"Caroline Kraabel (born 1961 in Torrance, California) is a London-based American composer, improviser and saxophonist. She is known for her research into the implications of electricity related to recording, synthesis and amplification.

After living in Seattle, Kraabel moved to London while in her teenage years, at the end of the punk era.[1] There she took up the saxophone and became active in London's improvised music scene, eventually developing a style based on the physicality of the instrument, extended techniques and acoustics. She has performed solo and collaborated with John Edwards, Veryan Weston,[2] Charlotte Hug, Maggie Nicols,[3] Phil Hargreaves, and the London Improvisors Orchestra[4] among others. She has also organized and conducted pieces for Mass Producers-a 20-piece, all-female saxophone/voice orchestra[5] and for Saxophone Experimentals in Space-a 55-piece group of young saxophonists, as well as with her two children during walks through the streets of London.

Recordings include Transitions with Maggie Nichols and Charlotte Hug,[6] Five Shadows with Veryan Weston, Performances for Large Saxophone Ensemble 1 and 2 and Performances for Large Saxophone Ensemble 3 and 4 with Mass Producers and a solo work Now We Are One Two.

Caroline Kraabel has been hosting a weekly radio show on London's Resonance FM[7] and is the editor for the London Musicians Collective's magazine Resonance."

"Harrison Smith had saxophone lessons from the age of 13, and clarinet lessons from the age of 14. His first playing experience was with Herrington Colliery Band and later with various dance bands and rock/soul groups in the North East of England. Smith became interested in jazz and started to play with local groups lead by Alex Hand and Alan Glen. In 1973 he attended a jazz course at Barry Summer School (Wales) and some months later he was asked by one of the tutors, Barry Guy, to do a national tour with the "London Jazz Composers Orchestra". The same year he moved to London.

In London he joined John Walters` `Landscape` and also gained valuable musical experience by playing with likes of Mike Osborne, Harry Beckett, Louis Moholo, Harry Miller, Evan Parker, Elton Dean etc. Over the next few years he worked with various groups lead by Dave Defries, Jim Dvorak's `Sun Sum` and `Dhyana` (album to be released in the near future), Rodger Dean's `Lysis` with Kenny Wheeler, the `Michael Garrick Sextet`, Keith Bailey's `Prana` with Chris McGregor and Kent Carter, a duo with Keith Bailey and `Jazz Africa`.

In 1983 he joined the very popular South African inspired group `District Six`, recording four albums, playing festivals and touring in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic etc, as well as Britain. Harrison played with District Six for some 8 years.

In 1988 the `Free Jazz Quartet` was formed with Eddie Prevost, Paul Rutherford and Tony Moore, recording the much acclaimed "Premonitions" album and toured in both Spain and the U.K.

In the nineties Smith worked in a varied mix of projects including Danny Thompson/ Richard Thompson's `What Ever Next` , Joe Gallivan Trio, Louis Moholo Group, a duo with Eddie Prevost, co-led `Ala-Ka-Zam` with Jim Dvorak, `Continuum` a classical orientated ensemble and performed solo.

Harrison put his own group together in 1998... the `Harrison Smith Quartet` with Liam Noble, piano, Jeremy Brown, bass and Winston Clifford on drums.

They recorded their first album the same year `Outside Inside` for the Slam label which received critical acclaim internationally. Since then he has worked with `London Improvisers Orchestra`, the `Dill Katz Quartet` and has performed across a wide spectrum of the music, from jazz standards to the cutting edge and more experimental."

"Hannah Marshall is a cellist who is continuing to extract and invent as many sounds and emotional qualities from her instrument as she can , playing experimental & freely improvised music and collaborating with other musicians, theatre and performing artists in the UK and Europe. She trained at The Guildhall school of music and Drama from 1992-1996. She plays regularly with The London Improvisors Orchestra and has performed at various festivals including VNM-Graz, Freedom of the City - London, Fete Qua Qua, Nickelsdorf-Konfrontationen, Banlieue Bleu-Paris, Jazz em Agosto-Lisbon, Barcelona Horta Cordel, ring ring-belgrade, Wels Unlimited- Austria, Alpen Glow - UK/Austria, Taktlos, Nantes festival, Saalfelden jazz festival, Red Ear Amsterdam, thirstyfish festival - London, Konfrontationen, Akouphene-Geneva, Europa Jazz Festival, Joyful Noise Festival- Swtizerland, Blurred Edges Festival- Hamburg. She has been invited by Fred Frith, Thomas Lehn and Suichi Chino in their residencies at café Oto, and by Evan Parker in his monthly residency at The Vortex Club."

"Marcio Mattos was born Rio de Janeiro, 20th March 1946; double bass, 'cello.

Studied acoustic guitar in early teens, switching to double bass and cello, mainly self-taught, after becoming interested in Jazz. Later entered the Villa-Lobos institute where he became involved in improvisation and electronic music. Since coming to Europe in 1970 has performed, recorded and broadcast both in Britain and abroad in groups including John Surman, Evan Parker, John Stevens, Keith Tippett, Derek Bailey's Company, Dewey Redman and Marylin Crispell amongst others. Has also worked with dance companies such as Ballet Rambert and The Extemporary Dance Theatre Company, and in electro-acoustic music groups such as the West Square Electronic Music Ensemble.

A long- standing member of the Eddie Prevost Quartet and various Elton Dean groups. Other current British projects include the "Bardo State Orchestra", Chris Burn's Ensemble, "Wooden Taps" with Maggie Nicols, "Embers" with John Butcher and others, "Lines" with Phil Wachsmann/Jim Denley and others, and "Full Monte" with Chris Biscoe, Brian Godding and Tony Marsh . International projects working in Europe have included Georg Graewe's Grubenklang Orchestra, Stefano Maltese's "Open Music Ensemble", Tony Oxley's Celebration Orchestra, "AXON"- trio with Phil Minton and Martin Blume , bass/cello and shakuhachi duo with Shiku Yano, and in Japan various groupings with Sabu Toyozumi and Keiko Midorikawa.

Also trained as a Ceramic artist at Goldsmiths college and continues to make and exhibit work in clay."

"David Ryan is a visual artist and writer based in London and Cambridge, who is also actively involved in contemporary music. He studied at Liverpool and Coventry Polytechnics, and also on a travelling German Scholarship to Hamburg, Lubeck and Berlin. His extensive writing on art and music includes pieces on Jessica Stockholder, Bernard Frize, John Riddy, Shirley Kaneda, Fabian Marcaccio, Franz Ackermann, David Reed, Katherina Grosse, Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, Helmut Lachenmann and Jonathan Lasker for various art publications including Modern Painters, Dissonanz in Switzerland, Leonardo Music Journal, San Francisco, Art Papers USA, Contemporary Visual Arts, Contemporary, London, Artpress, Paris, and Tempo, and Art Monthly, London. Catalogue contributions include Hybrids for Tate Liverpool, and Jessica Stockholder/Fabian Marcaccio for Sammlung Goetz, Munich. He has given lectures on abstract painting including venues such as the UNAM (National University of Mexico), Mexico, Warwick Arts Centre, Forum Konkrete Kunst, Erfurt, Germany, Dahl Gallery, Lucerne, Switzerland, and Tate Liverpool, UK. His publication Talking Painting: Dialogues with 12 Contemporary Abstract Painters (2002) is published by Routledge. He has lectured at Christies, Sothebys, and is currently reader in Fine Art at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. He has exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery (Open Exhibition), London, British Abstract Painters, Flowers West, Los Angeles, USA; Painting and Time at the Nunnery Gallery, London, British Abstract Painting 2001 at Flowers East, London, Surface Connections, Holden Gallery Manchester, Illuminate at Jasmine Studios, Hammersmith, London, Flux at London Bridge Tunnels, On the Way to Things at Churchill College, Cambridge, Lines of Enquiry at Kettles Yard, Cambridge, and Transfer at Keith Talent gallery, London.

As a performer Ryan has also been actively involved in contemporary music and performed for Danish Radio; Huddersfield International Contemporary Music Festival; New Music Marathon, Northwestern University, Chicago; The Barbican Art Centre, London (Cage Uncaged, 2004), Line-Point-Line, Los Angeles, and is Director of Dal Niente Projects which presents neglected modernist and contemporary experimental works in London. He has also collaborated with numerous improvising musicians such as John Edwards, John Butcher, Eddie Prevost and numerous others, and has a longstanding duo with clarinetist Ian Mitchell. Italian composer Nicola Sani collaborated on Non tutte ie Isole...an 'opera' for three instrumentalists and sound projection in October 2003, presenting a three-part video projection. Other collaborations with Sani include AchaB 3 at the 2006 Synthese Festival, Bourges France (a 3 screen video). He has also composed Prelude/Postlude 2, part of Sonic Illuminations presented at the BFI, London in 2008. Ryan has had numerous awards including Arts Council of England, Jazz Services, Britten-Pears; Holst and Hinrichsen Foundations; Sonora, Rome, as well as Italian and American Government grants. He was presented at the 2008 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with Nicola Sani's AchaB in a new version. His recent films include Knots and Fields (New Music at Darmstadt - with interviews with Pierre Boulez and Brian Ferneyhough), a collaboration directed by Andrew Chesher, and Via di San Teodoro 8 (2010 -11). Recent exhibitions and screenings include Crossing Abstraction, 2009 at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethianen, Berlin; and screenings at Berlin Konzerthaus, 2011; International Music Institute, Darmstadt; Viewfinder, Seoul, Korea, 2011; Italian Cultural Institutes, London and Stockholm, De la Warr Pavillion, 2010/11, and All Frontiers Festival, Monfalcone, Italy 2011, and screenings scheduled for Brussels and New York in 2012."

"Noel Taylor's main instruments belong to the clarinet family - soprano, alto and bass clarinet. He lives in Lisbon, Portugal, where he moved in 2017. He has performed widely in the UK, Portugal, Germany, Poland and Italy. He is a dedicated improviser, but his work also includes short compositions, conductions with large scale orchestras, and organising musical events. .

Recent projects have involved the trio 'Redstart' , 'Splatter (with Anna Kaluza, Pedro Velasco & Tom Greenhalgh), 'Happenstance' (with Chris Biscoe, Tom Greenhalgh, Guillaume Viltard), Grimwald (with Steve Beresford, Terry Day & Roberto Sassi). 'Plank' (with Pedro Velasco,Rachel Musson, Asuman Biswas) and 'Bay's Leap' (with James Barralet & Clare Simmonds)

Splatter have released three albums to date. Many other ad-hoc partnerships have happened along the way - always with the emphasis on improvisation. Two of these shorter collaborations have resulted in CD releases, one with Niko Meinhold and one with Alberto Popolla.

Noel Taylor is a member of the London Improvisers Orchestra, where he is one of the most frequent conductors. He has also led conductions with the Berlin Improvisers Orchestra and at festivals. He has played with Rome's Iato Orchestra. He has performed in Krakow in Poland, Germany, Italy, Sicily and Portugal, as well as London & other parts of the UK.

Other musicians he has performed with include Theo Jorgensmann, Claudio Puntin, Shabaka Hutchings, Eugenio Colombo, Steve Beresford, Mick Beck, Carlos Zingaro, Harrison Smith, Mark Sanders, Terry Day, Dominic Lash, Rafal Mazur, Cleveland Watkiss, Steve Noble, Liam Noble, Luca Venitucci, Stefano Guist, diatribes, Pat Thomas, Lawrence Casserley, Satoko Fukuda, Henrik Wallsdorf, Tony Marsh & Veryan Weston, Nick Stephens, Fumi Okiji, Marcio Mattos,Ricardo Tejero, Alex Ward, Orphy Robinson & many others.

His most regular collaborators have been Guillaume Viltard, Chris Biscoe, Alberto Popolla, Andrea Caputo, Anna Kaluza, Niko Meinhold, Julie Kjaer, Beibei Wang, Tommaso Vespo, Benedict Taylor, Noura Sanatian, Pedro Velasco , Tom Greenhalgh, Clare Simmonds, James Barralet, Tom Wheatley & John Garcia.

From 2009-2013 he curated a series of events called the Luna Fringe, a series of monthly events at Arch1 in West Ham. Bay's Leap toured Portugal in 2018 and a modified version of Spaltter, which included lthe Portuguese drummer Pedro Melo Alves and guitarist Luis Marins, also toured in 2018."

"David Leahy is a Kent (UK) based musician and dancer specialising in things improvised, from Free Improvisation in music to Contact Improvisation in dance.

In my past, I journeyed through Classical music, through celtic and world music to arrive at Jazz, before focusing my energy on music with less recognisable stylistic constraints. My relationship with dance began as a composer for choreographies, before becoming an accompanist and finally a dancer myself.

I now maintain a duel practice working in the UK and internationally as a soloist and performer (music, dance and combined) / accompanist / composer / conductor and facilitator.

I produce my own work as well as in collaboration with others. Notable ongoing relationships with individuals and institutions include ; London Improvisers Orchestra, Wuppertal Improvisers Orchestra, MbUSkers (Kent-based MbUS group), and Improvisers on the European free improvised music scene. Fevered Sleep (Theatre Company), London Contact Improvisers, Trinity Laban, Greenwich Dance Agency, Underscores in London, Slap, Tina Krasevec, Hagit Yakari, Daun Ensemble, Deirdre Starr, Geraldo Si, Benedict Taylor, Angeline Conaghan and Groundswell Arts.

I recently completed a Masters in Creative Practice at Trinity Laban, which focused on my movement practice. However, my final project centred around the translation of the Contact Improvisation framework, the Underscore developed by Nancy Stark Smith, so as to be suitable for improvising musicians (Music-based Underscore). This is now an ongoing practice with regular sessions in both Kent and London, which is also fuelling plans for further study into music as a somatic practice.

"Born Cambridge, England, in January 1980; played bass guitar since 1994; studied with Hugh Boyd and Pascha Milner and at Basstech (London) with Rob Burns, Terry Gregory and others. Played double bass since 2001; basically self taught, with grateful thanks to Simon H. Fell. First class BA in English Literature from Oxford University (2002). Received MA Composition from Oxford Brookes University in 2003, having studied with Paul Whitty, Ray Lee and others. Received PhD from Brunel University in 2010, having studied the work of Derek Bailey, Helmut Lachenmann and JH Prynne and been supervised by Richard Barrett and John Croft."

"Born in 1975 in the North of Ivory Coast, I had grown up in a wild countryside with almost no music - but many natural sounds. Back in France at the age of 10, I was seized by a compulsive desire of music, listening to many sorts of music, and especially free jazz, to the great displeasure of my brothers who never appreciated Cecil Taylor for breakfast. I was dreaming about bass playing but started studying philosophy.

By the whims of fate, I saw a double bass at a friend's flat. A few weeks after, I was studying at the Paris Conservatoire and having private jazz lessons. It was ages ago.

I gave my first improvised bass solo in 2003 (not without apprehension !) I have played with many artists of the French improv' scene, including Heddy Boubaker, Nusch Werchowska, Isabelle Duthoit, Alexandre Kittel, Catherine Jauniaux, Jean Pallandre, Mathias Pontévia, Etienne Brunet, Soizic Lebrat, Sébastien Coste, etc. I have also organised many concerts in Lyon where I lived from 2000 to 2007."

"Dave Tucker started performing in the Punk movement of the late 70's in Manchester. His first recorded release was 1978 with Mellatron. In the early 80's he was a member of "The Fall" touring as well as recording "Slates" and aJohn Peel sessions with the group. After this time he experimented with other music's and recorded film music. After moving to London in the mid - 80's he studied & performed with Phillip Wachsmann as well as playing with members of the London scene including Dudu Pukwana, Andy Sheppard, Nick Evans, Johnny Dyani & John Stevens as well as others. Was and still is a member of the Alan Tomlinson Trio from 1992 which toured Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia. The trio also performed at many leading festivals at this time. Around this time he also performed with many leading International musicians including Keith Tippett, Otomo Yoshide, Charles Hayward, Barre Phillips, Dietmar Diesner & Lol Coxhill. Recently he toured California from which the PAX release is from. As well as a duo performance with Bill Roper at SIMF festivail in Seattle Febuary 2004 and performances in New York City with Lukas Ligeti He is a member of Pat Thomas' group Scatter (Phil Minton, Roger Turner) with whom he has performed at the Uncool 99 festival in Switzerland as well as recorded radio sessions for the BBC. He currently Performs in a Trio with Louis Moholo & Francine Luce., a duo with John Butcher , leads his own Quartet "School of Velocity" featuring, Evan Parker, John Edwards & Steve Noble and plays Guitar and conducts with the London Improvisers Orchestra & Winkhaus with LA performance artist Anna Homler & Adrian Northover and also has performed tours in the Czech Rebublic with the "Earthieves" He also produces dance music & soundtracks. Most recently comissioned to produce music or Channel four news He has had his first piece of written music performed at the 8th London New Wind festival."

Neil Metcalfe is a UK flutist who has been a member of groups Evan Parker Octet, Garage, London Improvisers Orchestra, Paul Rogers Freedom Orchestra, The Dedication Orchestra, The Intuitive Art Ensemble, The Runcible Quintet, Transatlantic Art Ensemble, Trio F O, and Unlaunched Orchestra.

"Javier Carmona is a drummer and percussionist from Madrid (now settled in Barcelona after seven years in London), Javier is very active in the European free improvisation scene and has performed with musicians such as John Tchicai, Evan Parker, Carlos Zingaro and John Russell, among many others.

Member of several formations, Javier also collaborates with dancers Rosa Aledo and Saija Lehtola in Kicking Louise & Co., a dance company that has presented work in France, Cyprus, Spain and England.

Organizer of FIL Malaga, a festival of free improvised music including performances and workshops, Javier has also led student workshops about free improvisation in Newport University (with Kamil Korolczuk), Westminster University (with Sakoto Fukuda) and Huddersfield University (with Ingrid Laubrock and Olie Brice).

Co-founder alongside graphic designer and electronics player Kamil Korolczuk of Oso Records, a netlabel of free downloadable music focused on releasing various types of experimental music."

"Louis Tebogo Moholo (born 10 March 1940), is a South African jazz drummer.

Born in Cape Town, Moholo formed The Blue Notes with Chris McGregor, Johnny Dyani, Nikele Moyake, Mongezi Feza and Dudu Pukwana, and emigrated to Europe with them in 1964, eventually settling in London, where he formed part of a South African exile community that made an important contribution to British jazz. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Breath, a big band comprising several South African exiles and leading musicians of the British free jazz scene in the 1970s and is the founder of Viva la Black and The Dedication Orchestra. His first album under his own name, Spirits Rejoice on Ogun Records, is considered a classic example of the combination of British and South African players. In the early 1970s, Moholo was also a member of the afro-rock band Assagai.

He has played with many musicians, including Derek Bailey, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Enrico Rava, Roswell Rudd, Irène Schweizer, Cecil Taylor, John Tchicai, Archie Shepp, Peter Brötzmann, Mike Osborne, Keith Tippett, Elton Dean and Harry Miller.

Moholo returned to South Africa in September 2005, performing with George Lewis at the UNYAZI Festival of Electronic Music in Johannesburg. He now goes under the name Louis Moholo-Moholo because the name is more ethnically authentic. South African promoter Slow Life in March 2017 at the Olympia Bakery in Kalk Bay, Cape Town produced a show where Louis performed along with Mark Fransman, Reza Khota, Keenan Ahrends and Brydon Bolton."

Tony Marsh, real name Anthony Vincent Stewart Marsh, was a British free jazz/improv drummer and percussionist (born 19 August 1939, Lancaster, died of cancer aged 72, 9 April 2012 in London, England).

"The percussionist Tony Marsh, who has died of cancer aged 72, was an inspired collaborator, combining intensity with restraint and stroking the drums more than he struck them. He worked with some of the most creative artists in European jazz of the past four decades, from the composer Mike Westbrook to the saxophonists John Tchicai and Evan Parker.

Marsh devoted his life to an art form short on cash and kudos, but long on creative satisfaction. In his last months he sought inspiration in the complex scores of the composer Iannis Xenakis; formed a new trio with two of London's most creative jazz 20-somethings; and, in March, played an impromptu London performance with the Chicago saxophone master Roscoe Mitchell that astonished those who witnessed it.

Marsh was born in Lancaster, the eldest of three brothers. The family moved to London after the second world war in search of better medical care for his tuberculosis, and he spent a long period of recuperation in St Thomas' hospital. That period of illness seriously hampered his formal education, but he became a good enough teenage footballer to enter trials for professional clubs.

He took up the drums as a military bandsman during national service in the 50s and would play them at Butlins' holiday camps and on cruise ships. In the 60s, he made a living in the West End of London as a jobbing drummer - also learning from records by the great American jazz bands of Clifford Brown (with the bebop drums pioneer Max Roach), Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

In the early 70s, Marsh joined the saxophonist Don Weller, the bass guitarist Bruce Colcutt and the guitarist Jimmy Roche in Major Surgery. The band only released one album, First Cut (1977), but it acquired lasting cult status. He also began productive relationships with the saxophonist Chris Biscoe, the Barbadian trumpeter Harry Beckett and the saxophonist Mike Osborne (in the last period of that cutting-edge artist's playing life, before mental illness incapacitated him in 1982).

Marsh then discovered Westbrook's brass band and big-band music, improv, cabaret and more. Marsh's relaxed dynamism powered an unusual Westbrook big band on an Ellington tribute at Amiens, France, in 1984. It became the landmark album On Duke's Birthday. Four years later, Marsh joined Biscoe's quartet, Full Monte.

Through his European tours with Westbrook, Marsh forged a link with the French jazz scene, regularly commuting between Paris and London until the early 2000s. In 1985, he joined Biscoe and a French brass section to record the bassist Didier Levallet's album Quiet Days, followed by a series of sessions led by Beckett - including one that Levallet considered among his best recordings, Images of Clarity (1992). He also played with the adventurous UK pianist Howard Riley, reeds player Paul Dunmall, and with the saxophonist Simon Picard and the bass virtuoso Paul Rogers on their recording News from the North (1991) for the Swiss experimental label Intakt.

Marsh then committed himself increasingly to life in London. He hugely enjoyed his monthly involvement in the experimental London Improvisers Orchestra (involving the composer/pianist Steve Beresford, Parker and a loose repertory company of others). He was also a permanent member of one of the most thrilling European free-improv trios of recent times, with Parker and the double bassist John Edwards. Marsh was also the driving force behind a genre-crossing quartet with the flautist Neil Metcalfe, the violinist Alison Blunt and the cellist Hannah Marshall.

Since 2011, he had begun a productive relationship with two hotly tipped newcomers, the reeds player Shabaka Hutchings and the bassist Guillaume Viltard. They played freely without prolixity, combined fine detail with spontaneity, and eschewed amplification.

"Listen closely, take a chance, keep going even if money's tight, and you'll find the real reward - that's why Tony was hip in the most meaningful sense," Parker says. "And he didn't need to play loud, or be loud, to get that intensity. It's like splitting diamonds or something. If you know exactly the right place to make the impact, you don't need to hit anything hard." [...]"-John Fordham, The Guardian

"Adam Bohman has been operating on the outer fringes of underground music for decades. Working with home-built instruments, found objects, tape cut-ups, collages, ink drawings and graphic scores. Favouring acoustic sounds over electronics, he explores the minute tendrils of sounds coaxed from any number of non-musical instruments and objects. He is a member of British experimental groups, Morphogenesis, The Bohman Brothers, Secluded Bronte, and The London Improvisers Orchestra. Adam's music is unique and experimental, incorporating Fluxus japery, musique concrete, sound poetry and free improvisation."

"Tania Caroline Chen stands uniquely at the intersection of notated contemporary music and free improvisation in today's musical landscape. As an innovative composer and improviser, her work encompasses solo piano, electronics, and multimedia installations. She has interpreted and been influenced by the works of pioneering composers such as Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Michael Parsons, Michael Nyman, and Luc Ferrari. Drawing from these inspirations, she creates interdisciplinary and long-form compositions, as showcased in her 'Quiet Sound Concert' series.

Her compositions, including 'Strands' and 'Icons of Elegance', have resonated at venues like the Strands Theater in California, the Kaohsiung Music Festival in Taiwan, and Iklectik in London. Among her many music albums, her Grammy-nominated work featuring John Cage's 'Electronic Music for Piano' highlights her dedication to indeterminacy and sound experimentation. Tania has collaborated with notable artists such as David Toop, John Tilbury, Wadada Leo Smith, and Ikue Mori. With performances spanning global stages like the Issue Project Room in New York, the Southbank Centre in London, Meakusma Festival in Belgium, and the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, Tania remains a pivotal figure in contemporary experimental music."

"Steve Beresford (born 1950) is a British musician who graduated from the University of York. He has played a variety of instruments, including piano, electronics, trumpet, euphonium, bass guitar and a wide variety of toy instruments, such as the toy piano. He has also played a wide range of music. He is probably best known for free improvisation, but has also written music for film and television and has been involved with a number of pop music groups.

Beresford played in Derek Bailey's Company events and in the groups Alterations with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack, and the Three Pullovers with Nigel Coombes and Roger Smith. He was also a member with Gavin Bryars and Brian Eno of the Portsmouth Sinfonia.

Beresford has continued to play free improvisation with a number of prominent musicians, including Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, and Han Bennink. He has collaborated extensively with Swiss-American artist/musician Christian Marclay and is an active member of the long-standing London Improvisers Orchestra.

From 2010 he performed various pieces by John Cage, including Indeterminacy with Tania Chen and comedian Stewart Lee, and a performance with Ilan Volkov at The BBC Proms 2012 at The Royal Albert Hall in London.

He has also worked with a number of popular musicians, including Ray Davis, The Slits, Frank Chickens, Ted Milton and The Flying Lizards. In 2015 he performed a duoproject with the upcoming Norwegian singer Natalie Sandtorv at the Blow Out! festival in Oslo, Norway.

He was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists in 2012. He is a senior lecturer on the Commercial Music course at University of Westminster.

Beresford's music and his teachings have inspired the musical community in the UK for over a decade. British songwriter and performer Katy Carr cites Steve Beresford's lectures on musical themes associated with Free improvisation, Experimental music, John Cage, musique concrète, Diamanda Galás and The Slits as a source of initial inspiration with regards to the creation of her debut album, Screwing Lies released in 2001."

"Born in 1950, and moved from Cornwall to London in 1972 and began playing as a freelance jazz pianist as well as developing as an improviser at Little Theatre Club.


1975-85: Residency & fellowship for Digswell Arts Trust (Hertfordshire). Activities included:

Collaborations with visual artists (potter-Elizabeth Fritsch and fine artist Steve Cochrane).
Work on written theoretical material, commissioned by The Digswell Arts Trust.
Co-ordinating music workshops, supported by Eastern Arts Association.
Co-founded and composed for young local group - Stinky Winkles, voted 'Young Musician of 1979' by Greater London Arts Association and won first prizes in France, Spain and Poland.
Collaborations with Lol Coxhill, music for Derek Jarman Film. First released recordings.

Throughout 1980s and early 90s worked with Eddie PrŽvost Quartet, Trevor Watts' MoirŽ Music and Lol Coxhill and Phil Minton. Major festivals have included Zurich, Berlin, Nickelsdorf, Karlsruhr, Warsaw, Wroclaw, San Sebastian, Bombay, Vancouver, Nancy, Aukland, Nevers, Washington, Lille, Houston, Le Mans, Strasbourg, Bologna and Victoriaville.

Ensemble projects with Minton:

Duo - Ways, Ways Past, and....Past - diverse songs, originals & improvisation structures.
Songs from a Prison Diary - French commission for 25 singers with poems by Ho Chi Minh.
Naming the Animals -a quartet with Lianne Carol and Ian Shaw, words by Adrian Mitchell.
Mouthfull of ecstasy - with John Butcher, Roger Turner, texts from Joyce's Finnegans wake.
Makhno - for chamber choir commissioned by Taktlos Festival 1997.
4Walls - a quartet with songs and improvisations with Luc Ex and Michael Vatcher.


Other recent duo collaborations with:

Trevor Watts - improvisations with a feeling of form, where rhythm and melody sit comfortably with more abstract moments. A major current project.
Caroline Kraabel - duets that explore acoustic phenomena related to two instruments and how these sounds interact in specific acoustic spaces.
Jon Rose - improvisations using different acoustic keyboards and violins with selected tunings derived from science, history and the imagination.
Hugh Metcalfe - Films by Hugh, images of objects, animals, humans, holidays, journeys, unfold, transform, collide and provide the basis for accompanying duet improvisations.


Local activities:

(1995-6) playing in rhythm section for 'Changes' jazz club in North London with British jazz artists.
Awarded A4E National Lottery support to give series of workshops/concerts with John Edwards & Mark Sanders titled 'Playing Together' in East Anglia (1998).

Helped coordinate and arrange the Lindsay Cooper Song Project (1999). European festivals - Taktlos (Zurich), Angelica (Bologna, commissioned arrangement of "Oh Moscow" for orchestra), Moers (Germany) and Roccella Jonica (Italy)"

"Terry Day: Multi-instrumentalist, Improvisation Pioneer, Song Writer, Tune-Smith, Lyricist, Poet, Painter, Conductor even.

I began Improvising on the drums in a drum duet with my brother Pat in 1955, and in 1960 formed an improvising trio of Piano, bass & drums. Russell Hardy (piano) later became Music composer in Ian Dury's Kilburn & the Highroads.

I am an early 60's First Generation Pioneer of Improvisation, Free Jazz & experimental music. Since the 1960s I have collaborated with many improvising musical Luminaries, Groups, dancers, painters, poets, Artists from around the world, & performed / acted in Alternative Theatre, Events, Rock & Roll, and Nigerian High Life band. .......most of which went unrecorded, or remain "bad" recordings unreleased in my own & private Archives.

I once played many instruments (piano, cello, mandolin, alto & soprano sax), but ill health prevented me from playing for 13 years (1987-2000). Depending on who I am working with, I now play Bamboo Reed Flutes, Drums, Sopranino, Recorders, Balloons & Improvise with my Lyrics, Prose, Verse ( which many call poems - but for me They Are Lyrics ).

Since 2000 I have performed regularly with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO) playing Bamboo Reed Flutes, Sopranino, Recorders, Balloons, Drums, & Simultaneously Conducting & Reciting Lyrics, prose, verse with the LIO. I have also performed Recitation Conductions with the Malaga, Tokyo, & Madrid Improvising Orchestras. My recitations also include collaborations with groups & individuals which can be viewed on my website.

Since 2000 I have continued to collaborate with the New Luminaries of improvisation from around the world, & old Veterans such as the People Band. I toured Japan in 2012 working solely with Japanese improvising musical Luminaries, dancers & the calligrapher Setsuhi Shiraishi. I toured Brazil in 2013 giving workshops, performing solo & with Brazilian musicians. I have appeared regularly on Malaga annual music festivals."

"George Lowen Coxhill (19 September 1932 - 10 July 2012), generally known as Lol Coxhill, was an English free improvising saxophonist and raconteur. He played the soprano or sopranino saxophone. Coxhill was born to George Compton Coxhill and Mabel Margaret Coxhill (née Motton) at Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK. He grew up in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and bought his first saxophone in 1947. After national service he became a busy semi-professional musician, touring US airbases with Denzil Bailey's Afro-Cubists and the Graham Fleming Combo. In the 1960s he played with visiting American blues, soul and jazz musicians including Rufus Thomas, Mose Allison, Otis Spann, and Champion Jack Dupree. He also developed his practice of playing unaccompanied solo saxophone, often busking in informal performance situations. Other than his solo playing, he performed mostly as a sideman or as an equal collaborator, rather than a conventional leader - there was no regular Lol Coxhill Trio or Quartet as would normally be expected of a saxophonist. Instead he had many intermittent but long-lasting collaborations with like-minded musicians.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was a member of Canterbury scene bands Carol Grimes and Delivery and then Kevin Ayers and the Whole World. He became known for his solo playing and for work in duets with pianist Steve Miller and guitarist G. F. Fitzgerald. He was thought to have largely inspired Joni Mitchell's song "For Free", while busking solo on the old footbridge which formed part of the Hungerford Bridge between Waterloo and Charing Cross. Coxhill collaborated with other musicians including Mike Oldfield, Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople), Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath and its musical descendant The Dedication Orchestra, Django Bates, the Damned, Hugh Metcalfe, Derek Bailey and performance art group Welfare State.

He often worked in small collaborative groups with semi-humorous names such as the Johnny Rondo Duo or Trio (with pianist Dave Holland - not the bassist of the same name), the Melody Four (characteristically a trio, with Tony Coe and Steve Beresford), and The Recedents (with guitarist Mike Cooper and percussionist Roger Turner), known as such because the members were (in Coxhill's words) "all bald", though the name may additionally be a play on the American band the Residents. Typically these bands performed a mix of free improvisation interspersed with ballroom dance tunes and popular songs. There was humour throughout his music but he sometimes felt it necessary to tell audiences that the free playing was not intended as a joke. Coxhill was compere and occasional performer at the Bracknell Jazz Festival, and a raconteur as well as a musician; he often would introduce his music by saying the words, "what I am about to play you may not understand". It was following a performance at Bracknell that he recorded the melodramatic monologue Murder in the Air."

"ADRIAN NORTHOVER - saxophones, Played and recordings with B Shops for the Poor, The Remote Viewers, Sonicphonics (with Billy Bang), The London Improvisers Orchestra, Ensemble Trip-Tik, Anna Homler, Ricardo Tejero, The Custodians, Sabu Toyozumi, Terry Day, Tristan Honsinger and JJ Duerinckx ,duo CDÕs with Adam Bohman, Tasos Stamou, Daniel Thompson and others. Current projects include ÔHard EvidenceÕ with John Edwards and Steve Noble, playing the music of Thelonious Monk, Vladimir MillerÕs Notes from Underground, ÔHogcallinÕ - a septet playing the music of Charles Mingus, and a trio with Marcio Mattos and Marilza Gouvea. This year (2016) has also seen collaborations with Neil Metcalfe(flute), Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg (voice), Vladimir Tarasov (drums), and Marcello Magliocchi (drums) and Daniel Thompson(guitar). Adrian is also involved with Indian music (Jazz Thali ) and works with live music for film (Ensemble Kino)."

"Ricardo Tejero: Born in Madrid. Saxophonist, clarinetist and composer.

Ricardo's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, jazz, African music, dance music and conduction of large orchestras. He also has developed and important activity as music educator, teaching sax and clarinet tuitions as well as leading music workshops.

Ricardo began playing alto saxophone in 1992. Initially self-taught he then studied with Wade Mathews. In 1998 he started playing improvised music under the guidance of Chefa Alonso at the same time as he was playing in different ad hoc bands doing Latin Music, jazz or Spanish Popular music. In the same year he formed, together with other musicians, his first improvisation ensemble SOPLATHAT, who played an active role in Madrid's improvisation scene of late 90's.

In 2001 Ricardo moved to Leeds (England) to study music. He graduated in Jazz and Contemporary Music at Leeds College Music in 2005, obtaining in 2007 a Masters Degree in Contemporary Music at Brunel University (London) under professors Richard Barret and Peter Wiegold.

Since he moved to Leeds he played and participated in many different groups and projects like the quintet NEEDS MUST ( Leeds ), a co operative project with drummer Neil Thomas and bassist James Paylor; LCM's DUKE ELLINGTON ORCHESTRA under Tony Faulkner; Omar Puente's LATIN BIG BAND; Sese Seko Mgamba Mandinga Band or played in different projects of LIMA ( Leeds Improvised Music Association ) with musicians like Dave Kayne, Mathew Bourne, Didrik Ingvaldsen, Ninon Foiret, Peter Fadnes or Christoff De Berzenac.

In 2005 Ricardo london went to London where he lived for almost a decade and maintained an active role in the London improvised music scene as well as working with other ad hoc projects, playing and collaborating with musicians from different countries. Some of the musicians he has worked with include John Edwards, Alex Ward, Javier Carmona, Dominic Lash, Dave Tucker, Mark Sanders, Veryan Weston, Niko Meinhold, Julian Bonequi, Alexander Hawkins, Steve Noble, Roland Ramanan, Giorgio Albanese, Roberto Sassi, Tony Marsh, Marcio Mattos, , Hannah Marshall, Frank Paul Schubert, Adrian Northover or Matthias Muller among others.

At present Ricardo lives again in his home town Madrid where he got involved in a number of projects not only in music but also working with dance and theater, colaborating with artists like Paloma Carrasco, Guillermo Bazzola, Sam Hall, Baldo Martinez, Eva Varela Lasheras or Jorge Sanchez. Ricardo also takes part in the colective Raras Musicas organising and promoting musical events.

He has played in festivals and venues of most European countries as well as Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, USA and Japan."

"Alan Tomlinson was born in Manchester and studied trombone at the City of Leeds College of Music. He has been actively improvising since the early 1970s and was a member of I.L.E.A's Cockpit Theatre Music Ensemble, Tony Oxley's Angular Apron, Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the Ballet Rambert Orchestra.

He works with musicians including Jon Corbett, David Toop, Phil Minton and Paul Hession and has toured all over Europe and as far afield as North America and Siberia. He recorded the solo album 'Still Outside' in 1980 and more recently 'Trap Street', with Steve Beresford (electronics) and Roger Turner (percussion) which was released in May 2003 on Emanem."

"Trombonist, composer, and sound installation artist, Robert Jarvis is based in the South East of England and enjoys being involved in a wide range of music making, both as creator and performer.

For the first seven years of his career he worked alongside fellow Kent-based musician Peter Cook on a series of music-based community projects before concentrating on his own education projects, collaborating along the way with many different artists, and eventually receiving The Performing Right Society's Composer-In-Education Award.

From the mid-nineties he began to concentrate more on composition, often making use of found-sounds and integrating these into his score; however, it was not until 2003 that he had the idea of a more installation-type approach to his music making. These pieces were quite successful and led to two separate British Composer Awards as well as an invitation by The British Council to create a new work for the then new Chongqing Planning Exhibition Gallery, in China.

In 2007 he was awarded a residency at The Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden, in Surrey, and this in turn led to a series of other pieces designed for site-specific outdoor spaces, as well as a new body of work drawing from scientific data collected from natural processes, leading to recognition through The PRS New Music Award.

Today, Robert continues to explore new methods for musical creation, attempting to build on his reputation for compositions that entice new appreciations of the sonic landscape and encourage a rethinking of our relationship with our surroundings. His most recent accomplishment is his astronomically inspired aroundNorth sound installation, which is now permanently installed in the grounds of Armagh Observatory.

When not creating or installing, Robert can be regularly heard playing with many different musicians, across different genres, including folk, improv, contemporary, and popular music, as well performing occasionally as a soloist."

"Roland Ramanan is a UK improvising trumpeter, known for London Improvisers Orchestra, Roland Ramanan Tentet, Vole."

"Jackie Walduck is a composer and vibraphone player, whose work explores the exchanges between written and improvised music and the musicians that create it. ​She works with classical, contemporary and jazz musicians from beginner to professional, and collaborates with dancers, artistis and film-makers in a range of contexts to create new work. In 1998, City University awarded her a PhD in collaborative composition. She was invited by the British Council to work in Oman in 2001-3, where she developed a creative strand for the Omani music curriculum, as well as composing the first ever collaborative piece with children and Omani musicians. Her film score for The Dress was premiered at Cannes in 2007. Recent collaborations have been with Kala Ramnath, Amjad Ali Khan and musicians from Shivanova.

In 2008 she formed Ignite with Wigmore Hall Learning a new type of chamber ensemble, working through improvisation. As Wigmore Hall's Learnign Ensemble in Residence, Ignite engages people of all ages from the Westminster community with the creative and interactive aspects of chamber music making. The band has become an energetic and adventurous ensemble, commissioning over 20 new improvised works from leading composers, and breaking new ground at Wigmore Hall with the first late-night concerts, Open House days, and large-scale community projects. Beyond Wigmore Hall, Ignite is making its mark as a fiery new music ensemble, performing at Kings Place, NAtional Portrait Gallery and Whittington Chamber Music Festival.

2015 sees the launch of Tactile, an ensemble of sighted, partially sighted and blind musicians, all working blindfold. We will create music without visual cues, exploring the gift of darkness, as well as creating tactile scores for improvisation with artist Viyki Turnbull. All performances will take place in darkened spaces, immersing the audience in a world in which the visual is extraneous to sound."

"Benedict Taylor is an award winning composer & solo violist specialising in contemporary music and improvisation. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music & Goldsmiths College, and is a leading figure within the area of contemporary composition & string performance, at the forefront of the British & European new and improvised music scene.

He composes, performs & records internationally, in many leading venues and festivals including: Royal Court Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, BBC Arts Online, Berlinale, Venice International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Festival, London Contemporary Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Cantiere D'Arte di Montepulciano, Edinburgh Festival, CRAM Festival, Cafe Oto, The Barbican, Royal Albert Hall, Southbank Centre, The Vortex, Ronnie Scott's, ICA, BBC Radio 3 & 2, Radio Libertaire Paris, Resonance FM London.

Through his work he is involved with a number of higher education institutions, giving composition, improvisation & performance lectures at the Royal College of Music, City University and Goldsmiths College amongst others. He is the founder and artistic director of CRAM, a music collective and independent record label dedicated to new music."

"Charlotte Hug: musician (viola & voice), composer, teacher, media artist, visual artist,

Hug´s innovative musical-visual solo performances in distinctive locations and her interdisciplinary work have created an international furore. She has played in locations such as the tunnels of the Rhône glacier, the House of Detention, an underground former prison in London, a half-demolished bunker in Humboldthain Berlin, the hot healing springs in the spa town of Baden and the dockyard in Coph on the Irish Atlantic coast.

This musician of the extreme is constantly pushing the boundaries of her instrument and has reinvented the viola - and this with an instrument built by the Viennese violin maker J.G Thir in 1763 . She has developed a number of techniques, including the "soft bow technique", which enables her to play up to eight voices. Hug´s speciality is also a blend of viola and vocals, which has given rise to her distinctive tonal language.

In the visual arena, as well as in a musical context, Hug´s sound-drawings "Son-Icons" have found international recognition. These she has used to develop her own compositional method. Hence her spatial and video-scores ranging from solo pieces to orchestra works, such as the orchestral work "Nachtplasmen" for Son-Icons and video-score, which was premiered with the Lucerne Festival Academy in 2011. She has had solo exhibitions at venues such as Swissnex San Francisco, the Sirius Arts Centre Cobh, Cork in Ireland and the Museum of Art Lucerne.

Hug is also fully active as a concert performer, soloist, composer and conductor of her own works at major festivals inEurope, North America, Latin America and Canada, such as Tage für Neue Musik Zurich, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Berliner Festspiele MaerzMusik, San Francisco International Arts Festival. Her extensive discography, including three solo CDs, as well as improvised music from international collaborations is distributed worldwide by important labels.

There are collaborations with international greats, such as the photographer and film maker Alberto Venzago, the theatre and opera director Jossie Wieler, concerts with artists such as Joan Jeanrenaud from the Kronos Quartet, Maggie Nicols, Barry Guy, Phil Minton, Larry Ochs, Evan Parker, Elliott Sharp, etc.

Hug gives master classes in improvisation and "instant composing". She also gives lectures and performance lectures in the field of "Transdisciplinarity in the Arts". She is a visiting professor at several universities and art academies including McGill University Montreal, CNMAT of the University of California Berkeley and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since 2008 she has held the post of lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts in interdisciplinary studies.

Hug lives in Zurich and on the road. Having completed her studies in fine arts and music, she received various awards and composition commissions, from organisations such as Pro Helvetia, Lucerne Festival, etc. She has been "artist in residence" in London, Paris, Cork 2005 Capital of Culture, and in Berlin. In 2006 she was awarded the city of Zurich prize for composition. In 2011 she was "artiste étoile" at the Lucerne Festival."

"Growing up in Kenya and Cumbria and starting out as a classical violinist, Alison Blunt has become an internationally respected artist creating music utilising or consisting of improvisation, Her solo and collaborative projects often reach beyond the music stage and involve film, text, dance, theatre and visual art.

Alison Blunt was born in Mombasa, Kenya, grew up in Nairobi and subsequently in the Lake District, UK. Finding her way from a classical violin training at Birmingham Conservatoire and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Alison's fascination with sound, motion and space has led her into national and international projects exploring the boundaries between art forms and genres and creating, performing and recording new music.

She has performed new and creative work in contrasting environments including Royal Albert Hall, BFI, Southbank Centre, Barbican, Sage Gateshead, Sesc Pompeia (Brazil), MS Stubnitz (Germany), Boat Ting, Colourscape Music Festival, Little Angel Theatre, Vortex Jazz Club, Cafe Oto, Colston Hall, Symphony Hall, Buckingham Palace Gardens, Latitude Festival, Bimhuis (Holland), SoundOut Festival and ACME (Australia), Musikhuset Aarhus (Denmark), St Magnus Festival & Mull Theatre (Scotland), European Storytelling Marathons (Holland & Belgium), Alte Gerberei (St Johann, Tirol), MS Stubnitz, Radialsystem, & B-Flat (Germany), Stockwerk Jazz Club (Styria), Wunderbar (South Island NZ) and The Kosmos (New Mexico USA) with a diverse array of creative artists including Apartment House, Apocryphal Theatre Company, Renee Baker, Julia Barclay-Morton, Barrel, Barcode Quartet, Cristiano Calcagnile, Lawrence Casserley, Viv Corringham, Guy Dartnell, John Edwards, Vinny Golia, HANAM Quintet, Elisabeth Harnik, Tristan Honsinger, Cat Hope, Birthe Jorgensen, Tony Marsh (RIP), Hannah Marshall, Lisa Mezzacappa, Gianni Mimmo, Phil Minton, Lode, London and Berlin Improvisers Orchestras, Evan Parker, Pierette Ensemble, Reciprocal Uncles, Gino Robair, Mark Sanders, Guillaume Viltard, Ove Volquartz and Michael Zerang.

Alison's activities range from composing for film, visual arts, theatre and contemporary dance productions to touring solo musical storytelling performances, from performances with interdisciplinary ensembles to arranging and recording children's albums, from gigging with rock bands to gigging with world folk music artists, from writing about new music to performing and recording new music. Alison resists being pigeonholed."

"Philipp Wachsmann. Born Uganda, 1944; violin, viola and electronics.

In the CD booklet to Gushwachs, John Corbett notes that Phillip Wachsmann came to free improvisation from a predominantly classical background, particularly via the contemporary experiments of "indeterminacy, graphic and prose-based scores, conceptualism and electroacoustics, listening to Webern, Partch, Ives, Berio and Varèse, reading 'Die Reihe' and interrogating the rhythmic, harmonic and melodic preoccupations of Western art music. Starting in 1969, Wachsmann was a member of Yggdrasil, an ensemble performing works by Cage, Cardew, Feldman, Ashley and others and in this group he used contact mikes on the violin and made his own electronic instruments, ring modulators and routing devices. Ironically, his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris (1969-1970) pushed him hard in the direction of free music. He recalls: 'Despite her neoclassical orientation, her insistence that composition is about the imagination of performance and its realisation, the live moment, and her stunning ability to make this happen was a powerful influence on me, steering towards 'performance' and therefore 'improvisation'.'"

Wachsmann moved from Yggdrasil to Chamberpot - recorded on Bead 2 - and shortly thereafter appeared on Tony Oxley's influential February papers, forward looking in the virtual 'industrial' orientation of some of the tracks, years before this became an accepted genre; the two musicians have continued to work together, in various groupings but notably in the percussionist's Celebration Orchestra. Philipp Wachsmann has also performed and/or recorded with: Derek Bailey's Company, e.g. on the recording Epiphanies; Georg Graewe; Barry Guy; Iskra 1903; King Übü Orchestrü; London Jazz Composers' Orchestra; Evan Parker, particularly as part of the Evan Parker Electronic Project; Quintet Moderne; Fred Van Hove's ML DD 4; Rüdiger Carl's COWWS (now CPWWS) Quintet; and Lines, with Martin Blume, Jim Denley, Axel Dörner and Marcio Mattos. He also plays as a solo musician.

Phillip Wachsmann also administers Bead Records."