"Tom Chant: Born 8th March 1975, Dublin.

Tom began piano lessons when he was eight years old. After getting increasingly inspired by jazz, free jazz and modern composition as a teenager he attended an A-level course in music in 1993 with teachers Philip Flood - composer; jazz trombonist Mark Bassey; and pianist Chris Wilson. He bought his first soprano saxophone in 1995 and began improvising soon after when he started attending singer Maggie Nicols' weekly Gathering night. Around this time Tom attended composition classes with Sam Haydn and was a member of a contemporary music hand-bell group led by Pete Devenport, both at South London music centre Musicworks. His first recordings were from this period, with Gwen Jamois, as the Sycophants - an electronic music duo. They recorded for the record labels Ninja Tune and Lo Recordings.

In 1997, Tom started recording with Jason Swinscoe, founder of the Cinematic Orchestra. Through his parents, Michael Chant and Carole Finer - who were both members of the Scratch Orchestra - he met Eddie Prévost, AMM's master drummer, who created the Eddie Prévost Trio with Tom on saxophones and John Edwards on double bass. With both groups (and a couple of others) he has toured all over North America, Europe and Japan. He has played at major festivals like North Sea Jazz, Montreux, Sonar, Vancouver Jazz, Ulrichsberg Kalaidaphon, Nickelsdorf, Fuji Rock, Only Connect at London's Barbican Hall, Ether and the LMC festival at London's South Bank Centre and at the Pompidou Centre, Paris and the Sydney Opera House. With the Cinematic Orchestra he has recorded the albums "Motion," "Remixes," "Everyday," "Man with a Movie Camera" and "Ma Fleur" for Ninja Tune, and with the Eddie Prévost Trio he has recorded the albums "Touch," "The Virtue in If," "The Blackbird's Whistle" and "All Change" for Eddie's label Matchless Recordings.

He has appeared on Portuguese television with Telectu, Thai TV with Cinematic Orchestra and Welsh television with Rhodri Davies and has presented a weekly live music programme on Resonance FM radio in London. He has worked with internationally renown artists Bernard Purdey, Fontella Bass, Sunny Murray, Toshimaru Nakamura and Gerry Hemingway and with many London, Paris and Barcelona based improvisers including Steve Noble, Veryan Weston, Steve Beresford, Pat Thomas, John Bisset, Gail Brand, Sharif Sehnaoui, Agustí Fernandez and Pablo Rega and with the London Improvisers Orchestra which includes the likes of Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, John Butcher and many more. He has worked with dance music acts like Coldcut, DJ Vadim and Bonobo and in Paris with dance group Compagnie Jot.

Currently active groups include the Cinematic Orchestra, the Eddie Prévost Trio and Stripped Abstract."

11/18/2024

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"Northern Irish guitarist Ross Lambert (19xx) has been involved in, initiated and been a connector between a wide variety of improvisatory music since his first exposure and immediate commitment to it in Sheffield via Derek Bailey during the mid-eighties. Although his work is painfully under-documented, he has collaborated with a huge number of musicians, including Ami Yoshida, Evan Parker, John Butcher, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Tetuzi Akiyama and Rhodri Davies - as well as his close friends Seymour Wright, Sebastian Lexer and Eddie Prévost."

-Inexhaustible Editions (http://inexhaustible-editions.com/artists/)
11/18/2024

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Sebastian Lexer is a UK pianist, improviser, researcher, and software engineer. His recordings can be heard on Matchless Records, Another Timbre, Fataka, and Dromos Records. He attended Goldsmiths College, University of London between 1995-2000.

-Squidco 11/18/2024

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UK trumpeter Jamie Coleman is a membmer of 9!, Coleman / Kasyansky / Wright, The Cinematic Orchestra, and Zero 7. He can also be heard on the Matchless compilation That Mysterious Forest Below London Bridge.

-Squidco 11/18/2024

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"Mark Wastell Born 1968; cello.

Much of Mark Wastell's relationship with his chosen instrument is concentrated on the tactile, textural and sonic possibilities of both violoncello and bow. He is increasingly interested in working with extreme elements drawn from frequency, timbre and pitch.

His early activity was consciously and subconsciously influenced by a variety of improvising musicians including John Stevens, Barry Guy, Phil Durrant and John Russell. Subsequent exposure to contemporary composers lead to a greater understanding and appreciation of the works written for strings by Feldman, Cage, Nono, Lachenmann and Sciarrino. The use of live electronics and music concrete by Tudor, Parmegiani, Xenakis and others was another important early influence.

Wastell's current instrumental material primarily focuses on using abstract principles of space and texture - encompassing elements of new London silence, pro-instrument minimalism, new complexity and electro-acoustics. Because of the very nature of his chosen instrument, he tends to favour 'chamber' style ensembles and is a member of a number of regular groups:

• Chris Burn's Ensemble, with John Butcher, Rhodri Davies, John Russell, Matt Hutchinson

• Derek Bailey's Company - with, for example, Will Gaines, Simon H. Fell and Rhodri Davies

• Evan Parker's String Project, with Peter Cusack, Hugh Davies, Rhodri Davies, Phil Durrant, John Edwards, Kaffe Matthews, Marcio Mattos, John Russell

• Assumed possibilities, with Chris Burn, Rhodri Davies and Phil Durrant

• The Sealed Knot, with Burkhard Beins and Rhodri Davies

• Necessaire with Alessandro Bosetti, Ignaz Schick and Burkhard Beins

• IST with Simon Fell and Rhodri Davies

• Quatuor Accorde with Tony Wren, Phil Durrant and Charlotte Hug

• Broken Concort, a duo with Rhodri Davies

Mark Wastell has also performed with many other leading musicians including John Zorn, Keith Rowe, Peter Kowald, Hugh Davies, Roger Turner, Veryan Weston, Lol Coxhill, Mark Sanders, Axel Dorner, Hans Koch, Phil Minton, Max Eastley and Steve Beresford.

As a soloist he has played at the Micro-classical Festival (London 1996), LMC Festival (London 2000) and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2000). He has travelled extensively with various groups, performing on tour and at festivals in the USA, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Greece. Other work includes the launch in 1996 of his own record label, Confront Recordings. Wastell is also joint co-ordinator of the concert venue All Angels, together with Rhodri Davies."

-European Free Improv (EFI) (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/mwastell.html)
11/18/2024

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"Seymour Wright - saxophonist, investigator, artist - lives in London. His practice is about the saxophone - music, history and technique ­- actual and potential; an on-going, rigorous and exhaustive exploration of the instrument. The energy of this learning is applied to various collaborations and contexts to access/share what he has called the 'awkward wealth of investigation'. His work is documented on two widely acclaimed self-released collections Seymour Wright of Derby (2008) and Seymour Writes Back (2015). As well as STEPS, his current collaborations include lll人 (with Daichi Yoshikawa and Paul Abbott), GUO (with Daniel Blumberg) and XT (with Paul Abbott)."

-Cafe Oto (https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/artists/seymour-wright/)
11/18/2024

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"John Tilbury (born 1 February 1936) is a British pianist. He is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's music, and since 1980 has been a member of the free improvisation group AMM.

Tilbury studied piano at the Royal College of Music with Arthur Alexander and James Gibb and also with Zbigniew Drzewiecki in Warsaw. 1968 he was the winner of the Gaudeamus competition in the Netherlands.

During the 1960s, Tilbury was closely associated with the composer Cornelius Cardew, whose music he has interpreted and recorded and a member of the Scratch Orchestra. His biography of Cardew, "Cornelius Cardew - A life unfinished" was published in 2008.

Tilbury has also recorded the works of Howard Skempton and John White, among many others, and has also performed adaptations of the radio plays of Samuel Beckett.

With guitarist AMM bandmate Keith Rowe's electroacoustic ensemble M.I.M.E.O., Tilbury recorded The Hands of Caravaggio, inspired by the painter's The Taking of Christ {1602). In this live performance, twelve of the members of M.I.M.E.O. were positioned around the piano in a deliberate echo of Christ's Last Supper. The thirteenth M.I.M.E.O. member (Cor Fuhler) is credited with "inside piano" as he interacted and interfered with Tilbury's playing by manipulating and damping the instrument's strings, essentially doing piano preparation in real time. Critic Brian Olewnick describes the album as "A staggering achievement, one is tempted to call The Hands of Caravaggio the first great piano concerto of the 21st century."

Another notable recent recording of Tilbury's was Duos for Doris (like The Hands of Caravaggio also on Erstwhile Records), a collaboration with Keith Rowe. It is widely considered a landmark recording in the genre of electroacoustic improvisation (or "EAI").

In 2013 he collaborated with artist Armando Lulaj in FIEND performance at the National Theatre of Tirana (Albania)."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tilbury)
11/18/2024

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