Royal Conservatory in Den Hague with Karlheinz Stockhausen and at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. At Mills College, Carroll studied composition with Lou Harrison and Anthony Braxton and received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media. As a cellist, Carroll has performed in Europe and the US and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the world premiere of “Ocean.” 
Cellist CRAIG HULTGREN plays in Luna Nova and is a Birmingham resident. He teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and Birmingham-Southern College where he directs the BSC New Music Ensemble. He is currently Chair of the Board of Directors for the Metropolitan Youth Orchestras of Birmingham. Hultgren is a CAMA artist (Collaborating Artists Manifesting Adventure) with the St. Louis New Music Circle and will be presenting programs there for three seasons. He has been active in the local free improvisation since the 1990's- when he was President of BAA- and was a key figure in creating the Birmingham Improvisation Festival.
DAVID APPEL is a choreographer, performer, and teacher whose work has been presented throughout North America, Europe, and in Mexico since 1973. He has also performed with Simone Forti, City Dance Theater of Boston, several dance/music collaborative groups, and many individual artists in a variety of media. For the past 17 years he has been active primarily as a solo artist, exploring the processes and possibilities that arise out of cultivating more intimate and detailed dancing, celebrating the body’s innate and quirky musicality, investigating how we mediate and move fluidly between our inner landscape and being “in the world,” and evolving a movement language that is paradoxically singular and familiar, idiosyncratic yet somehow connects. (
"ImprovSensational! 
SYLVIA ""SYCAMORE"" TOFFEL is a lifelong performer, movement specialist, improviser and earthtender from Birmingham. She will be featured in a performance by a quartet consisting of herself and choreographers/dancers David Appel, Mary Foshee, and Ann Law at the Children's Dance Foundation on Sunday, August 15, as well as a collaborative dance performance showcase at Children's Dance Foundation on August 20.