Izumi Kimura, piano: "As a contemporary pianist, I am attracted to the things that live in the cracks between composed and improvised music. Between abstract and concrete, variations of the forms the Nature takes, our roles, cultures, languages, attitudes, things unknown, things in between, invisibles and inaudibles, all these things are vibrations I try to listen, through the act of playing the piano.

I was born in Yokohama, Japan, and have been playing the piano since I was little and the whole time I spent in Japan, which was up to 1995. As soon as I graduated from Toho University of Music in Tokyo I moved to Ireland. It took a long time and some turbulence of life before my music and life started to grow together. Very slowly, life and music started becoming intertwined with each other, and they are becoming one.

I have been lucky to work with lots of great musicians and wonderful people from both classical and jazz/improvised music fields. Musicians and ensembles I worked with include RTECO, Crash Ensemble, Ergodos, Music 21, Michael d'Arcy, Bill Dowdall, Kenneth Edge, Ben Dwyer, Cora Venus Lunny and many more from the world of classical music, and Ronan Guilfoyle, Barry Guy, Gerry Hemingway, Tommy Halferty, Michael Buckley, Dominique Pifarély, Benoît Delbecq, Stéphane Payen, Sarah Buechi and many more from the world of jazz/improvised music. The festivals I enjoyed performing in Ireland and abroad include RTE Living Music Festival, Boyle Arts Festival, Dublin Dance Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, Bray Jazz Festival, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ghent Street Festival of New Music in Belgium, Music 21's 'Brazil Now', 'Artes Da Irlanda' in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and Creative Connexions in Sitges, Spain, and many more."

"Artur Majewski is a trumpeter, born in Wrocław in 1978. Known as a member of Robotobibok, Mikrokolektyw and the Foton Quartet, as well as for his improvisations with various artists.

He started his musical career at a young age on piano but at the age of 10 he switched to the trumpet. In 2002 he graduated from Music Academy in Katowice under world famous trumpeter Professor Piotr Wojtasik . Majewski's thesis focused on the output of Don Cherry - a godfather of avant-garde-jazz trumpet. Robotobibok

During his studies he co-founded Robotobibok (a portmanteau of the Polish words for robot and slacker), a band which explored the boundaries of rock, jazz, electronic and drum'n'bass. Its popularity in late 1990s and early 2000s was considerable in Poland as well as in other European countries. In 2002 they toured the United States and Europe, visiting London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin, and Zagreb. During the nine years of Robotobibok's existence they released three albums: Jogging (2000), Instytut Las (Institute Forest, 2003) and Nawyki Przyrody (Nature's Habits 2004). An independent recording company - OM Vytvornia - founded by Robotobibok's members, published all of them.

Mikrokolektyw

Together with Robotobibok's drummer Kuba Suchar, Artur Majewski founded a duet - Mikrokolektyw (Microcollective). It is regarded as one of the most important combos in Polish improvised music. Its value can be proved by enthusiastic reviews and the fact that they are the only Polish band that publishes its albums in the world-famous recording label Delmark Records run by Ken Vandermark.

Other collaborations

Majewski is also a member of Foton Quartet, alongside Gererd Lebik, Wojtek Romanowski and Kuba Cywiński. So far, they have released one album, Zomo Hall, published by celebrated NOT Two Records. He cooperates with the Szczecin band Kristen, as well, and tours in a duet with bass player Rafał Mazur. With him, Anna Kaluza and Kuba Suchar, he recorded the album entitled Tone Hunting, which was published by Portuguese improvised music label Clean Feed Records.

Years into his career, thanks to his unprecedented artistic abilities and his own original musical language, Artur Majewski has become one of the most interesting improvisers in Europe and has started to draw more and more attention from American improvisers. He cooperates regularly with Rob Mazurek in his famous Exploding Star Orchestra and with Joshua Abrahms and his Chicago-based Natural Information Society."

"Barry John Guy (born 22 April 1947, in London) is a British composer and double bass player. His range of interests encompasses early music, contemporary composition, jazz and improvisation, and he has worked with a wide variety of orchestras in the UK and Europe. He also taught at Guildhall School of Music.

Born in London, Guy came to the fore as an improvising bassist as a member of a trio with pianist Howard Riley and drummer Tony Oxley (Witherden, 1969). He also became an occasional member of John Stevens' ensembles in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. In the early 1970s, he was a member of the influential free improvisation group Iskra 1903 with Derek Bailey and trombonist Paul Rutherford (a project revived in the late 1970s, with violinist Philipp Wachsmann replacing Bailey). He also formed a long-standing partnership with saxophonist Evan Parker, which led to a trio with drummer Paul Lytton which became one of the best-known and most widely travelled free-improvising groups of the 1980s and 1990s. He was briefly a member of the Michael Nyman Band in the 1980s, performing on the soundtrack of The Draughtsman's Contract.

Guy's interests in improvisation and formal composition received their grandest form in the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. Originally formed to perform Guy's composition Ode in 1972 (released as a 2-LP set on Incus and later, in expanded form, as a 2-CD set on Intakt), it became one of the great large-scale European improvising ensembles. Early documentation is spotty - the only other recording from its early years is Stringer (FMP, now available on Intakt paired with the later "Study II") - but beginning in the late 1980s the Swiss label Intakt set out to document the band more thoroughly. The result was a series of ambitious, album-length compositions designed to give all the players in the band maximum opportunity for expression while still preserving a rigorous sense of form: Zurich Concerts, Harmos, Double Trouble (originally written for an encounter with Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra, though the eventual CD was just for the LJCO), Theoria (a concerto for guest pianist Irène Schweizer), Three Pieces, and Double Trouble Two. The group's activities subsided in the mid-1990s, but it was never formally disbanded, and reconvened in 2008 for a one-off concert in Switzerland. In the mid-1990s Guy also created a second, smaller ensemble, the Barry Guy New Orchestra.

Guy has also written for other large improvising ensembles, such as the NOW Orchestra and ROVA (the piece Witch Gong Game inspired by images by the visual artist Alan Davie).

His current improvising activities include piano trios with Marilyn Crispell and Agusti Fernandez. He has also recorded several albums for ECM, which often focus on the interface between improvisers and electronics, including his work in Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and his own Ceremony.

Guy's session work in the pop field includes playing double bass on the song "Nightporter", from the Japan album Gentlemen Take Polaroids.

He is married to the early music violinist Maya Homburger. After spending some years in Ireland, they now live in Switzerland. They run the small label Maya, which releases a variety of records in the genres of free improvisation, baroque music and contemporary composition.

Guy's jazz work is characterised by free improvisation, using a range of unusual playing methods: bowed and pizzicato sounds beneath the bass's bridge; plucking the strings above the left hand; beating the strings with percussion instrument mallets; and "preparing" the instrument with sticks and other implements inserted between the strings and fingerboard. His improvisations are often percussive and unpredictable, inhabiting no discernible harmonic territory and pushing into unknown regions. However, they can also be melodious and tender with due regard for harmonic integration with other players, and at times he will even play with a straight jazz swing feel.

Similarly, in his concert works, Guy manages to alternate harmonic and rhythmic complexity worthy of 1960s experimentalists such as Penderecki and Stockhausen with joyous, often ecstatic, melody. Works such as "Flagwalk" for string orchestra and "Fallingwater - Concerto for Orchestra" display Guy's compositional skill in handling extended forms and writing for large instrumental groups.

Some of his compositions, such as "Witch Gong Game" for ensemble, use graphic notation in conjunction with cue cards to lead performers into playing and improvising material from numbered sections of the score.

He is also an architect."

"Ramon Lopez was born on August 6th 1961 in Alicante, Spain. Drummer, Percussionist and Composer. He began as a self-taught drummer in the mid-1970's. Witnessing a Max Roach solo concert in 1980 was a turning point that fundamentally changed his understanding of music. He was part of local groups until he decided to move to Paris in January 1985 and became increasingly involved in the experimental scene in France. At the same time, he developed an interest in Indian music, and took tabla lessons with Krishna Govinda K.C. He is currently a student of Pandit Subhankar Banerjee, while teaching Indian music himself with Patrick Moutal at the Paris Conservatory (1994-2001) His first recording as a leader, an album of solo drums, was released in 1997 on the British Leo label linked to free jazz music and improvisation. Besides Jazz and Indian music, he is attracted especially to flamenco music. He has worked with some of the great flamenco artists, among them Carmen Linares, Esperanza Fernández, Inés Bacán, Gerardo Núñez, Rafael de Utrera, Chano Domínguez, etc... His musical endeavours have always been challenging; his interpretation of songs from the Spanish civil war (2001) spring to mind, or his duos dedicated to Roland Kirk (2002). From 1997 to 2000 he was drummer in the renowned French Orchestre National de Jazz under Didier Levallet, who continues to expand the traditional vocabulary of the orchestra with new elements. Among many others, Lopez has worked at concerts and festivals and in the recording studio with the following musicians of the jazz avant-garde: Beñat Achiary, Rashied Ali, Majid Bekkas, Anthony Coleman, Andrew Cyrille, Sophia Domancich, Agustí Fernández, Glenn Ferris, Sonny Fortune, Barry Guy, Charles Gayle, Teppo Hauta-Aho, Howard Johnson, Hans Koch, Joachim Kuhn, Daunik Lazro, Jeanne Lee, Thierry Madiot, Roscoe Mitchell, Joe Morris, Ivo Perelman, Enrico Rava, Paul Rogers, Louis Sclavis, Alain Silva, Archie Shepp, John Surman, Claude Tchamitchian, Mal Waldron, Christine Wodrascka... Ramon Lopez is an un-typical percussionist. He is a musician who has mastered a number of different musical traditions. He loves to work with artists from other disciplines, with actors, choreographers or visual artists. He is currently one of the most respected European musicians in the area of contemporary jazz or improvised music. The French government named him "Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters" in 2008."-Jorge García, Institut Valencia de la Musica.