Jon Catler is one of the world’s leading innovators on microtonal guitar. For many years, Catler’s interest has been in the exploration of the “notes-between-the-notes,” or microtonal music. He has devised his own system of tuning based on Just Intonation: The pure intervals of the Harmonic Series. He has redesigned his guitar to allow an unprecedented range of consonance and dissonance, alternating between a 64-note per octave fretted guitar and a fretless. Since his initiation into the world of microtonal music performance, Catler has played with many music luminaries, most notably legendary Just Intonation composer La Monte Young with whom he has worked for over 30 years, touring and recording as a member of the Forever Bad Blues Band (Gramavision CD), The Theater of Eternal Music Big Band, and the Just Alap Raga Ensemble. As a recording artist and published author, Catler has released over a dozen critically acclaimed CD’s of original music, all in Harmonic Series Tunings. Catler's latest recording The Young Mountain of the East was released in 2026 by Chaikin Records.
Legendary saxophonist Don Dietrich and his cellist daughter Camille Dietrich come together in DIETRICHS, a pairing music critic Byron Coley calls “sheer wailing sonic pleasure.” Don has been a driving force as a member of Borbetomagus for over four decades, known for his volatile style and “unyielding wall of sound.” Camille’s raw energy balances classically trained precision with the instinctive flair of someone raised on aggressive improvisation. Together, they drown audiences in sound, leaving an impact long after their final note fades. DIETRICHS began their journey in 2017 with their debut album on Pica Disk Records, followed by a series of performances that landed them a spot on the list of Jazz Right Now's Best Live Concerts of 2018. In 2021, the duo joined Feeding Tube Records' Quarantunes Series, subsequently releasing the recording with the same label. Their livestream was ranked in Art Forum Magazine’s “Alan Licht’s Best Music of 2021.” DIETRICHS released their critically acclaimed third album Catch the Leaves through Relative Pitch Records in 2023, followed by its 2024 vinyl re-release via Feeding Tube Records. DIETRICHS released “No Bahdu” on Relative Pitch Records in 2025 and just released “Live Bahdu” on the same label following their first European tour as a duo.
Michael R. Bernstein is a musician, composer, and installation artist who often builds instruments and devices to interact with in an experimental music setting. He is interested in the interaction of light and sound, repetition and minimalism, networked devices, and granular synthesis. He has an MFA from the Parsons School of Design in Design and Technology, and formerly ran the Heavy Tapes cassette label, performed over 100 live shows with improvised quartet Double Leopards, and started an art rock band called Religious Knives with his best friend and wife, Maya E. Miller. He has released music on the Sacred Bones, Ecstatic Peace!, Feeding Tube, and Eclipse Records labels, and currently releases music and books on his own MRBCO (https://michaelrbernste.in/mrbco) imprint.
NEPENTHAUS is a sound & light union of organic and electronic nature formed by Suny Gao, Michael Reisinger & Mariah Robertson that utilizes unconventional and handmade instruments and artifacts. “Our name comes from a drug thought to originate in the bell of a flower in Egypt that takes worries and strife from the mind. This is where we live. Always learning.”
Joe Piccirillo began his label Minimum Table Stacks in 2021 and has released vinyl records by artists from Japan, New Zealand, Wales, London and many other places. He lives in Jersey City, NJ with his wife and two sons.
Scott Kiernan is an artist living and working in New York City. In his video, photo and installation works, electronically synthesized and photographic elements interact to address their own materiality and means of distribution. He is particularly interested in how meaning shifts through stages of translation via technology, speech and syntax. He was founder and co-director of Louis V E.S.P., an artist-run gallery and performance space in Brooklyn, NY (2010- 2012) and now of E.S.P. TV (2011-present), a nomadic television studio that explores the televisual as a medium for broadcast collaborations. This project also formed UNIT 11, a transmission-based residency program operating from a former TV news van turned mobile electronic studio. Kiernan also directs Various/Artists, a project producing audio/visual releases by artists working across diverse media. He has exhibited and performed internationally in venues such as Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, Swiss Institute/Contemporary Art, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Whitney Museum of American Art, PERFORMA, Harvard Art Museums, P.S.122, Anthology Film Archives, Mixed Greens, Ballroom Marfa, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Center for International Contemporary Art in Rome.
Bradley Eros, as always, (since the very beginning of Abasement (.001)) will project their "hand-made" analog slides, and/or film ~ all night long! *** "eau de cinema", 'musique plastique', "philosophical jaywalker", "Eros C'est L'amour!"
Abasement has been curated by Joseph Frivaldi and Robert Mayson since 2015.
