Ariel Julian Dionysus Yes Abrahams
everything – “The Gem Center”
Ariel was born in New York in 1988 and graduated from New York University in 2010 and 2011. He is a life-artist, educator, and organizer. He is fascinated by religion, group dynamics, and imagination. He likes to think of himself as someone who brings worlds into being. Ariel is the Director of Public Engagement for Odyssey Works, and the founder of the Bilha Zilpah Reunion community. For more info check out www.arielabrahams.com
Maya Azbel
design – Surge logo
In addition to SURGE’s logo, Maya designed the cover art for audiodrama album Almost: A Tribute to Joe Frank, which she also sings on. Maya stars in “This is Just to Say,” a short film adaptation of William Carlos Williams’s poem, by fellow SURGE contributor Darina Sikmashvili. Maya has also been known to write and perform original songs, photograph, paint, and write poetry and prose fiction. You can find a good chunk of her body of work at maya-azbel.tumblr.com
Agnes Bannigan
words – “The Hypnosis Series”
Rob C!
music – “Tarpon”
music – “Intermission”
Robert is a four legged FBI agent who works undercover for a waste treatment plant in Dubai. Robert creates all of his music by attaching computer recognised cables onto his internal organs and screams. The screaming creates bit code into the computer and the painful noise translates into midi instruments like the guitar, drums, organ (pun), and dish soap squeezer. Robert loves diabetic shock very much and will never ever give it up for anything ever.
Diana Hill
words and music – “A Diana or Nick Xmas”
music – “Leave the Stovelight On”
Diana Hill was recently awarded the Morton Feldman Composition Award upon receiving her Masters degree in Music from the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, where she studied under the direction of composers Doug Geers, Wang Jie, and Tania León. While at Vassar College, she studied composition under Suzanne Sorkin, Harold Meltzer, and Richard Wilson. Preferring to write for choir, film and dance, her music often has a magical quality, and always involves playing with connotation and expectation. Her choral works are known to utilize unconventional texts.
Diana actively sings, performing in vocal ensembles all over NYC and the tri-state area; she most regularly performs with Ghostlight Chorus. Diana is also the Choir Director of the Children’s Choir and the Senior Choir at Our Lady of Miraculous Medal in Ridgewood, Queens, where she additionally acts as Cantor for services, weddings and funerals. For more info, or to listen to Diana’s music, dianahillmusic.com
Daniel Howard
everything – “The Gift”
script – “Letters”
Born in 1987, Daniel Howard grew up on Long Island, graduated from Brooklyn College and lives in Boston. He spends most of his time alone, sitting in a chair, staring either at a laptop screen or a book. Sometimes, he works his fingers over the keys of the laptop or he moves a pen over the book’s page. This behavior—not without precedent, odd as it may seem—has yielded an in-progress detective novel in the tradition of those authors who revered the genre even as they cannibalized it for what some might call loftier, or effete (depends on who’s doing the calling), purposes. In order to pay for this lifestyle, Daniel spends the rest of his time taking care of small children. A poor conversationalist, he pours into his work every subject that escaped him during the fight-flight-freeze threat of social contact. He labors under the pitiful delusion or admirable hope that someday he and others like him may walk along the bridge of written words to spoken ones.
Sarah Law
direction – “Letters”
Sarah Law is a Brooklyn based director and teaching artist. She received a bachelors of fine arts in Acting from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Recent projects include work with Target Margin Theatre, The Brooklyn Lyceum, The Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure, Merce Cunningham studios, and The Hill Theatre. Sarah has written and directed original productions and films throughout her teaching artist residencies including one that won the “Anti Bullying Competition” in Brooklyn with the DYCD in 2012. She recently stage managed the 2015 production of “See-Saw” with CAT youth theatre. Sarah is a co-founder and writer with “Tyndall Productions”, a Brooklyn based film production company. She is currently getting her masters in applied theatre at CUNY SPS.
Helen Marder
designer – album art
The Beginning of what we mere humansapiens understand as time and space, the Wood Queen made on a canvas with oil paints, charcoal, water color, Adobe Illustrator, Crayola crayons, felt and velvet, super glue, tear drops from dying Pterodactyls, pencils, and di-ah-reha (which is the ultimate creating cream used only by god artists iE= Hellen Marder).
helenmarder.com
Megan McGrath
words – “Tarpon”
Megan is a Master’s candidate in Animal Behavior & Conservation. She works in a lab that studies cognition and communication in large-brained mammals such as dolphins and elephants. Her goal is to contribute to our body of knowledge on cetacean behavior. Megan absolutely loves what she does.
She can often be found thinking about animals, intelligence, cognition, evolution, behavior, ecology, ethology, the cosmos, the Drake equation, cortical folding, stories, creation, humanity, cooking, or something else.
Her strangest hobbies are evolutionary biology, listening to heartbeats, and talking to squid.
William Nava
Surge producer
words – “Make Me Smile”
words – “Intermission”
William – known to many as Willis – identifies as a writer, multi-media artist, philosopher, and anarchist. In his spare time he enjoys boxing himself in by appropriating identity labels.
Willis and John’s interest in audiodrama began with their collaboration on Almost: A Tribute to Joe Frank, a “tragicomic epic in which the narrator dies and nothing happens.” You can find it, and all of Willis’s writing and media, at williamnava.com
John Passaro
Surge producer
everything – “Flow”
John Passaro counts SURGE among the worthiest artifacts of his existence on earth. John specializes in sound: the rigid logical conventions of music, the free-form human expression of speech and conversation, and the less predictable patterns heard in the real world.
As a producer, John works with music, podcasts, film sound and other audio; he previously worked on the album Almost, a forerunner of SURGE made with producer William Nava, and his audio engineering work appears regularly on OMGWTFBIBLE. As a performer and composer, he has worked on Samantha Shokin’s album Fabula/Syuzhet, has a small repertory of solo work, and sings as a switch-hitting bass/baritone/tenor/alto in a sacred music octet.
Most importantly, John is frightened out of his wits, and the worst part is he can’t tell you why.
Lisa Robins
performance – “Letters”
Keenan M. Scott II
performance – “Letters”
Keenan M. Scott II is a SLAM poet originally from Queens, NY. He got his start on the underground poetry scene in Washington, DC at the age of fifteen. By the age of eighteen he published a book of poetry. He went on to attend Frostburg State University where he received a degree in Theater Arts with a concentration in acting. Keenan formed a production called Noisy Tenants, LLC. to share his love for various art forms with the world. His most recent endeavor was directing, producing and acting in his original play, Thoughts of a Colored Man on a day when the sun set too early on Off-Off Broadway. Keenan plans to continue to push the limits of his art until it reaches the world.
Darina Sikmashvili
words – “Leave the Stove Light On”
My name is Dasha and I write about The Space Between, like that Dave band, remember? The wicked words? Nah? Alright. I’m lyin’.
David Tuchman
words – “No Matter What Remains”
David Tuchman is incredibly busy. He spends most of his time working on OMGWTFBIBLE, a brand-new translation of the entire Hebrew Bible that he releases as a monthly podcast. He was a 2014 PresenTense Fellow and traveled to England to share his work, so it’s going pretty well. He is not at liberty to discuss any details regarding Professor Moster at this time.
The Wandering Cellist
music – “No Matter What Remains”
Luna Skye started playing and became obsessed with the cello at age 16. She would fuse this new-found obsession with the passion she had developed years earlier for heavy metal music. This has defined this unorthodox journey she’s taken.
In the years that followed, she got some classical training, started playing in rock bands and began composing her own music – playing in the subways as part of Music Under New York, and freelancing in New York City. She’s traveled the US and Canada playing for Steampunk, Sci-Fi & Gaming Conventions and has released multiple albums. You can find more information at celloluna.com
Nick Zimmerman
words – “A Diana or Nick Xmas”
A writer in NYC.