"Bo Van der Werf (°1969) graduates from the Conservatory of Music in Amsterdam.

Early on, he works out a dual career path: as sideman on the one hand and as leader of his own projects on the other.

So, he is involved right from the start when the Brussels Jazz Orchestra is founded and still has his permanent spot in the band.

In addition, he performs with several other ensembles, including Septych (Bram De Looze's septet), Lidlboj (with pianist-keyboarder Jozef Dumoulin), Dragons (French saxophonist Alexandra Grimal's quintet), Workshop (with French saxophonist Stéphane Payen), the Sylvain Cathala Septet and MikMâäk. He also composes music for documentaries and dance performances and there is the collaboration with contemporary music ensemble Ictus. He plays on the first Aka Moon albums as well.

He develops his personal vision with his band Octurn, which just like the BJO sees the light of day in the Brussels jazz club Sounds. Here he focuses on deepening principles in line with Olivier Messiaen's ideas and contemporary classical music, and linking all of this to jazz idioms and improvisation.

Quite exceptional in that respect are the recordings with the monks of the Gyuto Monastery where this vision rises to a crescendo.

During the upcoming concerts in the Sounds, his quartet Songbook of Changes takes centre-stage with Fabian Fiorini, Jozef Dumoulin and Dré Pallemaerts within its ranks."

"Hamiet Bluiett (born September 16, 1940, Brooklyn, or Lovejoy, Illinois; surname pronounced BLUE-ett) is an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. His primary instrument is the baritone saxophone, and he is considered one of the finest living players of this instrument. A member of the World Saxophone Quartet, he also plays (and records with) the bass saxophone, E-flat alto clarinet, E-flat contra-alto clarinet, and wooden flute.

Bluiett was born just north of East St. Louis in Brooklyn, Illinois (also known as Lovejoy), a predominantly African-American village that had been founded as a free black refuge community in the 1830s, and which later became America's first majority-black town. As a child, he studied piano, trumpet, and clarinet, but was attracted most strongly to the baritone saxophone from the age of ten. He began his musical career by playing the clarinet for barrelhouse dances in Brooklyn, Illinois, before joining the Navy band in 1961. He attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

In his mid-twenties, Bluiett heard Harry Carney (the baritone player in the Duke Ellington band) play in a live concert in Boston, which also made a strong impression on the young Bluiett, providing an example of a baritone saxophonist who played as soloist rather than accompanist.

Following his time in the Navy, he returned to the St. Louis area in the mid-1960s. In the late 1960s Bluiett co-founded the Black Artists' Group (BAG) of St. Louis, Missouri, a collective dedicated to fostering creative work in theater, visual arts, dance, poetry, film, and music. He led the BAG big band during 1968 and 1969.

Bluiett moved to New York City in the fall of 1969, where he joined the Charles Mingus Quintet and the Sam Rivers large ensemble. In 1976 he co-founded the World Saxophone Quartet along with two other Black Artists' Group members, Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake, as well as multi-reedist David Murray. He has remained a champion of the somewhat unwieldy baritone saxophone, organizing large groups of baritone saxophones. Since the 1990s Bluiett has led a virtuosic quartet, the Bluiett Baritone Nation, made up entirely of baritone saxophones, with drum set accompaniment.

In the 1980s, he also founded the Clarinet Family, a group of eight clarinetists playing clarinets of various sizes ranging from E-flat soprano to contrabass. Bluiett has also worked with Sam Rivers, Babatunde Olatunji, Abdullah Ibrahim, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye.

He returned to his hometown of Brooklyn, Illinois, in 2002 but moved back to New York City in 2012. He currently performs at gigs, including the New Haven Jazz Festival on August 22, 2009. He performed with students from Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, CT. The group were known as Hamiet Bluiett and the Improvisational Youth Orchestra."

"Jean Derome. Born Montréal, Québec, 1955. esidence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (saxophones (alto, baritone, soprano), flutes (flute, bass flute, piccolo, alto flute, recorders), keyboards, small wind instruments (ocarinas, jew's harp, game calls, toys...), percussion, invented instruments, voice)

One of the most active and eclectic musicians on the Canadian creative music scene, Jean Derome has managed to earn the recognition of a larger public, a rare feat in that field. Thanks to his large-scale musique actuelle projects, his compositions, his work as an improviser, his jazz groups and his music for the screen and the stage, Derome ranks as a major creative force, in Québec and abroad. He is experienced and innovative on both saxophone and flute, and his unique writing style cannot be mistaken for anyone else's. Sensitive and powerful, his music often features a funny strike that makes its complex nature more inviting.

Ever since Nébu (one of Québec's first avant-garde jazz groups) in the early '70s, Derome has been consistently renewing and diversifying his approach of composition. He impressed audience and critics first with the flute, then with the saxophone, as a lead character in the musique actuelle underground. He took part to the various artists' collectives looking for new ways to express themselves freely, without esthetic or social constraints, including the Ensemble de musique improvisée de Montréal. Later, in the early '80s, he co-founded Ambiances Magnétiques, a collective and record label that raised his profile at home and introduced his name to the outside world. Among his numerous projects, let us mention the duos Les Granules, Nous perçons les oreilles and Plinc! Plonc!, the dynamic group Jean Derome et les Dangereux Zhoms, and the large-scale projects Confitures de gagaku, Je me souviens - Hommage à Georges Perec and Canot-camping. Most of these projects are based on a unique form of synergy between composition, structured improvisation and genuine creative madness, all this articulated with unmatched playfulness. In 1992, Derome became the second artist to be presented with the Freddie Stone Award (bassist Lisle Ellis was the first).

Besides improvising on a regular basis with Ambiances Magnétiques' members and appearing in their projects, Derome has also shared the stage with several musicians of international stature, among others Fred Frith, Lars Hollmer, Louis Sclavis and Han Bennink. He performs regularly all over Canada, in the US and in Europe. He received a Prix Opus in 2001 for his exposure abroad.

Lately, jazz circles have been praising his undisputable qualities as a jazzman, thanks to the Thelonious Monk tribute project Évidence, the Normand Guilbeault Ensemble (whose Mingus Erectus CD is devoted to Charles Mingus' music), and the much-lauded Derome Guilbeault Tanguay Trio.

Although Jean Derome writes tirelessly for his own projects, he is much in demand in the fields of film, theatre and dance. A short list of this side of his work would have to include his numerous scores for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), especially for films by John Walker, Jacques Leduc, Fernand Bélanger and animated films by Pierre Hébert, Michèle Cournoyer and Jean Detheux; his incidental music for Théâtre UBU, Théâtre de Quat'Sous and Théâtre du Nouveau Monde; not forgetting his work with several top choreographers, including Louise Bédard, Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood, Daniel Soulières and Ginette Laurin. Other music ensembles have commissioned works from him, including Tuyo, Bradyworks, the Hard Rubber Orchestra from Vancouver and Fanfare Pourpour. Incidentally, Derome is the musical director of the latter.

Over thirty years of music and 70 record credits later, Jean Derome still has sleeves bursting with tricks."