"Frode Gjerstad was born in Stavanger, Norway, 24-03-1948. He started trying to play improvised music as a trumpeter in 1968. When he moved to Lund in Sweden (1971 to 1975) he got a chance to meet, talk and play with musicians interested in this music. He had at that time started playing tenor saxophone (1969).

After he came back to Stavanger in 1975 he started collaborating with keyboardist Eivin One Pedersen. Together, they explored many different aspects of improvised music, as a duo or with others, but it was not until 1981, when they first played with John Stevens, that he had a real chance to feel what a dedicated musicians can do to the music-making.

At the early stage of his career, he choose mainly to play with international musicians because there was no tradition in Norway for the free music. However, after the club Blå opened in Oslo in 1996, a good number of younger musicians are now picking up on the music.

His relationship with British drummer, John Stevens which started in -81 and lasted up until his death in -94, was of great importance both musically as well as on a personal level. Through Stevens, he was introduced to some of the finest British improvisers and got to know their way of playing. Together, they led the trio "Detail" starting with Johnny Dyani on bass. And after Johnny died in -86, with Kent Carter.

He has also been active, running a larger group of mostly Norwegian musicians, the Circulasione Totale Orchestra. He started the group using electric instruments and modern rock-oriented rhythms. He has used the band to present his own compositions as well as a workshop and a place for young people to get to know free music. The band presented a commissioned work at the Molde Festival in -89 with a 13 man band combining free improvisations, compositions as well as rapping and scratching.(Three horns, three bassists, three drummers, accordeon, guitar a rapper and a DJ). The Circulasione Totale Orchestra is a powerful ever-changing band.

But it´s not easy to keep such a big group together. In 1998 he decided to keep the core of the band which at that time was Paal Nilssen-Love on drums and Øyvind Storesund on bass and try to develop that sound. It became Frode Gjerstad Trio. So far the trio has toured Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Polen, Italy, Austria, Portugal, England, Canada and the United States.

He has received several grants from various foundations and has been very active in the Norwegian Jazzmusicians Federation as well as in the committee for the Norwegian Contemporary Music Federation. Voted Jazz Musician of the Year in Norway, 1997. Part of the price was a concert where he could freely choose which musicians to use. This was the first meeting with Hamid Drake and William Parker. The concert became a tour of Scandinavia in -97 and the US in 2000.

US Pianist Borah Bergman has also been important to Frode. They first met in -94 and have played as a duo and also as trio with Evan Parker and later Peter Brøtzmann. Borah has been a great inspiration and a challenge over the years!

English bassist Nicholas Stephens first played with Frode in 1984. He played electric bass at the time, but it was not until after John Stevens died in 1994 that they started working together as "Calling Signals". First with a tour of England in 1995 with Paul Rutherford and Terje Isungset. And in 1996 with Louis Moholo and Danish guitarist, Hasse Poulsen. The latest version of the group has been with accordionist Eivin One Pederesen and Paal Nilssen-Love or Tony Marsh on drums. Frode also met and worked with US percussionist Kevin Norton in 2004 and they have found a common ground. They have a trio with Nicholas Stephens: Instinctual Eye.

Electronic music started to make an impact when he met Lasse Marhaug. They have played some concerts together and made some recordings. Lasses sounds have opened up a whole new territory of possibilities and came at a time when Frode started playing clarinets. A very fruitful combination!

Another side of the electronic thing was the group Ultralyd which was Frodes idea: to bring in a loud powerful electric bass with drums, guitar and reeds. After about a year, he left the band because the sound level was unbearable for the old man.! And he left it to the youngsters to decide how loud the band should be. Still, he has continued playing with Morten, Anders and Kjetil in other projects."

"Few Chilean guitarists demonstrated such commitment to experimental music as Ramiro Molina. Soloist, composer, arranger and magnificent improviser, he started playing as one of the key names in the jazz exploration, in the mid-90s, in charge of two avant-garde ensembles: Phaedo (1996) and Turangalila (2001).

Like most of the Chilean electric guitarists, Molina began in music with some names of progressive rock as horizon, but already to the 18 years, in 1984, was integrated to a grouping that would mark its definitive course: Hamilton Big Band. Under the orders of the Ecuadorian saxophonist Hamilton Vela, and with many of the most prestigious jazz players of the time in the star lineup, Molina began his training in the rudiments of swing.

Since 1996 he led the experimental group Phaedo, for which he wrote music for quartet (guitar, bass, drums and trumpet). His compositions developed the concept of "abstract jazz", a very personal view of the author on the transfer of the pictorial principles proposed by abstract painters to sound structures. Later, Molina worked as leader of a series of jazz trios with music written especially not only for these formats but for the characteristics of each of the soloists involved. In this sense, Molina operated more as a learned composer than as a jazz player. In its ensambles it used contrabajistas like Alejandra Santa Cruz, Cristián Espiñeira and Daniel Navarrete, and to drummers like Andy Baeza, Felipe Candia and Nicolás Rivers.

In 2000 the guitarist expanded the original format of the quartet Phaedo, to sextet. This new band was ultimately transformed into his main project as a soloist. Molina then included a rhythm section of jazz and a first line of learned instruments (trumpet, flute and bassoon), where noted the phagestologist Nelson Vinot.

Free and total: the impromptu speech
A year later the lead of the trio of free improvisation and avant- garde jazz Turangalila (with improvisers such as the saxophonists Edén Carrasco and later Alejandro Rivas ) began, after the experiences obtained in the first workshops of improvised music dictated by the English pianist Martin Joseph in Chile. With this project, Molina definitively consolidated himself as an experimental guitarist and intuitive improviser, with studies of "prepared guitar" and the development of new and personal tunings with which he managed to translate to sounds an extended work of conceptual framework for his work.

In 2005, and after closing this project of assembly, Molina happened to be one of the impellers of the group of free improvisation Tiempo Real and with Navarrete (in addition to Rivers ) in 2008 launched its manifesto through the experimental disc Schfrtk. A year later, he led his management and diffusion of improvised music to Piso 3, a stage he founded with composer Karla Schüller and percussionist Roberto Zamora, where several projects related to improvisation were scheduled every week.

During the following seasons, important and very diverse creators from music to dance and other stage proposals were presented in this scenario. In parallel, Molina continued with his open collaborations with different soloists and projects. One of them was translated into the duet with bassist Amanda Irarrázabal, titled Al tiro (2013), but since 2010, the guitarist had rearticulated his small assemblies to explore the new concept of "total improvisation" From the book Improvisation by influential English musician Derek Bailey.

This group, which Molina presented as RAM Trio with Angelo Cassanello (trombone) and Matías Mardones (drums), began to deepen the concept by recording the album Rabdomante (2010), and then performed at avant-garde and improvisation festivals in cities such as Buenos Aires and Recife. The sound quality of the trio changed soon with the incorporations of Isidora O'Ryan (cello) and Nicolás Ríos (drums), and sometimes the group was expanded to act as RAM Quartet, combining trombone and cello along the guitar backbone Electric and battery. The following discs, Bonzo (2012) and Nebula memoria (2014), gave new samples of the musical language of the totality and improvisation developed by Ramiro Molina."