"Davey Williams (born 1952) is an American free improvisation and avant-garde music guitarist. In addition to his solo work, he has been noted for his membership in Curlew and his collaborations with LaDonna Smith.

Williams began on guitar at age 12. He played in rock bands in high school, and studied with blues musician Johnny Shines from the late 1960s until 1971. Early in the 1970s Williams played in the University of Alabama B Jazz Ensemble and the Salt & Pepper Soul Band. He also started working with LaDonna Smith around this time, and founded a musical ensemble/recording project called Transmuseq. He toured the U.S. and Europe in 1978. Early in the 1980s he worked in a blues band called Trains in Trouble, then joined Curlew in 1986, who released several albums on Cuneiform Records through the 1990s.

In the 1980s he also worked with Col. Bruce Hampton and OK, Nurse, and in the early 1990s played in a punk rock band called Fuzzy Sons. Concomitantly with Fuzzy Sons, Williams played in an improvisational three-piece called Say What?, and worked with Jim Staley and Ikue Mori. Williams has appeared live at some 1,500 concerts worldwide.

Williams co-founded The Improviser, a journal of experimental music, in 1981. He has also worked as a music critic for the Birmingham News and published freelance criticism elsewhere."

"LaDonna Smith, violinist and violist is dedicated to the international new music scene since 1978..

An active performer,educator, editor, and producer of the improvisor, she has been an avid warrior, promoting the improvisational arts, and keeping the music alive in the Southern Eastern United States. From touring the world, producing and hosting concerts and performance, the Birmingham Improv Festival, the improvisor festival of 2010, a month long festival held simultaneously in five different cities across the U.S.A, celebrating the 30 year anniversary of the international journal of free improvisation, she has hosted performers from Sweden, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, France, England, Russia and Ukraine, as well as Japan and Australia for concerts, workshops, and residencies in Alabama, as well as a host of regional and national participants in music, theatre, and dance.

As a performer, LaDonna has created a style of improvisation that is uniquely personal. Alternating classical and extended techniques,she explores her instrument, painting scenarios and sound pictures as she plays. She has performed at practically every major improvisation festival and many of the New Music Festivals. She has toured North America & Europe on numerous occasions, playing solo or in collaboration with others, including Misha Feigin, Sergey Letov, Evan Parker, Roger Turner, John Russell, Gunter Christman, John Oswald, and many others. . Her travels have taken her to the former USSR, Siberia, China, Japan, and India. Her longest musical relationship remains steadfast with Alabama guitarist, Davey Williams. Together, they have toured North America and Europe many times as Trans Duo. As musical partners, they maintain their own recording label, TransMuseq, and also co-edited the improvisor, the international journal of free improvisation, printed eleven editions & published on the web for 30 years."

"Hans Reichel (May 10, 1949 - November 22, 2011) was a German improvisational guitarist, experimental luthier, inventor, and type designer.

Reichel was born in Hagen, Germany. He began to teach himself violin at age 7, playing in the school orchestra until age 15. Around age 15, he began to play guitar and became interested in rock music, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and later, Frank Zappa, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix. Reichel played in various groups before giving up music for a time while studying graphic design and working as a typesetter.

He came back to music in the early 1970s, when he recorded a tape of guitar music. This recording was sent to the jury of the German Jazz Festival in Frankfurt, where he was asked to appear in a special concert for newcomers. Discussions with Jost Gebers, the founder of Free Music Production (FMP), led to release of Reichel's music on the label, his first release being Wichlinghauser Blues in 1973.

The majority of Reichel's body of work consists of solo recordings, along with performances in smaller group settings. He recorded duets with a wide variety of musicians, including accordionist Rüdiger Carl, cellist Tom Cora, percussionist EROC, and a number of guitarists including Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Fred Frith. Reichel was also a member of the September Band (along with vocalist Shelley Hirsch, Rüdiger Carl, and drummer Paul Lovens), and also performed with larger ensembles led by the likes of saxophonist Thomas Borgmann and Butch Morris, an avante-garde conductor.

Due to the limited distribution of FMP, Reichel's music has never much been heard, especially in the United States. Smaller, independent labels such as Rastascan, Table of the Elements, and Intakt have issued some of his recordings in North America. Despite this limited exposure, Reichel was featured in Bart Hopkin's Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones, a book and CD released in 1996, devoted to experimental musical instruments. He was also named among the "30 Most Radical Guitarists" in a 1997 issue of Guitar Player magazine.

Hans Reichel died in Wuppertal, aged 62, in November 2011.

He should not be confused with the painter Hans Reichel (1892-1958), a friend of both Henry Miller and Alfred Perles.

Reichel constructed and built several variations of guitars and basses, most of them featuring multiple fretboards and unique positioning of pickups and 3rd bridges. The resulting sounds exceeded the range of conventional tuning and added unusual effects, from odd overtones to metallic noises, to his play.A variety of daxophone tongues

His Daxophone is a single wooden blade fixed in a block containing a contact microphone, which is played mostly with a bow."

"Lisle Ellis, (born November 17, 1951) is a Canadian jazz bassist and composer who is known for his improvisational style and use of electronics.

Ellis was born in Campbell River, British Columbia. Ellis began playing electric bass in his teens and worked professionally from an early age in numerous environments including studios, radio & TV shows, and strip clubs. He was born Lyle Steve Lansall, but used his initials L. S. as his stage name Ellis; he also used the name L. S. Lansall-Ellis professionally.

Ellis studied at the Vancouver Academy of Music with Walter Robertson and attended Douglas College in Vancouver. He later studied at the Creative Music Studio in New York City from 1975-1979.

Ellis lived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 1982 until 1983 and then Montreal, Quebec, Canada from 1983 until 1992. In 1986 Ellis was the first recipient of Canada's Fred Stone Award, given annually to a musician for integrity and innovation. In the early 1980s in Vancouver, and the late 80's in Montreal, Ellis was a conspicuous activator of musician alliance organizations, performance venues, and concert series presentations. One collective in particular, Vancouver's New Orchestra Workshop, is still active nearly thirty years later.

After moving to the United States in 1992, he settled in San Francisco, working with Glenn Spearman from 1992 until 2001. He lived in San Diego from 2001Ð2005 and New York City from 2005 to the present. In 1994, he was a member of the Cecil Taylor band for a brief tour of California.

Ellis's discography includes performances with Peter Brštzmann, Andrew Cyrille, Joe McPhee, Dave Douglas, Glenn Spearman and about 40 recordings for Music & Arts, Black Saint, DIW, Hat Art, New World, and Victo. His 1989 album, Kaleidoscopes: The Ornette Coleman Songbook, with pianist Paul Plimley, was given five stars in Down Beat magazine.

Since the late 1990s, Ellis has been primarily focused on developing an electro-acoustic interface he calls "bass & circuitry". By 2008, with the completion of a template for this interface Ellis turned his attention back to acoustic music projects with an emphasis on jazz based improvisation and to finding a balance between his electronic and acoustic music interests.

Central to Ellis's music, and a vehicle for both his electronic and acoustic experiments, has been his long standing trio with Larry Ochs and Donald Robinson called What We Live. Di Terra, an Italy-based trio with Alberto Braida (piano), and Fabrizio Spera (drums), has been an exclusively acoustic music vehicle for Ellis. His experimental trio Audible Means with Ellery Eskelin (saxophone), and Erik Deutsch (keyboards), was active on the New York scene in 2006 and 2007 and was a focal point for Ellis's bass & circuitry explorations. Since his arrival in New York, collaborations and interactions with composer/electronic musician Tom Hamilton have also been important to Ellis's work in electronic music."

"Paul (Horace) Plimley (born 16 March 1953 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a free jazz pianist and vibraphonist. He is one of the doyens of the Canadian jazz avant-garde, a co-founder of the New Orchestra Workshop Society and frequent collaborator with the bassist Lisle Ellis. He is well versed in classical music and in all styles of jazz; he was one of the first and most convincing interpreters of Ornette Coleman's music on the piano (an instrument usually seen as antithetical to Coleman's music).

Plimley studied classical piano under Kum-Sing Lee at the University of British Columbia (1971-3). In 1978-9 he studied with Karl Berger and Cecil Taylor at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY. In 1977 he founded the New Orchestra Workshop (NOW), and he has been active in many of the ensembles associated with NOW, including the NOW Orchestra.

His work with Lisle Ellis is extensive, and includes the duo CD Both Sides of the Same Mirror (Nine Winds, 1989); When Silence Pulls, with Andrew Cyrille (Music & Arts, 1990); Noir, with Bruce Freedman and Gregg Bendian (Victo, 1992); Density of the Lovestruck Demons with Donald Robinson (Music & Arts, 1994); and Safecrackers with Scott Amendola (Victo, 1999). Most notable, perhaps, are two recordings for Hat Art: the collection of Ornette Coleman interpretations, Kaleidoscopes (1992), and (under Joe McPhee's leadership), a revisiting of Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite called Sweet Freedom, Now What? (1994). In May 2000 he recorded a live act at the 17th International Festival of New Music in Victoriaville, Quebec with John Oswald, Marilyn Crispell and Cecil Taylor. The album was released at Victo Records.

The still Vancouver based musician is a regular at the annual Vancouver International Jazz Festival."

"Composer/Performer Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 33 years on 5 continents. He performs primarily on alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and the shakuhachi - an endblown Japanese bamboo flute. His solo work utilizes an expanded palette of sonic language, creating a kind of personal idiom all its own. In an ensemble setting, he leads the trio Sync, with Jerome Harris, guitars and Samir Chatterjee, tabla, works with the Mivos string quartet playing his Quintet for Clarinet and Strings and collaborates around the world with fellow improvisors. Recent recordings include this Quintet, The World of Odd Harmonics, Ryu Nashi (new music for shakuhachi), and Inner Diaspora, all on John Zorn's Tzadik label, as well as Live at Roulette with Evan Parker, and The Fell Clutch, on Rothenberg's Animul label."

"Robert Dick (born January 4, 1950) is a flutist, composer, teacher and author. His musical style is a mix of classical, world music, electronic and jazz, and he is the inventor of the "glissando headjoint" a custom flute head joint that allows the player to achieve electric guitar-like whammy bar effects with their instrument. In 2014, the National Flute Association awarded Dick its Lifetime Achievement Award. The New York Times said his Òtechnical resources and imagination seem limitless" while JazzTimes called him Òrevolutionary.Ó

Robert Dick was born and raised in New York City. He began playing the flute in the fourth grade, after hearing the piccolo on the radio in the Top 40 hit ÒRockinÕ Robin. His primary teachers were Henry Zlotnik, James Pappoutsakis, Julius Baker and Thomas Nyfenger.

As a teenager, Dick wanted to become an orchestral flutist, and played first flute in the Senior Orchestra at the High School of Music and Art and also the New York All-City High School Orchestra. ÒStudies with him (Julius Baker) were geared toward becoming an orchestral player, and that was my dream at the time. But as I grew out of that dream, I realized that my training really hadnÕt provided a look at music from the inside, which is what I neededÑparticularly the idea that music is generated from hearing within and recognizing what you are hearing.Ó He became a soloist and composer.

At Yale College, Dick earned a BA degree, and met Robert Morris, a composer and theorist, who mentored him as he wrote his first compositions. While at Yale, Dick wrote his first book: THE OTHER FLUTE: A Performance Manual of Contemporary Techniques, and then earned his master's degree in composition, studying with Morris as well as electronic music with Bulant Arel and Jacob Druckman.

While attending YaleÕs graduate school, Dick composed ÒAfterlight,Ó a flute piece that used multiphonics as its basis. ÒAfterlightÓ received a BMI Oliver Daniel Prize.

After leaving school in Spring 1973, Dick lived in New Haven, Connecticut until September 1977, when he moved to Buffalo, New York to join the contemporary music group, the Creative Associates. Dick was a member of the group until June 1980. While in New Haven, he wrote his second book Tone Development through Extended Technique and began to develop himself as an improviser and composer.

Dick spent six months in Paris from July - December 1978 working at I.R.C.A.M. (Institute of Research and Coordination, Acoustics and Music) developing his idea for a new flute mechanism. The first prototype was made by Albert Cooper in London in 1984. This design remains unfinished.

From Fall 1980 until Spring 1992, Dick lived in New York City, developing his compositions, improvisations and wrote Circular Breathing for the Flutist. In this period, he self-published The Revised Edition of THE OTHER FLUTE: A Performance Manual of Contemporary Technique and his later books, compositions and instructional recordings through his Multiple Breath Music Company. In 1986, he left the role of concert soloist in contemporary music to perform his own music and the music of composer-performer collaborators exclusively. Dick performed a recital of his own works as part of the New York PhilharmonicÕs Horizons 84 Festival at Avery Fisher Hall in 1984.

In May 1992, he moved to Switzerland for ten years, continuing his career as a composer-performer. He returned to the US in 2002, as Visiting Assistant Professor of Flute at the University of Iowa. In July 2003, he returned to New York City. Since July 2013, Dick has been dividing his time between New York City and Kassel, Germany, where his children Sebastian (born 2006) and Leonie (born 2008) live with their mother, composer-pianist Ursel Schlicht.[citation needed]

Dick's recitals today primarily consist of his compositions and improvisations, occasionally incorporating the influences of Paul Hindemith, Georg Philipp Telemann and Jimi Hendrix into his repertoire.

As an instructor, Dick created a method and practice of teaching for flutists that he documented in his books: Tone Development through Extended Techniques, and Circular Breathing for the Flutist and the two volumes of FLYING LESSONS: Six Contemporary Concert Etudes. He teaches masters classes at hundreds of international universities.

Dick is the inventor of the Glissando Headjoint¨, a telescoping flute mouthpiece which allows the flutist to slide and extend notes.

As a composer, Dick's work has been recognized by a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, a Guggenheim Fellowship and two NEA Composers Fellowships, among many grants and commissions. Dick has composed a new work for the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition. He has recorded over 20 albums and appeared as a guest on many other recordings."

"Lindsay Cooper (3 March 1951 Ð 18 September 2013) was an English bassoon and oboe player, composer and political activist. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians. She collaborated with a number of musicians, including Chris Cutler and Sally Potter, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She wrote scores for film and TV and a song cycle Oh Moscow which was performed live around the world in 1987. She also recorded a number of solo albums, including Rags (1980), The Gold Diggers (1983) and Music For Other Occasions (1986).

Cooper was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the late 1970s, but did not disclose it to the musical community until the late 1990s when her illness prevented her from performing live. In September 2013, Cooper died from the illness at the age of 62, 15 years after her retirement."

"Irène Schweizer (born 2 June 1941) is a Swiss jazz and free improvising pianist. She was born in Schaffhausen, in 1941. She has performed and recorded numerous solo piano performances as well as performing as part of the Feminist Improvising Group, whose members include Lindsay Cooper, Maggie Nichols, Georgie Born and Sally Potter. She has also performed a series of duets with drummers Pierre Favre, Louis Moholo, Andrew Cyrille, Günter Sommer, Han Bennink, Hamid Drake, as well as in trio and quartet sessions with others, including John Tchicai, Evan Parker and Peter Kowald. With Yusef Lateef, Uli Trepte and Mani Neumeier she performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1967. One of her most enduring collaborations is with the improvising musician Rüdiger Carl (de)."

"Maggie Nicols (or Nichols, as she originally spelled her name as a performer) (born 24 February 1948), is a Scottish free-jazz and improvising vocalist, dancer, and performer.

Nicols was born in Edinburgh as Margaret Nicholson. Her father was from the Isle of Lewis, and her mother is half-French, half-Berber from North Africa. At the age of fifteen she left school and started to work as a dancer at the Windmill Theatre. Her first singing engagement was in a strip club in Manchester at the age of sixteen. At about that time she became obsessed with jazz, and sang with bebop pianist Dennis Rose. From then on she sang in pubs, clubs, hotels, and in dance bands with some of the finest jazz musicians around. In the midst of all this she worked abroad for a year as a dancer (including a six-month stint at the Moulin Rouge in Paris).[citation needed]

In 1968, she went to London and joined (as Maggie Nichols) an early improvisational group, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, with John Stevens, Trevor Watts, and Johnny Dyani, and the group performed that year at Berlin's then new avant-garde festival, Total Music Meeting. In the early 1970s she began running voice workshops at the Oval House Theatre (one of the most important centres for pioneer fringe theatre groups). She both acted in some of the productions and rehearsed regularly with a local rock band. Shortly afterwards she became part of Keith Tippett's fifty-piece British jazz/progressive rock big band Centipede, which included Julie Tippetts, Phil Minton, Robert Wyatt, Dudu Pukwana, and Alan Skidmore. Tippetts, Minton, and Nicols also joined Brian Eley to form the vocal group Voice. Around the same time Nicols began collaborating with the Scottish percussionist Ken Hyder (who had recently moved to London) and his band Talisker.[citation needed]

Maggie Nicols recorded an album with the vocalist Julie Tippetts called Sweet and S'Ours which was an FMP]] import.

By the late 1970s, Nicols had become an active feminist, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group, which performed across Europe, with Lindsay Cooper. She also organised Contradictions, a women's workshop performance group that began in 1980 and dealt with improvisation and other modes of performance in a variety of media including music and dance. Over the years, Nicols has collaborated with other women's groups, such as the Changing Women Theatre Group, and even wrote music for a prime-time television series, Women in Sport.

Nicols has also collaborated regularly over the years with Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer and French bassist Joelle Leandre, including tours and three recordings as the trio "Les Diaboliques". Her collaboration with Ken Hyder also continues; the duo incorporate elements of the traditional tunes of their shared Scottish background into jazz improvisations in their most recent project, Hoots and Roots Duo. She has worked with pianists Pete Nu and Steve Lodder, with her own daughter, Aura Marina, with avant-gardists Caroline Kraabel and Charlotte Hug, and with lighting designer Sue Neal in Light and Shade. She performed internationally for several decades, including the Zürich and the Frankfurt "Canaille" festivals, the Victoriaville Festival. She gave solo performances at the Moers Music Festival, the Cologne Triennale, and a number of other creative and improvised music festivals."