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Saxophonist Carl Smith is a performer, composer, educator and organizer within a diverse community of creative musicians. Carl has studied creative music-making privately with Frank Gratkowski, Jack Wright, Tina Marsh, Sabir Mateen, Assif Tsahar, Alex Coke, Rob Brown, Charles Gayle and Lou Grassi.

Carl has also performed around the US, Canada and Mexico with musicians from across North America, Europe and Japan, including Peter Kowald, Daniel Carter, Roy Campbell, Blowfly, Faruq Z. Bey, Dennis Gonzalez, Wadada Leo Smith and Gunda Gottschalk, among others.

As an organizer, Smith has hosted Austin performances by international creative music artists. Beginning in January of 2004, Carl Smith’s monthly ECFA Creative Music Series premiered at the Rhizome Collective in East Austin, and continues at the Austin Music Co-op in Central Austin.

Carl is also organizer of ECFA, a somewhat fluid group (usually a trio or quartet) which is the main vehicle for his musical ideas. This group has, in the last year, presented concerts highlighting the music of John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Steve Lacy & Thelonius Monk. ECFA has also released two full-length CDs, one (Die Faden) on the Texas label Pecan Crazy Records, and one (Die Mitte) on the French label Lenka Lente.

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Derek Phelps is a composer, trumpeter, improviser and all-around good guy with diverse musical pursuits. A graduate of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and an alumnus of The Banff Center’s International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, Derek approaches music the way he approaches making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; with very little caution, a pang of hunger and knowing full well that he’ll most certainly have to wash his hands afterwards. Fresh off a stint on a cruise ship, Derek is dying to play music that moves his audience, not just a boat. Equally adept in reggae and jazz genres, original music is his second favorite thing in the world; his first is automatic car washes.

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Jason Friedrich (drums) was born in Houston, and now resides in Austin where he studied music with the late A.D. Mannion. Jason is currently playing with The Dave Biller Quartet, The David Chenu Quartet, Die ECFA Trio, Bonnie Whitmore, Chris Vestre, Beau Sample and the Impressment Gang, and Tacks, The Boy Disaster.

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Holland Hopson is a composer, improviser, and electronic artist. As an instrumentalist he performs on soprano saxophone, clawhammer banjo, electronics, boomboxes, and metronomes. He hopes someday to play the musical saw. Holland has performed with Thomas Buckner, George Lewis, Neil Rolnick, and Ladonna Smith, among others. He has held residencies at STEIM, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Experimental Music Studios, Krakow and Katowice, Poland; Sonic Arts Research, Vancouver, Canada, and Harverstworks Digital Media Arts, New York, where he developed a sound installation based on Marcel Duchamp’s "With Hidden Noise". In 1993-1994 Holland recorded environmental sounds on four continents and in over a dozen countries as a fellow of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. Holland is currently recording the sounds of planes flying over head, and whittling down the last World Series broadcasts to one sustained roar of the crowd.