"John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics.Originally a physicist, he left academia in '82, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians - Derek Bailey, John Tilbury, John Stevens, The EX, Akio Suzuki, Gerry Hemingway, Polwechsel, Gino Robair, Rhodri Davies, Okkyung Lee, John Edwards, Toshi Nakamura, Paul Lovens, Eddie Prevost, Mark Sanders, Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Phil Minton, and Andy Moor - to name a few.

He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of place. Resonant Spaces is a collection of site-specific performances collected during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.His first solo album, Thirteen Friendly Numbers, includes compositions for multitracked saxophones, whilst later solo CDs focus on live performance, composition, amplification and saxophone-controlled feedback.

HCMF has twice commissioned him to compose for his own large ensembles. Other commissions include for Elision (Australia), the Rova (USA) & Quasar (Canada) Saxophone Quartets, reconstructed Futurist Intonarumori (USA), "Tarab Cuts" (based on pre-WWII Arabic recordings, and shortlisted for the 2014 British Composer's Award) and "Good Liquor .." for the London Sinfonietta. In 2011 he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists.

Recent groupings include The Apophonics with Robair and Edwards, Anemone with Peter Evans, Plume with Tony Buck & Magda Mayas and a trio with Okkyung Lee & Mark Sanders.Butcher values playing in occasional encounters - ranging from large groups such as Butch Morris' London Skyscraper and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with David Toop, Kevin Drumm, Claudia Binder, Paal Nilssen-Love, Thomas Lehn, Fred Frith, Keiji Haino, Ute Kangeisser, Matthew Shipp and Yuji Takahashi."

"Vanessa Mackness successfully completed a degree in Fine Art Painting at the Camberwell School of Art in the late 1970s. Her interest in improvised singing developed through meetings with Phil Minton and Maggie Nicols, while further study occured with the singer/composer/instrumentalist Gilles Petit and opera/jazz singer/voice practitioner Maurice-Bertrand Quintart. In addition her aquaintance with Imrat Khan and occassional study with his son Nishat Khan facilitated a broadening of her approach to the voice as instrument. Since 1985, Mackness has worked with, among others, Evan Parker, Phil Minton, Maggie Nicols, Eddie Prevost, Louis Moholo, Alexander Balanescu, Keith Tippett, Wolfgang Gutler, Barry Guy and Phil Wachsmann. She also works with Derek Bailey and has performed at two Company Weeks (1990 and 1991). Her duo with John Butcher has been in existence since Company Week 1990, and since then they have broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Music in our Time and released a recording on Incus. She has sung in Tom Phillips' opera IRMA in England and America (though not on the recorded version), and in the eight-voice Machno project, led by Phil Minton and Veryan Weston, at the 1993 Taktlos Festival. In October 1993 Vanessa Mackness performed solo at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin and more recently took part in Reiner Korff's composition for 35 musicians at the Peter Edel Festival in Berlin."