Timothy Frazier grew up in a musical family in Kansas and has been singing and performing since he was a very little show-off. His early performances included basement dance concerts and impromptu grocery store displays of his gymnastic skills. He has a patient and indulgent mother.

He moved to the Bay Area in the late 1980's and began studying dance with folks such as Keith Hennessey and Jess Curtis of Contraband. He spent many years dancing for Reclaiming's Spiral Dance and honing his own elegant and sometimes goofy style at art galleries and events around the Bay Area.

He also studied Classical Indian Dance, Bharatanatyam, with Katherine and K.P. Kunhiraman for many years.

Timothy became interested in Irish singing years ago and began to learn the Irish language, eventually turning to Scots Gaelic and Scottish music. He has sung as a soloist at Reclaiming's Spiral Dance, Comhaltas Ceoltori San Francisco, Enrico's, The Starry Plough, salons and strolling down the local sidewalks.

So your buddy just got back from the club scene on Mars; brought you back a mixtape. Check this out: they got killer vocal percussion (that guy can *sing* jungle rhythms), overtones and deep throat singing, a didgeridoo player, some guy chanting into a 12 foot long silver toob, phunky samples. Yow! what else.

Mixtape from Mars is a loose techno tribal collective specializing in odd sounds from homemade and store-bought instruments. In one of our usual gigs you might hear a wide variety of instruments or perhaps a bag of forks. This time, however, we're going completely a cappella, or should I say "electronicappella": all the sounds start with the mouth. Then they're looped and processed. You won't hear any synthesizers or drum machines tonight, but we won't be disappointed if you think you do. Mixtape from Mars formed as Fermat's Last Theremin for BurningMan 99, and transmogrified into MFM at BurningMan 2000.

You can hear more on the web: www.mp3.com/MixtapeFromMars

Andrew Chaikin made his name as a singer, songwriter, and producer with a cappella pioneers The House Jacks, and is considered one of the world's foremost vocal percussionists. His beats have funkified albums by the Bobs, the Nylons, and the Persuasions, and caused Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll to devote an entire column to Andrew's "lips of pure gold." As a singer and voice-over talent, he can be heard on many national TV and radio commercials, Web sites, and video games. These days he performs live with fellow ex-Jack Austin Willacy, the industrial percussion ensemble Rhythm Slam, and, of course, the techno-tribal collective Mixtape From Mars. Check out all things Chaikin at www.biggerbread.com

Simran Gleason, who has been described by Andrew as "that crazy guy who got me into this" (not referring, of course, to his music career), prefers to think of himself as just barely graduating from wannabe status. He has been concentrating on music for modern dance, and has worked with the Body Cartography Project, Choreographers Collective, Bela Homoom, and the Park Zilla dance company. This is probably the first time you have to buy a ticket to hear him make noisy. Simran's solo work can be found on the web as "Inkstone" at www.mp3.com/Inkstone

You know what they say about the size of a man's instrument? Well, John Cornwell plays a twelve-foot-long Toob. Need we say more? I guess we oughta... John has been playing a wide array of instruments since third grade (he even did time in a hand bell ensemble) but quit most of them after he discovered hallucinogens and John Coltrane. MFM, to him, represents an opportunity to paint with music. He likes music with texture and tight beats, particularly Eno's ambient work, Trance Mission's trance/world stuff and combinations of the above (like Massive Attack).

Barbara Jaspersen is a vocalist, actor, and poet. She has done a variety of performance activities in the Bay Area for the last 15 years, including children's theater, film, Shakespeare, ritual experiments, poetry readings, opera workshops, and soundtracks. Barbara can be seen as Bella Luxor in Antero Alli's cyber-noir video film Tragos. She has sung on a few CD's, and with the groups Deus Machina (of Omnicircus), Our Band, Copus, Molto Vox, Sherwood Consort, resmiranda, Opera non Troppo, and now for the first time...Mixtape from Mars! Her TV pilot Miss Bharbie's Kiddie Khaos Kharnaval is eagerly awaited by fans and network bean counters alike. She has recently been making music with Simran for the dancers of the choreographer's collective.

Rob Penn is one of the founding members of The House Jacks, an a cappella group once signed to Warner Bros' Tommy Boy Records. More recent credits include his role as Pilate in "DJ Christ, Superstar!" performed at Burning Man. At present he's enjoying making music with a growing cast of talented friends and is thankful to share the stage with this bunch of martians. Look for him at open mics and venues around the Bay Area.

Ron Jones is a native San Franciscan. He shares his Haight Ashbury home with children, grandchildren, a wife and her pottery business and lots of wonderment. For the past 20 years he has worked at the San Francisco Recreation Center for the Handicapped, Inc. (RCH). That's where he coaches the Special Olympic Basketball Team that never lost a game! Sometimes if you stay in one place long enough you see some unusual things. That's the case with Ron Jones.

As an author, he has written about those familiar surprises that enrich our life. Three of his books The Acorn People - The Wave and B-Ball have been made into television dramas. A book about Mount Zion's Psychiatric Ward was nominated for a Pulitzer. And Say Ray, the story of a disabled man abducted to Mexico, was honored as the American Book of the Year. His story about a classroom experiment in Fascism, The Wave, is printed in 9 languages and required reading in German schools.

Three years ago, Ron took the stage to tell his unusual stories. Stories he had written. And lots of new adventures. Stories about his father and a very special gift - of skinny dipping in a talking pond - the mysterious murder of Insect Lady - Playlands Laughing Sal - and the sexual prowess of his secret concoction Mint Jam. Ron's storytelling in San Francisco Solo Mio Festival and in coffee houses and theaters in the United States and Europe has been described by critics as -

"What Sports and Life Should be About..."
Bob Lypsyte, New York Times

"...Tells Perhaps the Most Important Story of our Time."
Studs Terkel

"A Triumph!"
Der Spiegel

Working with guitarist Kenny Martha and video documentarians Dirk Dirksen and Damon Molloy, Ron has assembled his stories into "Storytelling Videos". These unique 1/2 VHS videos blend spoken word, jazz and lots of images from home movies, still photos and original art into a creative statement. Mint Jammin' was honored as the Grand Prize Winner of the San Francisco Poetry Film Festival. Now it's your turn to discover some Unusual Stories from some Familiar Places.

Ron Jones recently performed "Buddha Blues" at the Marsh. He is currently preparing a show entitled "When God Winked and Fellini Grinned!".

Claudia Villela's haunting improvisations and her surprising five-octave range have earned her a consistent following at such venues as the Monterey Jazz Festival, Spoleto Festival, San Francisco Jazz Festival, U.C. Davis, Yoshi's and other clubs, concerts and festival dates across the United States, Japan and Brazil. Audiences are drawn to the magical dimensions of her singing. Creative and soulfully expressive, Villela's music is heavily rooted in the traditional and contemporary sounds of Brazil's rich creative cultural heritage. As Helcio Milito, one of the fathers of bossa nova put it, "Claudia is the biggest expression of Brazilian music in the U.S. today."

As a child growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Claudia Villela would fall asleep at night listening to the sounds of a samba school practicing behind her grandmother's home. "I woke up to the melodies of my mother singing while my father played the harmonica," she recalls, "My music is the sum of all sounds I've heard, from Brazilian macumba to freeform jazz to European classical. It comes from all those memories."

She first started singing in college festivals around Rio at age 15. She was soon active in the music scene. She began singing with the Stanford University Chorus, and in 1986, she joined the De Anza College Jazz Singers - which won first prize in Down Beat's vocal jazz competition. She won a number of scholarships, including one to study with jazz vocalist Sheila Jordan at New Yorks' Manhattan School of Music and John Robert Dunlap of the New York Metropolitan Opera. Since then, she has recorded two CDs of her original compositions. In 1999, she released two new projects, one with pianist Kenny Werner, a spontaneously improvised session for voice and piano, the other in partnership with guitarist/composer Ricardo Peixoto. Asa Verde, Supernova and Inverse Universe feature original music composed by Villela and Peixoto.

"I can't be premeditated or calculated when I'm performing," says Villela. "I like an aspect of losing myself, of going into the unknown. I am an improviser at heart...I lean towards the edge reaching for the unknown. It is magical, and people really get it." So do the critics. In 1997, she was nominated for Jazz Singer of the Year by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors (NAIRD). Mark Holston of Jazziz described Villela as "intelligent and seductive". And according to San Francisco Examiner jazz critic Phil Elwood, "Villela actually dances with her voice on top of Brazilian beats."