"Robert Burke has enjoyed a diverse and wide-ranging career as a performer, composer, researcher and educator in music. Classically trained on the clarinet and saxophones, his main focus as a performer has been in jazz and popular music, including eight years performing and composing with Kate Ceberano (including a top-ten Australian hit) and fifteen years with ARIA award-winning band The Black Sorrows.

Rob has performed on and contributed compositions to over 200 CDs by groups ranging from pop acts such as John Farnham, Ice House, Real Life, Vika and Linda Bull, to contemporary jazz projects with leading artists including Tony Gould, Paul Grabowsky, Vince Jones, Tony Floyd, Doug De Vries, Slava Gregorian, Geoff Hughes, Nick Haywood, Paul Williamson, Jordan Murray and Stephen Magnusson.

Rob has performed /recorded with many international jazz artists including Kenny Werner, Mark Helias, Nasheet Waits, Tom Rainey, Enrico Rava Dave Douglas, George Lewis, Red Rodney, John Abercrombie, Paul McCandless (Origon), George Garzone, Richie Barshay, Johannes Weidenmueller (USA), Lula Galvao, Roberta Valente, Hermeto Pascoal (Brazil), Mirko Guerrini, Debasis Chakroborty (India) and Qmars Piraglu (Iran)

"George E. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. A 2015 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Lewis has received a MacArthur Fellowship (2002), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Walker Fellowship (2011), an Alpert Award in the Arts (1999), and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2015, Lewis received the degree of Doctor of Music (DMus, honoris causa) from the University of Edinburgh.

A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis's work in electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, and notated and improvisative forms is documented on more than 140 recordings. His work has been presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonia Orchestra, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Talea Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Wet Ink, Ensemble Erik Satie, Eco Ensemble, and others, with commissions from American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Harvestworks, Ensemble Either/Or, Orkestra Futura, Turning Point Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, IRCAM, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and others. Lewis has served as Ernest Bloch Visiting Professor of Music, University of California, Berkeley; Paul Fromm Composer in Residence, American Academy in Rome; Resident Scholar, Center for Disciplinary Innovation, University of Chicago; and CAC Fitt Artist In Residence, Brown University.

Lewis received the 2012 SEAMUS Award from the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, and his book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) received the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society's Music in American Culture Award. Lewis is co-editor of the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (2016), and his opera Afterword, commissioned by the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago, premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in October 2015 and has been performed in the United States, United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic.

Professor Lewis came to Columbia in 2004, having previously taught at the University of California, San Diego, Mills College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Koninklijke Conservatorium Den Haag, and Simon Fraser University's Contemporary Arts Summer Institute. Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey."

"Paul Grabowsky is a pianist, composer, arranger, conductor - and is one of Australia's most distinguished artists.

Born in Lae, Papua New Guinea in 1958, Paul was raised in Melbourne where he attended Wesley College. During the late 70's he became prominent in the music scene in Melbourne, working in various jazz, theater and cabaret projects.

He lived and worked in Europe and the US from 1980-85, during which time he performed with many jazz luminaries including Chet Baker, Art Farmer and Johnny Griffin. He returned to Australia in 1986 and established a reputation as one of Australia's leading jazz musicians with such bands as his own trio and sextet, the Wizards of Oz and as musical director for singer Vince Jones.

He was musical director of Tonight Live with Steve Vizard from 1990-1992.

He has written the scores for over twenty feature films in Australia, the UK and US including The Eye of the Storm and Last Orders (Fred Schepisi) Innocence (Paul Cox), and Shiner (John Irvin). Among the many other filmmakers he has worked with are Gillian Armstrong, Nadia Tass and Clara Law. His television credits include the series Phoenix and Janus and the Emmy-winning Empire Falls. His works for the theater include two operas and various multimedia works.

He is the founder and AD of the Australian Art Orchestra, with which he tours both nationally and internationally. Recent AAO projects have concentrated on collaborations with traditional and contemporary indigenous performers, something which Paul passionately advocates.

Among his numerous CD releases are two for the Hush series (for which he is Artistic Director), designed to assist in the healing environment of Melbourne Children's Hospital.

He has won four ARIA awards, two Helpmann awards, several Bell Awards and a Deadly award. He was the Sydney Myer Performing Artist of the Year in 2000, and received the Melbourne Prize for Music in 2007.

He was Artistic Director of the Queensland Music Festival from 2005-2007 and the 2010 Adelaide Festival, and is currently Artistic Director of the 2012 Adelaide Festival."

"Mark Helias is a renowned bassist, composer and producer who has performed throughout the world for more than four decades with some of the most important and innovative musicians in Jazz and Improvised Music including Don Cherry, Edward Blackwell, Anthony Davis, Dewey Redman, Anthony Braxton, Abbey Lincoln, Cecil Taylor, and Uri Caine among many others. A prolific composer, Helias has written music for two feature films as well as chamber pieces and works for large ensemble and big band. His orchestra piece "Stochasm" was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in June of 2011. Twelve recordings of his music have been released since 1984, his latest being "The Signal Maker" on the Intakt label. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, and SIM (School for Improvisational Music) in Brookyn, NY."