"Luis Conde plays Single reeds / sax and clarinet, an expert on popular music and contemporary improvisation / teaching and research, as well as performer, composer, performer. Born in 1965, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Over the last decade has developed a continuous activity of new practices based on so-called instrumental extended techniques. He has studied saxophone with Victor Skorupski (ARG) attended clinics Ralph Lalama, Jim Odgren (Berklee College) and Villafruela Miguel (CUB). Masters in Clarinet with Eduardo Prado (National Symphony Orchestra), Martin Moore (Banda Sinfónica CABA), and with Alain Damiens Masterclasses (FRA, Ensemble Intercontemporain). He has also studied the shakuhachi (traditional Japanese wind instrument) with the Horacio Curti. Contemporary composition studies with Maestro Ernesto Conrado. Close collaborations with international musicians in Argentina and abroad, citing Axel Dorner, John Russell, Nabicht Theo, Jacques Demierre."

"Nicolás Ríos has been one of the most vital jazz drummers of the zero-zero generation, with proposals ranging from post-bop to a marked avant-garde, and with formats from acoustic chamber music to experiments with electronics. He is a composer but above all free improviser, aspects that are exposed in works such as Fuera de foco (2005), with which he began his journey within jazz. He is considered a soloist close to the Andy Baeza of the 2000s, and is part of a wave of drummers who in those days explored experimental music. like Julio Denis, Matías Mardones and Hugo Manuschevich.

Ríos studied learned composition at the University of Chile and from this location he composed a considerable amount of chamber works. Ríos initially acted in various experimental music ensembles, with generational musicians such as flutist Marcelo Maira, altoist Sebastián Zúñiga, guitarist Armando Ulloa, or his brother bass player Rodrigo Ríos. In 2005 he replaced Andy Baeza in the last appearances of the free trio Turangalila, episode that connected him with the guitarist Ramiro Molina, in whose subsequent trios of free improvisation he came to work more open and progressive languages ​​for a polyvalent battery.

Involved directly with jazz, he was the sideman of the singer Rodrigo González and the saxophonist of the old guard Mickey Mardones (on the album Da gracias a la vida, 2006). He also joined the tango-jazz quintet of pianist Rodrigo Ratier (in Neurotango, 2008) and the quintet of guitarist Sebastián Prado ( Patafísica, 2009). His first album is Fuera de foco (2005), with works written for a chamber quintet of unusual instrumentation within jazz: baritone sax ( Alejandro Rivas ), bass clarinet ( Alfredo Abarzúa ) and vibraphone ( Carlos Vera Jr ). In 2010 he recorded the album Armánico, in coliderazo with Armando Ulloa, and in 2015 he joined the sextet of the singer Arlette Jequier."

"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."