FRANK PAHL is one of the most distinctive and charming voices in contemporary American music. He has received numerous awards, grants, and residencies for his innovative compositions using homemade automatic instruments. Inspired by the works of Trimpin and Pierre Bastien, Pahl began to delve deeply into the creation of automatic instruments, using these instruments as the fundamental foundation of his compositions. His work has included pieces for automatic string quartet, automatic doorbell quartets, and bicycle quartet. Pahl has received over 60 commissions for theater, film and dance and his music appears on over 60 releases. Nanos Operetta presents the West Coast premier of the composer's new work, Toy Suite #2, a suite in five movements written for toy instrument quartet, performed by Pahl and his ensemble.

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World renowned composer ARNOLD DREYBLATT is an American expatriate living in Berlin for over 20 years. A student of LaMonte Young, Alvin Lucier, and Pauline Oliveros, he formed the Orchestra of Excited Strings in 1980. Among the second generation of New York minimalist composers, Dreyblatt has charted his own unique course in modern classical music, inventing a set of new and original instruments, performance techniques, and a system of tuning. He is often characterized as the most rock-oriented of American minimalists. Nanos Operetta presents the US premier of the composer's string quartets, Quartet II and Quartet III, in partnership with the Chepikov String Quartet with the participation of the composer.

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SHA SHA HIGBY is known internationally for her evocative and haunting performances, using the exquisite and ephemeral body sculptures she creates and moves within. For almost two decades, at the intersection of East and West, art and religion, sculpture and dance, Higby has been developing a process of mesmerizing complexity and beauty. Her work has drawn extensively from Japanese Noh theater, butoh, Indonesian shadow puppetry, and Indian textile design. Higby¹s elaborate sculptural costume, dance, and puppetry are a metaphorically rich and intimate journey, creating an atmospheric world on stage within the borders between life and death. The unfolding spectacle creates a path in which movement and stillness meet.

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RAPT PRODUCTIONS is a company of unique and talented dancers and musicians who collaborate to create exciting multidisciplinary performance experiences. Lead by directors Austin Forbord and Shelley Trott, Rapt focuses on physicality, partnering, and the theatrical possibilities of dynamic human interaction on the stage. By using explosive and intimate movement, video backdrops, and original live music, Rapt draws the audience into its surreal theatrical environments. Rapt will be performing Movement Study for the Grief Cycle, a solo dance with video installation.

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NANOS OPERETTA is a new music ensemble working in extended song forms, blending cinematic sound collages, seamless juxtapositions, shifting backgrounds, recurring motifs and vocal narrations. Employing unconventional instrumentation and found objects, they incorporate elements of ethnic, film, modern chamber, cartoon, and cabaret music into meditations on themes of love, disease, and revolution. Nanos Operetta has worked with Koichi & Hiroko Tamano, Myra Melford, and Ledoh. They are 2005 Isadora Duncan recipients for their score to Harupin-Ha's evening length work Serei. Nanos Operetta will be performing three pieces from their Suicide Series and a new arrangement of the music of the Dillinger Escape Plan joined by the Chepikov String Quartet.

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Led by director/cellist Robin Reynolds, the CHEPIKOV STRING QUARTET is one of the Bay Area's most challenging and evocative chamber ensembles. Specializing in the works of 20th century living composers, CSQ and Nanos Operetta have partnered in 2005, through three installments of the series, to present the works of composers Arnold Dreyblatt (USA/Germany), Boris Kovac (Yugoslavia), and Hyo-shin Na (Korea).