Jay Kruse ( 1968- ) I was born and raised in Houston, TX. In 1983 an electric bass was thrust in my hands and all hell broke loose. All of my creative energy as an artist quickly shifted into the world of music and it wasn’t long before I started getting ‘good’. I filed the frets off my first bass and started getting more into jazz and fusion. Next came the upright bass and serious study of music theory. I then found myself playing all around Texas and the Gulf Coast, all warm and fuzzy with my path laid out ahead of me. But something happened that threw a wrench in this trajectory of mine...something I still am wrestling with. In early 1990 I heard the ‘ney’, the reed flute of the Near and Middle East. In an instant (1 minute and 44 seconds, to be exact..) my whole foundation shifted and I found myself pursuing an entirely different kind of music with strange new instruments and completely new concepts of rhythm, structure and pitch. Not finding any source for these instruments, I made the only logical decision I could: I would learn to make them....