"New York City-based German-French bassist, composer and improviser Pascal Niggenkemper is a performing and recording artist active on the creative music scene in the US and in Europe.

From 1999-2005 he was musicaly active in Cologne having studied jazz & classical double bass at the Hochschule für Musik. In 2005 he received the DAAD award and moved to New York.

From 2008 to 2010 Pascal led the PNTrio with Tyshawn Sorey and Robin Verheyen. (CD "pasàpas" Konnex 2008 & "urban creatures" JazzHausMusik 2010). The trio toured extensively in Europe performing at the Jazzcologne Festival, Jazzherbst Konstanz and at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Recordings for the WDR and the BR Radio.

In cooperation with Jazzdor Strasbourg-Berlin, Pascal formed the septet vision7 that performed at Jazzdor Strasbourg-Berlin, Vive le Jazz in Cologne, Jazz à la Cité in Paris and at the Pori Jazz in Finland. (CD 'Lucky Prime' clean feed records Sept 2013)

In September 2011 Pascal released with Simon Nabatov and Gerald Cleaver the CD/LP upcoming hurricane on NoBusiness Records which is listed among 'Albums of the year' 2011 in the 'The New York City Jazz Record'. The trio performed in Canada and the USA.

He recently recorded a new solo program called: 'look with thine ears' music for bass & preparations was premiered at the Jazzdor Festival in Strasbourg in November 2013. The CD was released in March 2015 on clean feed records. He performed for the France Musique radio broadcast by Anne Montaron called 'a l'improviste'.

In 2014 he presented the double trio 'le 7eme continent' with the program 'talking trash' at the Vive le Jazz festival in Cologne, Germany and the concert was broadcast by WDR3 radio. Their CD was released in May 2016 on clean feed records and the group performed in France, Belgium and Germany.

Pascal is co-leading the groups baloni with Frantz Loriot viola and Joachim Badenhorst clarinets (CD 'fremdenzimmer' 2011, 'Belleke' 2014 & 'Ripples' 2015 clean feed records) PascAli a duo for two prepared basses with Sean Ali (CD 'suspicious activity' creative sources 2012) and Miner's Pick with Thomas Heberer. (CD 'miner's pick' FMR records 2014)

With friends, he curates in NY the house concert series ze couch, where every month artists meet to present their work.

Festival presence includes: Jazzdor Strasbourg-Berlin, Vision Festival New York, Umbrella Festival Chicago, Banlieues Bleues Paris, Strade del Cinema Aosta, météo Mulhouse, Jazzcologne, JIGG Lisbon, Taktlos Zurich, Jazz à la Cité in Paris, ESCUCHA Madrid, Washington DC Jazz Festival, Pori Jazz Festival, Middelheim Antwerp, Grenzenlos Köln, undead Jazzfest NYC, D'Jazz Nevers, NewAdits Klagenfurt, Font New York, Music Unlimited Wels, Vive le Jazz Cologne, GONG Aarau, Konfrontationen Nickelsdorf, Ljubljana Jazz Festival etc...

He received the following scholarships/grants: DAAD, Henry Mancini Institute, North Rhine-Westphalia composition stipend."

"John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics.Originally a physicist, he left academia in '82, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians - Derek Bailey, John Tilbury, John Stevens, The EX, Akio Suzuki, Gerry Hemingway, Polwechsel, Gino Robair, Rhodri Davies, Okkyung Lee, John Edwards, Toshi Nakamura, Paul Lovens, Eddie Prevost, Mark Sanders, Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Phil Minton, and Andy Moor - to name a few.

He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of place. Resonant Spaces is a collection of site-specific performances collected during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.His first solo album, Thirteen Friendly Numbers, includes compositions for multitracked saxophones, whilst later solo CDs focus on live performance, composition, amplification and saxophone-controlled feedback.

HCMF has twice commissioned him to compose for his own large ensembles. Other commissions include for Elision (Australia), the Rova (USA) & Quasar (Canada) Saxophone Quartets, reconstructed Futurist Intonarumori (USA), "Tarab Cuts" (based on pre-WWII Arabic recordings, and shortlisted for the 2014 British Composer's Award) and "Good Liquor .." for the London Sinfonietta. In 2011 he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists.

Recent groupings include The Apophonics with Robair and Edwards, Anemone with Peter Evans, Plume with Tony Buck & Magda Mayas and a trio with Okkyung Lee & Mark Sanders.Butcher values playing in occasional encounters - ranging from large groups such as Butch Morris' London Skyscraper and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with David Toop, Kevin Drumm, Claudia Binder, Paal Nilssen-Love, Thomas Lehn, Fred Frith, Keiji Haino, Ute Kangeisser, Matthew Shipp and Yuji Takahashi."

"Steve Dalachinsky is a New York downtown poet. He is active in the poetry, music, art, and free jazz scene.

Dalachinsky was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946, and grew up in the Midwood section of the borough. He has been writing poetry for many years and has worked with such musicians as William Parker, Susie Ibarra, Matthew Shipp, Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Mat Maneri, Federico Ughi, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Rob Brown, Tim Barnes, Kommissar Hjuler, and Jim O'Rourke. He has appeared at most editions of the Vision Festivals, an Avant-jazz festival involving many of these musicians. At one time he also appeared frequently at Michael Dorf's club , the Knitting Factory. He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife, painter and poet Yuko Otomo.[citation needed

Dalachinsky performs regurarly with free-jazz musicians to give his text a new life.

Dalachinsky's main influences are the Beats, William Blake, The Odyssey, obsession, socio-political angst, human disappointment, music (especially Jazz), and visual art with leanings toward abstraction. His work, for the most part is spontaneous and leans towards transforming the image rather than merely describing it, in what he now refers to as transformative description/descriptive transformation. "

"Liz Kosack is a musician and designer from Maine, USA working in Berlin and New York. Her work is cross-platform, but focuses around synthesizer playing and masks.

She completed a Masters in music at Jazz Institut Berlin, where she studied composition with John Hollenbeck and Greg Cohen. She holds a BA in jazz piano from William Paterson University, USA. She was a finalist in music and sound for the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in 2013.

She currently co-leads and is involved in multiple active projects in both Germany and the USA, released two LPs with "VAX" (The Sooner we Jump the Better, and Count to VAX) Is on RJ Miller's "Ronalds Rhythm," released a debut tape cassette with The Hero of Warchester in 2015 on Prom Night Records, Sunrise Over a Dystopic Future City's debut Dystopia (DVD collaboration with NYC filmaker Zach Caldwell, 2016) and expects to shortly release the resultant album of her masters project which features text-encoded melodic compositions and the talent of Frank Gratkowski, Tilo Weber, Dan Peter Sundland, Christian Tschuggnall, and Otis Sandsjö (selections of which were exhibited in fall 2014 at NYFA's "Estuary" exhibit in DUMBO, brooklyn.) Noteably this year she played the Moers festival with her band "The Liz" as Anubis in their piece "Book of Birds," collaborated with the Ballet im Revier, and in september gave her German professional debut on grand piano in a special version of RRR at the 30 Jahr Stadtgarten festival.

Liz is a sideman on Tilo Weber's Animate Repose (Shoebill 2016), and special guest on Orter Eparg's "Orter Eparg" (Øra, 2016.) She also plays synth on Lea Frey's next album, due for release 2017.

She leads mask-making workshops, has been commisioned for mask works by various groups, and is accepting new requests."

"Philip Zoubek (* 1978 in Tulln an der Donau ) is an Austrian pianist of the New Improvisation Music. A striking feature is his highly energetic play, the limits of the pianos, which also include preparation techniques and actions inside the instrument.

Zoubek studied piano at the Conservatory of the City of Vienna from 1996 onwards. He founded the Ubik quartet and took lessons with Uli Scherer before he enrolled at the Musikhochschule Vienna. In 2002 he moved to Cologne, where he studied with Hans Lüdemann, Frank Gratkowski and Marc Ducret. He founded the multimedia project Cauldron, with whom he won the composition competition of the bunker Ulmenwall Bielefeld and the cultural promotion award of the city of Herford; a DVD Q-Spektrum was created in 2003. With the group Snaut with Richard Koch (tp), Eric Schaefer (dr) and Christian Rainer (voice), he toured through Germany and Switzerland and became a prizewinner of the avant-garde competition for Young culture at the Düsseldorfer Altstadtherbst. Since 2004 he belongs to Achim Tang's Trio Torn, which performed successfully in 2011 in a quartet version at the Moers Festival. He was a member of the James Choice Orchestra ( Live at Moers, 2005), Ensemble Creativ, Org, Camera Obscura and the trio Muche / Zoubek / Tang. As a composer Philip Zoubek appeared with his own formation Philz. He also worked with Paul Lytton, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Ernst Glerum, Herb Robertson, Wilbert de Joode and Christian Thomé.

In 2008 he received the Horst and Gretl Will scholarship for Jazz / Improvised Music of the City of Cologne. Also in 2008 he founded the Trio Z3 with Benjamin Weidekamp and Christian Weber. The formation Z3 was born out of the idea of ​​the music of the Jimmy Giuffre -Trios of the 1960s."

"Etienne Nillesen is an active voice on the European creative music scene, with regular performances across Europe, Asia, America and Africa.

His main focus is improvisation with ongoing collaborations including the trio OGU, and STØY, in which he is exploring all the possibilities of music, playing a snaredrum and a cymbal with all kinds of sticks, toys, bells and bows.

His interest in various forms of exploratory music gave him an opportunity to work with artists as, as well as the opportunity to work with artists such as Claudio Puntin, Philip Zoubek, Sebastian Gramss, Matthias Schrief, Shelley Hirsch, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Eivind Aarset, Florian Weber, Simon Nabatov, Ernst Reijseger (CN), Tom Arthurs, Robert Landfermann, Bram Stadhouders, Jeroen van Vliet, Udo Moll, Sebastian Duboc, Simin Tander, Frank Wingold, Frederik Köster and Matthias Muche. Beishan International Jazz (CN), Bohemia Jazzfest (CZ), OCT-LOFT Jazz (CN), Women in Jazz (DE), Jazzfest Berlin (DE), The Hague Jazz (NL), Madrid International Jazzfestival (ES), Catania Jazz (I), Caïro International Jazzfest (EG) and clubs all over the world."

"Gunda Gottschalk plays improvised and contemporary music and combines her musical work with other art forms such as dance, theater, film, composition, visual art and literature.

Born in 1969. Lives in Wuppertal, Germany.

Classical violin studies with Johannes Prelle and Susanne Imhof at the State Hochschule for Music in the Rhineland. Further master classes and private studies with Stefan Picard, Antje Weithaas, Sascha Bron and Angelika Budde.

Since 1991, Gunda Gottschalk has been a member of Partita Radicale, a quintet for new and improvised music. Besides developing original improvisation cycles, Partita Radicale became known to a broader audience through their silent movie programs with live music, music theater productions and collaborations with composers.

In 1994/95 the violinist met the bassist Peter Kowald, who during this year carried out his project "365 Tage am ORT" (365 Days in Place) in Wuppertal. She performed in Peter Kowald's Ort-Ensemble and with important international soloists for improvised music such as Joelle Leandre, Carlos Zingaro, Even Parker.

1995-2002 Together with Xu Feng Xia she made up the core trio of Peter Kowald's "Global Village" Ensemble, which brought together musicians from radically different cultural heritages. In ensembles ranging from trio to sextet, "Global Village" concertized in Europe and the USA. Among the many guest artists collaborating with the trio were Jin Hi Kim, Savina Yannatou, Pamela Z, Jeanne Lee, Otomo Yoshihide, Le Quan Ninh.

Since 1995 Gunda Gottschalk has worked with the Belgian bassist Peter Jacquemyn. Their duo-CD "e pericoloso sporgersi" was awarded a prize in the young artist forum of the international Society for New Music and Ensemble Modern.

In 1998 the French pianist Christine Wodrascka founded the Trio "KRIZDA" with Isabelle Duthuit and Gunda Gottschalk.

Together with Thomas Beimel, Gunda Gottschalk received a work and production stipend in 2001 from the Film Foundation of North Rhine - Westphalia which was used to realize the radio play "Das Paradies" (Paradise).

Solo tours in 2002 and 2003 took the musician all over the USA. There she played with William Parker, Susie Ibarra, Assif Tsahar, Michael Zerang, Oliver Lake and Fred Frith among many others.

Gunda Gottschalk has been well represented on festivals of contemporary and improvised music all over Europe and is a regular guest at the avant-garde festival "visions" in New York."

"Ute Völker, accordion, is an accordion teacher at the Music School in Bochum, as well as a performing musician specializing in free improvisation. She studied the accordion and music theory at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, Germany. She has also studied musicology, phonetics and German at the Universities of Cologne, Vienna and Paris. Ute is a cofounder of Partita Radicale, an ensemble of modern improvised music and contemporary chamber music. Partita Radicale have performed worldwide in countries such as Belgium, France, Rumania, Albania, and China. Trios in which she performs include Gottschalk and Jaquemyn as well as John Russel (guitar) and Mathieu Wischowski (violin). Ute has played duos with performing artist Cornelie Müller (Munich, Germany), as well as with Carl-Ludwig Hübsch (Tu) and Chefa Alonso (sax). Ute is a member of Fineworks orchestra for improvised music. She has performed in concerts of improvised music both alone and with many artists in Europe, USA, Canada and Argentina. Since 1994, Ute has also been very active in various theatre productions, the latest being in 2004 Mr. WangÕs New Face with Partita Radicale and Wen Lei (Peking opera singer)."

"When Xu Fengxia was 5 years old she started to learn instruments. She first played the Chinese lute "Pipa", but when she started to study at the Shanghai Music Conservatory she focussed on the "Sanxian" (usually a plucked instrument, but as you can see it also is possible to use a bow!). The picture was taken during her first solo concert at the Conservatory. She mastered four instruments: guzheng, guqin, sanxian and a small lute called liuqin. After her graduation Xu Fengxia joined the famous Shanghai Orchestra of Chinese Music. She worked there as a soloist on the sanxian. Some of her early solo work has been documented on a Hugo Records (Hongkong) sampler. Meanwhile Xu Fengxia also played solo music of Paganini and was the soloist in a contemporary concert for sanxian and symphony orchestra.

The 80s brought new cultural influences to China. Young people got interested in Rock and Pop music from abroad. So, Xu Fengxia started to play the bass in Shanghai`s first Ladies Rockband. They played also possible venues from bars to football stadiums.

In the 90s Xu Fengxia began to live in Germany. She joined the Gufeng Ensemble which was the most famous group for traditional Chinese music in Europe.

Xu Fengxia had been playing the first concert with musicians of jazz and improvised music 1990 in Shanghai (with flutist Albert Preisfeld and violinist and composer Lutz Wagner). The 90`s brought a band called Shanghai Connection. It began as a trio with Xu Fengxia, Albert Preisfeld and Lutz Wagner. Later it was a sextet with Rolf Sudmann (piano), Zhang Zhenfang (erhu), Rudi Mahall (clarinet), Roland H.H.Bisswurm (drums), Li Jing Xia (pipa) and Xu Fengxia. They played compositions of Lutz Wagner. This was the first time when Xu Fengxia "got mad" and started improvising.

In the mid 90`s Xu Fengxia began an intensive collaboration with the late Peter Kowald, one of the main figures in improvised music worldwide.With Gunda Gottschalk (violin) and Peter Kowald (bass) Xu Fengxia performed worldwide. The trio which was called "Global Village" played at the Vision Festival in New York, at the Poschiavo,Lucerne and Taktlos festivals in Switzerland. With Peter Kowald and reed player Alfred Harth Xu Fengxia played the Moscow Pushkin Festival. When she had duo concerts with Peter in Boston and New York in september 2002 he all of the sudden died of a heart attack.Xu Fengxia describes Peter Kowald as her main influence to open up for new musical horizons. Also, Peter was a wonderful person and a good friend.The picture was taken after a concert in Hagen/ GermanyXu Fengxia works with composers and orchestras

Until now, Xu Fengxia often plays solo parts in the compositions of Chinese Composers like Tan Dun, Qu Xiaosong, Kee Yong, Xu Shuya, Qin Wencheng and many more. She cooperated with the Nieuw ensemble Amsterdam, the Flemish Symphony Brugge, Ensemble Recherche, Staatstheater Saarbruck and others."

"One of the finest players to have come out of Alan Silva's IACP school, cellist Didier Petit has been active on the French free improvisation scene since the mid-'80s. His playing style relies mostly on double-string arco technique. He is also often heard vocalizing on top of his instrument. He performs regularly with Parisian improvisers like Michel Doneda, Daunik Lazro, and Denis Colin, and has performed with Sakis Papadimitriou, Roger Turner, Marilyn Crispell, and Carlos Zingaro. His best-known group is the quartet NOHC, from the late '90s. He is the founder of the new music label In Situ.

Petit was born in a musical family. He started on cello at age six and attended the conservatory until age 15. At this point he turned his back on his classical upbringing. Hearing Sun Ra & His Arkestra and Alan Silva's Celestrial Communication Orchestra had the power of a revelation and soon the cellist embarked on the avant-garde jazz train. He enrolled in the bassist's IACP. For the next ten years or so he studied there, then taught and performed administrative tasks, all the while playing in the CCO. During this period, he met saxophonist Michel Lobko who introduced him to the European scene of free improvisers. With him and Christine Janvier, he organized the first Décades de Musiques Improvisées in 1985, a first exercise in musical activism and networking. In 1990 he founded In Situ, a label he has pampered for 12 years before leaving Théo Jarrier in charge in 2002.

1990 is also the year Petit released his first solo album, Sorcier, on the British label Leo Records. A number of collaborations followed, including the avant-musical theater troupe Un Drame Musical Instantané. He developed a particularly strong relationship with bass clarinetist Denis Colin, playing in his trio since 1994. In turn he invited Colin to take part with saxophonist Daunik Lazro and drummer Michael Nick to his own quartet NOHC, the idea of which sparked in 1990. A first album came out in 1998 on In Situ, followed by NOHC on the Road on Leo two years later. A second solo album, Déviation, appeared in 2000 on La Nuit Transfigurée."-François Couture

"Born in 1956, French Clarinettist Sylvain Kassap has been one of the greatest improv jazz musicians since the late 70s. A major player on the avant-garde scene, Kassap has performed with Louis Sclavis, Michel Portal, Henri Texier, Bernard Lubat, François Tusques, and many other cutting-edge French musicians. He has also played along side a large number of innovative international musicians such as Evan Parker, John Surman, Barre Philips, Sam Rivers, Hamid Drake, Han Bennink.

Kassap uses his clarinets in ways that go well beyond conventional melodic and harmonic expectations. With percussive bursts and textural sounds, Kassap expands the range and vocabulary of the instrument. He has also been a pioneer in fusing the arts, collaborating with actors, dancers and writers. And, he has made occasional forays into contemporary classical music, performing works by John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and other experimental composers. From free improvisation to contemporary and ethnic music, leading French clarinetist Sylvain Kassap explores a world that is rich in colour and finesse, animated by an unquenchable spirit of freedom."

Toma Gouband plays percussions with singing stones, foliage, drums, pin apple, and develops rythms based on proportions, crossing speeds, colors.

"One doesn't even need to 'enter' into the music of Toma Gouband: our ears (and eyes, if we have the pleasure of seeing him at work) are invited, by the spectacular and extraordinary organisation of colors and timbres that make up his dreaming inventive universe. Pieces of flint, natural skins covering a horizontal bass drum, which has scattered upon it tiny bells or blocks of wood, branches and twigs... pebbles rolled on the ground, inverted cymbals collcting thus all sorts of natural resonators... The high-hat cymbals have been replaced by...they've also been replaced by stones! Animated by an interior pulsation made from the superimposition of mysterious cycles, like so many clocks telling life's time in polyrythms that collide and cross over each other, the music of Toma Gouband transcends the idea of an imaginary territory, for it invites us to approach it as we would a social rite or even a ceremony of love. A weaving of the tissues of sound, with wisdom, sio that we feel them as universal, as though they come or to become, for which the visual metaphor could be those traditionel Kuba cloths from Upper Zaire that made of fabrics sewn one on top of the other, to which are added motifs according to an organisation that is rigorous but seems to be governed by rules that have been transmitted only to the initiates who create them. Thus, this is a music initited by the history of the world, unique, free of the constrains imposed by convention and which responds only to its own interior strenght: a summit of the musical art."-Benoît Delbecq