BEN WOODMAN

EQUILATERAL is a group of three jazz musicians dedicated to the creation of unified, distinctive, and original music. The ethos of the band is to find a deeper “group voice” than the more common approaches in jazz music; i.e. leader/sidemen or soloist/accompanist. Equilateral is comprised of Ben Woodman (guitar), Sam Berrett (drums), and Wyck Malloy (sax). The unconventional trio instrumentation is a perfect vehicle for thoughtful, well-crafted melodic development, intense rhythmic dialogue, and captivating groove. They will be recording their debut album of original compositions in the fall of 2026.

Ben Woodman is a jazz guitarist, trumpet player, and composer living in Portland, OR. He has self-produced 10 albums, ranging from solo guitar works to collaborative efforts. Longtime projects include his trio with Marcus Rudolph on drums and Marshall Peterson on bass, Idle Hands Quartet (an acoustic guitar centered group pulling from the languages of gypsy jazz, bluegrass, and other acoustic languages), and Strange Rotation (future-jazz trio featuring trumpet/fx, drums, and electric bass). His latest release “Pathless” is a suite of compositions for baritone guitar, hollowbody guitar, and trumpet. Ben’s primary aim is to move the language of the guitar forward via composition and improvisation, in solo and group contexts.

Sam Berrett is a Portland based drummer/multi-Instrumentalist that leans into improv-heavy music. He has toured nationally with acts such as Scott Pemberton Trio, Eleven Eyes, Reeble Jar, Amadan, & The Healthy Dose. He is an active member of the jazz/avant-garde scene in Portland and frequently delves into odd times, free playing, as well as straight ahead jazz.

Wyckliffe Malloy (Wyck) is a born and raised Portland Oregon saxophone player with a Bachelors in Jazz Performance from Portland State University. He can be seen around town playing straight ahead jazz and free improvisation.

DANIEL REYES LLINAS

DammNás – FranRasz – HamKatz: A Sextet on Permutations. 

The name is the first clue. DammNás – FranRasz – HamKatz splices together fragments of the six musicians’ surnames — Dammann, Llinás, Francis, Niekrasz, Oldham, Katz — into three new hybrid pairs. It’s not a band name so much as a demonstration: six identities broken apart and reassembled into new combinations, the same operation the group performs musically every time it appears. 

That’s the ensemble’s premise. Six musicians are not one fixed unit, but a set of possibilities. The group treats its own instrumentation as raw material — reconfiguring the same six players into a double trio, triple duets, a quintet plus soloist, or the full sextet, sometimes within a single piece. 

The sextet is comprised of violinist Isabel Dammann, synth wizard Ryan Francis, flutist/vocalist Maxx Katz, cellist Collin Oldham, drummer John Niekrasz, and guitarist Daniel Reyes Llinás — six musicians drawn from distinct corners of the creative music scene, united by a shared appetite for risk. 

The group’s premise is to push the boundaries of written material, indeterminacy, and textural soundscapes, treating the score as a starting point rather than a fixed destination. Through this lens, composed structures dissolve into open-ended improvisation, and rehearsed material coexists with in-the-moment discovery — allowing the ensemble to move fluidly between meticulously notated passages and fully spontaneous textures. The result is music that lives in the space between composition and chance, where each performance reveals a different shape of the same idea. 

Each member brings a singular voice shaped by years of genre-crossing work. 

Guitarist and composer Daniel Reyes Llinás hails from Bogotá, Colombia, and is now based in Portland. A former fixture of the NYC improv and new music scene, he trained on classical guitar at Universidad de los Andes and went on to study with Leo Brouwer and Robert Fripp. He has released music on Trey Gunn’s 7d Media and continues to perform internationally with Selva Espiral, a guitar duo exploring “paleo-futurismo,” a language rooted in Colombian ancestral traditions fused with experimental guitar technique. 

Violinist and vocalist Isabel Dammann moves fluidly between classical music, traditional fiddle styles, free improvisation, rock, and singer-songwriter settings, performing across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. She tours nationally with her chamber-folk trio Sprig of That, whose debut album bloom was released in 2023, and has served as an animation reference violinist for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. 

Synthesist and composer Ryan Francis brings a background steeped in contemporary composition, holding a doctorate from the Juilliard School, where he twice received the school’s top compositional honor, the Palmer-Dixon Prize. His recent work includes pieces written for synthesizers, alongside

commissions from the American Composers Orchestra and the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. His works appear on Tzadik Records. 

Flutist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Maxx Katz works at the intersection of metal, jazz, classical music, free improvisation, and performance art, channeling flute, electric guitar, and voice into a restless exploration of communication’s limits. Katz was a resident at the 2019 Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, studying under Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey, and leads the performance ensemble Yelling Choir. 

Cellist Collin Oldham has long been a fixture of the Portland music community, joining the Portland Cello Project in 2008 and contributing to many of its recordings, performances, and tours since. He has also performed and recorded with Extradition Series, The Decemberists, Elliott Smith, and Aretha Franklin, bringing a versatile cello voice across genres. 

Drummer and composer John Niekrasz is deeply committed to improvisation, both as a performance practice and a compositional approach, bridging music and language through text-based composition and syllabic notation. He composes for and performs in ensembles including Methods Body and Orchestra Becomes Radicalized, with recordings released on labels such as New Amsterdam and ESP-Disk’. 

Websites:

https://www.llinasmusic.com/ https://www.johnniekrasz.com https://www.maxxkatz.com https://www.isabeldammann.com

https://www.fearnomusic.org/ryan-francis https://www.portlandcelloproject.com/pages/cellists

Instagrams: @circularmusic, @Johnniekrasz, @maxxxkatz, @isabeldammann