Born in Salinas, California, Ernesto Diaz-Infante is Chicano (of Mexican descent). He received his MFA in Music Composition from California Institute of the Arts and has created musical compositions that span a broad perspective: transcendental piano, noise, avant-garde guitar, field recordings, lo-fi four-track manipulations, and experimental song. ED-I has performed throughout Europe and the United States, and his music has been broadcasted internationally. He has recorded more than 15 CDs of music and collaborated with numerous musicans. In 2000, his composition, I/O (for chamber ensemble), was performed by the California EAR Unit. He has been awarded residencies at the Centre International de Recherche Musicale (CIRM) in Nice, France, The Millay Colony for the Arts, Villa Montalvo, The Ucross Foundation, among others. He runs Pax Recordings record label which is dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and contagion of music from the margins of our culture and psyches. He lives in San Francisco with the filmmaker/video artist Marjorie Sturm and their son and daughter.
Swedish-born multi-instrumentalist Helena Espvall plays guitar and cello in several rock bands (as well as performing in a silent movie orchestra, an Arabian Music ensemble, and free improvised music), Besides performing with Espers, she also performs with the Amnesiac Music & Dance ensemble. Espvall frequently lends cello playing to the work of other musicians. She has been a member of the touring bands for Vashti Bunyan, Damon and Naomi, Ghost and Marissa Nadler; she has made guest appearances on records by Bert Jansch, Arborea, and Charalambides, among others.
Helena has performed several times at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, twice at the High Zero Festival of improvised music in Baltimore, at the Improvised and Otherwise Festival in Brooklyn, at the Big Sur experimental festival in California and at Terrastock 2006 in Providence, RI among others.