Hollow Bones
The electro-acoustic string and reeds quartet Hollow Bones, a cooperative of Amy Reed, Isadora Goldschneider, Murray Campbell and Randy McKean, weaves spontaneous sonic tapestries inspired by the natural world in all its forms, wedding the miniscule to the maximal, the ephemeral to the concrete. Rooted in improvisation, their communal approach may utilize graphic scores, visual imagery or the written word to guide its real-time creations, but ultimately relies upon deep listening to shape each performance.
Hollow Bones is working to build a shared language from performance to performance, highlighting the ritual aspects, textural qualities, and acoustical properties of music making. Each member brings their individual interests and contributions, which include past work with mavericks Pauline Oliveros, Anthony Braxton, Bob Ostertag and Susie Ibarra. Capable of moving from lyric birdsong to brittle multiphonic haze in a single piece, Hollow Bone’s ever-shifting sound palette reflects the many traditions they draw upon, In any given performance, their core lineup of electric guitar, accordion, violin/oboe and clarinet/saxophone may be augmented by voice, percussion, keyboards or banjo. Hollow Bones explores an almost somatic approach to music making, inspired by the physical sensation of sound.
Hollow Bones was formed in the summer of 2026, when they began playing for a series of workshops for contact improv dancers in Nevada City led by Rebecca Bone. They took their name from Amy Reed’s Birdsong (birds who sing here), which the group premiered in 2026.
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Amy Reed is a painter, composer and sound artist. Re-creating possibilities of past, present and future through collaboration, performance and sound primarily with field recordings, electric guitar, and voice and resonance. Their book of painting scores Wókimméa sásaka (They go walking) is published by Habitat Sounds, Berlin, DE. They recently premiered Birdsong (birds who sing here) with a quartet from Nevada City, California, now the working band, Hollow Bones.
Birdsong is a new experimental composition emerging from years of work with Pulitzer prize winning composer Susie Ibarra translating birdsongs and recording sounds in the field with an attention to polyrhythms, water, trees, glaciers and migratory birds. Birdsong utilizes text and cipher notation; is accompanied by a graphic score made from hand-made oak-gall, acorn, dirt, and ash inks on canvas pieces dyed with flowers from here.
Amy Reed’s ancestral homeland is the Sonoran Desert. They work with language reclamation, indigenous sovereignty and rematriation as a guest, living, working and organizing in unceded Nisenan Territory. In 2018, they founded MA Ensemble and MASARTS, an artist- and indigenous-led organization, dedicated to experimental curation activating DIY spaces and creative communities centering women-identified and gender-expansive artists working in sound, improvisation and interdisciplinary practices. Reed has worked in mentorship. performance, and collaboration with IONE. We co-produced the film Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros.
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Accordionist and interdisciplinary artist Isadora Goldschneider investigates the intersection of textiles, movement, and sound. The musical textures she explores in improvisation are influenced by her interdisciplinary work and her studies with renowned experimental sound artist Bob Ostertag, and master concert accordionist Merima Ključo. Recent projects include her MFA Thesis Remnants: An Embodiment of Time, Grief and Textiles, which incorporated experimental sound/textile interactions.
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Violinist and oboist Murray Campbell’s upbringing in a musical family in a small village outside Edinburgh and his subsequent studiesin theoretical physics and musical acoustics in Scotland and the Netherlands inform his combinatorial approach to the world of sound. Currently living in the California Sierra Nevada foothills, his improvisatory work draws upon the multitude of musical roles he plays, be it as a first-call oboist for orchestral and early music ensembles, as a fiddler for Celtic session bands, or as an improvising string-and-oboe doubler for the avant chamber jazz ensemble Bristle or the Euro Balkan quartet Beaucoup Chapeaux.
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Lauded as “on the ball, uncomplacent, fun even” by Wire magazine, multi-reedist, composer, sideman and bandleader Randy McKean is off the grid and invites you to join him. Operating from his home base in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, McKean injects the unexpected and a serious dose of absurdity into his every creation, be it the road-map mind-meld improvs of his chamber jazz quartet Bristle or the skipped-needle groove of his African-trance trio Tumble. Hailed by Option for his “fiery playing and the intriguing tapestries of his writing,” McKean’s past work with AACM stalwarts Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, trumpet pioneer Paul Smoker, electronic music maverick David Rosenboom and master percussionist Willy Winant have informed his many projects, including the organized skronk sax quartet Goggle, the perpetual motion sax-drums duos TMBR and Pac and Seep, and the sweeping reeds-electronics ensembles Gargantius Effect and Wild Horsey Ride. McKean’s current work in the vibrant Bay Area, Sacramento and Nevada County scenes includes clarinetist for the Euro Balkan group Beaucoup Chapeaux, EEb Contralto clarinet bass chair for guitarist David Dvorin’s Flounder and Pocket Quartet, and music director for the contact dance collective Shadow Cabinet. McKean has composed works for orchestra, wind quartet, and string quartet. As promoter and producer, McKean presents the Col. MaCaw’s Magical Cure-All concert series and co-leads its spin-off record label Cure-All Records with Dvorin.