Anthrophonic Packet · musicians
Anthrophonic

The Anthro system · for musicians · October 2026

Anthrophonic is an improvising collective: a night, a label, and the tools that hold it together through the building of an intentional network. This is how it all fits, and where it goes next.

Draft · for partners, players and friends · each section stands on its own

For musicians

Come and play

Anthrophonic is an improvising collective: a night, a label, and the tools that hold it together through the building of an intentional network. If you improvise, in any tradition, there's room for you in it.

Play at an Anthrophonic night. Guests join the first set, duos and trios with the house band, and the last set, everyone together. Tell us a little about what you play through anthrophonic.com/contact and we'll find you a night. On the night you sign in at the door, and your name goes on the night's page only if you say yes.

Host one in your city. The night is a template: a conversation with a guest, three sets, records in between, and every night recorded and kept. A host brings a room, a house band and the local language; we bring the night's page, the program and the network. Hosting a night, at the end, has the details.

This is a working sample of a night's own page. It's one page that changes through the evening:

Before →Deciding to come: when, where, the guest, the running order. During →In the room, from the QR code on the table: what's on now, add your photos. After →The next day and for good: play the night, the film, the photos, who played.

Sample content throughout. Venue names stay off this page until each room has agreed.

Why

Music happens between people

Improvising is finding out, in public, with someone you might have met an hour ago. It needs rooms, listeners and other players, and those are exactly what's hard to find. Most improvisers spend more time booking, emailing and promoting than playing.

So the point of all of this is community: a regular place to play, people to play with, listeners who come back, and a way to keep what happened. When one of us does well, a record, a tour, a good night, the rest of us should feel it too.

The name means human sound.

Anthrophonic started in Minneapolis in 2013 as a label and a home for projects. It found its question in 2018, recording conversations with musicians in Addis Ababa and Kampala: not only what music is, but why it is. The night puts that question on a stage.

The Anthro ethic

What we believe

  • We explore culture through music. It's been the idea since 2018: sit down with a musician, ask where they come from and what shaped them, then play together. The conversation tells you their story. Playing together tells you the rest.
  • Music is a universal language. Not because everyone plays the same notes, but because two people with no words in common can still listen, answer, and land somewhere together. We've heard it happen in Addis Ababa, in Kampala, in Chiang Mai, and on stages with players who met an hour before.
  • Improvisation is a gateway to understanding and mutual appreciation. To improvise with someone you have to listen harder than you talk. You take their idea seriously, you leave space, you follow. Do that for twenty minutes and you know something about a person that no conversation could tell you. Do it in front of a room, and the room feels it too.

That's the shape of the night: a conversation first, then music. Talk to understand where someone comes from, then play to meet them there.

The night · the template

A conversation, then three sets

Every Anthrophonic night follows the same shape, wherever it happens. It starts with talk, ends with everyone playing, and keeps everything.

  1. The conversation
    A guest, interviewed on stageTwo chairs, filmed, translated later if needed. Twenty to thirty minutes, then a few questions from the room. The interviewer rotates.
  2. Records
    Ambient records between every setThe room keeps its mood while the stage changes.
  3. Set 1
    Duos and triosThe house band splits up and plays with guests, often people who've never played together.
  4. Set 2
    The house bandAbout twenty-five minutes.
  5. Set 3
    EveryoneThe full band and the guests together.

Length

Two hours. Doors at 19:00, done by 21:00, or 21:30 if it's going well.

Who plays

A house band, plus guests who improvise in any tradition.

Entry

By donation, for the players and the room. Each city sets its own.

What's kept

Everything. See the living show, below.

The living show

A night doesn't end at 21:00

Every night becomes a page that keeps growing after the room empties. Everything we keep from it lives there, together, and the pages add up night by night into an archive of the scene.

On the night

The night page

Each night gets its own page on anthrophonic.com, with a short address and a QR code on every table and in the program.

During the night

Your photos and video

Scan the code and add what you shot from your phone: no app, no account. We look through everything before it appears, and credit who took it.

After

The recordings

Every set is recorded. The night page carries the sets, and the best of them come out on the label as records.

After

The conversation

The interview is filmed, transcribed and translated, so it reads in both languages. A native speaker checks it and the guest approves it before it goes up.

Take home

The program

A printed zine for every night, and a copy on the page. It's the thing you keep. See below.

Over time

The archive

Night after night, the pages become a record of who played, who talked, and what happened in the room: the scene, kept.

Free to everyone. All of it goes online for anyone to see, once the players and the guest have said yes.

The donation at the door is for the players and the room. It keeps the night going; it doesn't buy access. Later, once there are enough nights to be worth it, there may be a physical edition that collects the whole archive.

The program

A zine for every night

Every night has a printed program: a small booklet you get at the door and take home. It tells you what's happening tonight, who's playing and who's talking, what the collective is, and where to find the music. Over a season, the programs become something to collect.

The format

An A5 booklet in two languages: English from the front, and the city's own language from the back, upside down. Turn it over and it's the same program. Sixteen pages, four A4 sheets folded and stapled. The cover sheet is on a heavier paper and is new every night; the inside is plain paper. Black and white, in the collective's look, printed at a copy shop.

What's in it

Each language gets the same eight pages. Four change every night; four stay the same for a season.

1CoverThe night's name, number, date and the guest.
2The guestWho they are, what the conversation is about, who's asking. An invitation to bring questions.QR · the guest's page
7TonightThe running order, with times and who plays each set. "This night is recorded and filmed."QR · add your photos
8BackCredits for everyone who made the night, and the next night's date and guest.QR · next night
3House bandPhotos and short bios of the house band.QR · the artists
4The nightWhat the night is and how it works. The donation is for the players and the room.QR · support
5The labelThe collective in a few lines, and the records.QR · the records
6The roomThe venue's own page: a short history, and what it stands for, in its own words.

new every nightprinted once a season

The room

Every program has a page for the venue. The night happens because a room says yes, so the room gets its own page: where it came from, what it's for, and a thank-you. Each venue's page is written once and printed with the inside sheets for the season.

The translation

Everything is in both languages, not a summary on the back. A machine gives the first draft, and a native speaker checks every page before it's printed. The guest's own words are checked with the guest. In Budapest, that's English and Hungarian; each city picks its pair.

Why it's built this way

  • Cheaper to print. Only the cover sheet and the centre sheet change each week. The two middle sheets, the inside pages in both languages, are printed in bulk at the start of a season.
  • The codes never go stale. Every QR points to a short anthrophonic.com address that we can repoint, so a printed program keeps working when a record moves or a shop opens. Each code is counted, anonymously, so we can see which pages of the program people actually use.
  • It ties back to the page. The "add your photos" code on the Tonight page is how the audience feeds the living show.
  • It's made from the night page. The program is built from the same details as the night's page online, so nothing is typed twice. Change the guest or the running order once, and both follow.
  • Each city makes its own. Same template; a host swaps in their house band, their room and their languages.

Later

Ideas for once the night is running: a season folder that regulars keep the programs in, and a centre spread showing the previous night's sound as a waveform.

The collective

A small core, and everyone who plays with us

Anthrophonic has two rings. At the centre is a small core who make the records, run the night and share the work and the money. Around it is everyone who plays the nights, releases with us or uses the network and the tools.

The core, now

Christopher Robin Cox (trombone, electronics), Roland Heidrich (guitar) and Casey O'Brien (bass). They also play together as Melting ICE, and they're the house band in Budapest.

The wider circle

Guests on the nights, artists on the label, members of AnthroSonus. The core can grow; every city adds its own people.

The label

Records that keep what happened in the room

The label puts out the music the collective makes: live sets, studio records and, more and more, the nights themselves. Artists keep their music; the label brings the tools, the press list and the listeners.

Out now

Ghost Dance (2014), kcob / eudaemonic (2016), Arkive Sessions (2024), recorded after six months of a weekly night at the North Gate Jazz Co-Op in Chiang Mai.

Next

2nd Set: Live in Minneapolis, and a first record from Melting ICE. The first releases are test runs: we learn on our own records before anyone trusts us with theirs.

The network

AnthroSonus

AnthroSonus is an invite-only network for improvisers, started by Anthrophonic. Everyone on it is brought in by someone who knows their playing. It holds the players, the rooms that actually book this music, and notes from people who've played them.

Anthrophonic is where we make and release things. AnthroSonus is how we find each other, the rooms and the listeners.

Players

Every guest, duo partner and player on a record can come from people already vouched for.

Rooms

Venues that book improvised music, so a new city starts with a list, not a blank page.

Listeners

Each member brings their own audience. A record or a night reaches their people as well as ours.

Status

Small and in testing. It grows by invitation, one vouched-for player at a time.

The tools

Built so more time goes to playing

Booking, emailing, selling and promoting eat the time that should go to music. We build tools that do that work, and we share them with everyone in the collective.

Live now

  • Artist pages each artist edits themselves: records, who they play with, shows, press.
  • Release pages with the music, credits and story, on a player that keeps going across the site.
  • Release planner: set a date and it counts back about 30 steps, from masters to splits to press.
  • Tour planner: dates and cities in, venues from AnthroSonus and trains between stops out.
  • Night pages, with a QR code on the table for the audience's photos and video.
  • Mailing list that knows where people live, so we write to the people near a night.
  • QR codes and short links with the collective's mark, which we can repoint any time. Each scan is counted anonymously, so we know which nights, programs and posters people actually use, and which led to a sign-up or a photo.

Coming next

  • Social media planner: posts drafted for every night and release, for the collective's channels with each player tagged. Nothing posts without a person checking it.
  • Shop for records and merch on the release pages.
  • Press tools: a shared press list, pitching and follow-ups.
  • Money per night and per tour: fees, costs, who gets paid.
  • Sales reports from every place the music is sold.

How money works

Simple, and visible

  • Artists keep their music. Nothing here takes anyone's rights or masters.
  • Nothing is taken from anyone's gigs.
  • When the collective has income, real costs are paid back first, and the core can see every one of them.
  • After that it's shared, and what's left goes into more nights and more records.
  • The core decides together, by simple majority, and sleeps on the big ones.

The details, like the label's share of sales, are being settled with the people involved before the first release.

How it grows · plans

One night, then many cities

Nights like this last when they start small, keep a fixed day, and have more than one person who can run them. So we grow in phases: prove the night in one city, then take the same template to places where someone local will host it.

Phase 1 · first

Budapest

Planning

A pilot run with the house band, then a review: what worked, what to change, whether it carries itself. The room and the date are still to set.

Phase 2 · next

Chiang Mai

Waiting on dates

A series in Chiang Mai, the city where our night ran every Wednesday from September 2023 to January 2025 and became Arkive Sessions. The players and the habit are already there.

Phase 3 · later

New cities, local hosts

Planning

The same template, run by someone who lives there, with the tools and the network behind them.

Fishguard

West Wales. Room to be confirmed.

Bordeaux

France. Host and room to be found.

Minneapolis

Where Anthrophonic began. Host and room to be found.

Later, an idea: a yearly week that brings the hosts and players from every city together in one place, mixing people who've never played together. That's how several long-running improv series grew beyond their first room.

Hosting a night

What a host gets, and what a host does

What comes with it

  • The format, tested and written down.
  • A night page, QR codes and audience uploads for every show, with scan counts for their city.
  • The program template, ready to fill in.
  • Players and rooms from AnthroSonus.
  • The mailing list, written to the people near the night.
  • A route from a good night to a record on the label.
  • Help from the core, and the other cities.

What a host does

  • Finds the room and keeps a fixed day.
  • Builds a house band and invites guests.
  • Hosts the conversation, or finds who will.
  • Names a second person who can run it too.
  • Records the night and clears consent with the players.

Talk to us

Want a night in your city?

Write to us through the form at anthrophonic.com/contact. It comes straight to us.