"Daniel Levin is "one of the outstanding cellists working in the vanguard arena" (All About Jazz), "ridiculously fluent, virtually overflowing with ideas" (New York City Jazz Record) and "very much the man to watch." (Penguin Guide to Jazz). No matter what setting he plays in, cellist Daniel Levin occupies a musical space bordered by many kinds of music, but fully defined by none of them.

"Demonstrating an impressive breadth of texture and contrast, the cellist Daniel Levin comes well prepared for a career in jazz's contemporary avant-garde." (Nate Chinen, The New York Times).

Elements of European classical music, American jazz, microtonal and new music, and European free improvisation all figure prominently in his unique sound. As critic John Sharpe observes in The New York City Jazz Record, "he invokes all manner of musics with prodigious skill: jazz, classical, improv, noise, vocal chorus. His technique is unquestioned and he revels in the physicality of the instrument. Those with an adventurous streak or interest in the outer reaches of the cello universe will find much to savor."

Born in Burlington, Vermont, he began playing the cello at the age of six. In 2001, he graduated with a degree in Jazz Studies from the New England Conservatory of Music, and arrived on New York City jazz scene shortly therafter. Since then, Daniel has developed his own unique voice as a cellist, improviser, and composer. Ed Hazell noted upon release of Levin's first record as a leader, "Cellist Daniel Levin is a major new voice on his instrument and in improvised music." He has performed and/or recorded with Billy Bang, Borah Bergman, Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Gerald Cleaver, Andrew Cyrille, Mark Dresser, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, Tony Malaby, Mat Maneri, Joe Morris, William Parker, Ivo Perelman, Warren Smith, Ken Vandermark, and many others. Daniel is the recipient of a 2010 Jerome Foundation award."

"Lori Freedman. Born Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1958. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (clarinet, bass clarinet)

Qualified as "a musical revolutionary in the front ranks of the avant-garde" by Alex Varty of the Georgia Straight (Vancouver), Lori Freedman (clarinets) is internationally recognized as one of the most creative and provocative performers. She is a member of a select group known as "renaissance musicians" as her artistic activities cover many fields: performer of written music (well over one hundred works have been written for or premiered by her), composer, improviser, teacher, and on occasion, writer. While managing a full performance schedule of more than 75 public appearances a year, Freedman has been receiving commissions to write music for ensembles such as Orkestra Futura, Arraymusic Ensemble, Ensemble Transmission, Continuum Contemporary Music Ensemble, Ensemble SuperMusique, Ensemble Paramirabo, Upstream Orchestra, Queen Mab Trio, Crowbar Trio, Lott Dance, Oberlander Films, Foresite Theatre, Cooke Productions and Autumn Leaf Productions. Her current discography comprises over 59 recordings, the most recent of which include Greffes (Empreintes digitales), On No (Mode Records), Bridge (Collection QB), Plumb (Barnyard Records), 3 and À un moment donné (Ambiances Magnétiques), Huskless! (Artifact), See Saw and Thin Air (Wig). Highlight collaborations include work with Rohan de Saram, Barre Phillips, Helmut Lachenmann, Frances-Marie Uitti, Monique Jean, Joëlle Léandre, Axel Dörner, George Lewis, the Jack Quartet and Richard Barrett."

"Joe McPhee, born November 3,1939 in Miami, Florida, USA, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He began playing the trumpet at age eight, taught by his father, himself a trumpet player. He continued on that instrument through his formative school years and later in a U.S. Army band stationed in Germany, at which time he was introduced to performing traditional jazz. Clifford Thornton's Freedom and Unity, released in 1969 on the Third World label, is the first recording on which he appears as a side man. In 1968, inspired by the music of Albert Ayler, he took up the saxophone and began an active involvement in both acoustic and electronic music.

His first recordings as leader appeared on the CJ Records label, founded in 1969 by painter Craig Johnson. These include Underground Railroad by the Joe McPhee Quartet (1969), Nation Time (1970), Trinity (1971) and Pieces of Light (1974). In 1975, Swiss entrepreneur Werner X. Uehlinger release Black Magic Man by McPhee, on what was to become Hat Hut Records.

In 1981, he met composer, accordionist, performer, and educator Pauline Oliveros, whose theories of "deep listening" strengthened his interests in extended instrumental and electronic techniques. he also discovered Edward de Bono's book Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity, which presents concepts for solving problems by "disrupting an apparent sequence and arriving at the solution from another angle." de Bono's theories inspired McPhee to apply this "sideways thinking" to his own work in creative improvisation, resulting in the concept of "Po Music." McPhee describes "Po Music" as a "process of provocation" (Po is a language indicator to show that provocation is being used) to "move from one fixed set of ideas in an attempt to discover new ones." He concludes, "It is a Positive, Possible, Poetic Hypothesis." The results of this application of Po principles to creative improvisation can be heard on several Hat Art recordings, including Topology, Linear B, and Oleo & a Future Retrospective.

In 1997, McPhee discovered two like-minded improvisers in bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen. The trio premiered at the Vision Jazz Festival in 1998 but the concert went unnoticed by the press. McPhee, Duval, and Rosen therefore decided that an apt title for the group would be Trio X. In 2004 he created Survival Unit III with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Michael Zerang to expand his musical horizons and with a career spanning nearly 50 years and over 100 recordings, he continues to tour internationally, forge new connections while reaching for music's outer limits."

"Michael Snow was born in Toronto not so long ago, and lives there now - but has also lived in Montréal, Chicoutimi and New York.

He is a musician (piano and other instruments) who has performed solo as well as with various ensemble (most often with the CCMC of Toronto) in Canada, USA, Europe and Japan. Many recordings of his music have been released.

His films have been presented at festivals in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Netherlands and USA, and are in the collections of several archives, such as Anthology Film Archives in New York City, the Royal Belgian Film Archives, Brussels, and the Oesterreichesches Film Museum, Vienna.

He is a painter and sculptor, though since 1962, much of his gallery work has been photo-based or holographic. Work in all these media is represented in private and public collections world-wide, including for example the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museum Ludwig (Cologne and Vienna), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), and both the Musée des Beaux-Arts and Musée d'art contemporain in Montréal.

He has done video, film and sound installations, and designed books, examples of the latter being Micheal Snow/A Survey (1970) and Cover to Cover (1975).

Retrospectives of his painting, sculpture, photoworks and holography have been presented at the Hara Museum (Tokyo), of his films at the Cinémathèquie Française (Paris), Anthology Film Archives and L'Institut Lumière (Lyons) and of his work in all media simultaneously at the Power Plant and the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1994. Additional retrospective exhibitions have been mounted at the Vancouver Art Grallery and the Musée d'art contemporain (Montréal).

Solo and group shows of his visual-arts works have been presented at museums and galleries in Amsterdam, Bonn, Boston, Brussels, Kassel, Los Angeles, Lucerne, Lyons, Minneapolis, Montreux, Munich, New York, Ottawa, Paris, Pittsburgh, Québec City, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Toronto and elsewhere.

Michael Snow has executed several public sculpture commissions, the most well known being Flight Stop at Eaton Center and The Audience at Skydome, both in Toronto.

He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1975) and the Order of Canada (1982).

Michael Snow started to play piano around 1948, after hearing and being very moved by boogie woogie and blues. He then listened to everything he could in jazz. He met some other would-be musicians and they taught each other and started to play in bands. For several summers, he and his new musician friends went to Chicago, for a couple of weeks at a time, where they sat in where they could and heard a lot.

In Toronto, he played frequently with Ken Dean's Hot Seven and in other bands. He lived in Europe for a year and a half (53-54), supporting himself by playing piano and trumpet in Italy, Yugoslavia and France, and for a month in Brussels with a local band. starting around 1961, he played with Mike White's Imperial Jazz Band, which was quite busy for a couple of years on TV, making records, and performing at The Park Plaza, The Colonial, and for a year at The Westover Hotel where extraordinary guest artists were hired to play with the band: Dicky Wells, Vic Dickinson, Edmuind Hall, Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart, Buck Clayton, Jimmy Rushing and many other notable Swing and Dixieland musicians.

Subsequently, he played with some of these musicians (and with Wingy Mannone, a New Orleans trumpeter) elsewhere, mostly New York State and Michigan. At the same time, he had his own group which played more "modern" music (Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker). The group usually included larry Dubin on drums, Terry Forster on bass and Alf Jones on trombone. We played at such places as the House of Hambourg, George's and elsewhere.

He lived in New York from 63 to 70 and played with many fine musicians: Kenny Davern, Roswell Rudd, Milford Graves, Steve Lacy, Pharoah Sanders and others. Returning to Toronto, he started playing with the Artists jazz band, a unique band made up of mostly visual artists who also played. They made two lp's. In 1970, Chatam Square, a new York label, issued a double album of his solo music. He have made sound sculpture and have done sound installations, eg "hearing Aid" first intalled at The Kitchen in New York and later in various locations in Europe and Canada.

He joined the CCMC which, since 1976, has played weekly and biweekly concerts at The Music Gallery, sometimes with such guest musicians as Derek Bailey, Misha Mendelberg and Evan Parker. They made 6 tours of Europe and played in several festivals. CCMC has issued 6 albums and a three-record box "Larry Dubin and the CCMC." Snow also published a number of solo recordings, like "The Last LP" (Art Metropole), "Two Radio Solos" (Freedom in a Vacuum), and "Sinoms" (Art Metropole). A complete discography can be found in "Music/Sound: the performed and recorded music/sound of Michael Snow" (The Michael Snow Project; 4), Art Gallery of Ontario/The Power Plant/Alfred A. Knopf Canada, p. 141, 1993."