"Keith Jafrate is a writer and musician who grew up in London but who has lived in Yorkshire for many years. He has toured throughout England, and in North America and Europe, performing both as a poet and as a saxophonist. He gained a reputation in the 80's as a jazz-poet with his group Sang, and has since specialised in creating lyrical, spacious and bleak settings for his own texts.

Working somewhere between jazz, improv and contemporary music, he has composed for bands from duo up to octet, writing challenging and beautiful vocal parts and bringing together musicians from a variety of backgrounds to perform his work.

He's completed a number of commissions over the years, including large-scale compositions, text-music performances, and music for BBC radio plays, appeared at festivals in France, Germany and The Czech Republic, and released a number of CDs as a member of a variety of bands.

He formed Orfeo 5 in 2002 and continues to develop the group's particular mix of acoustic and electronic sounds. He also plays with Hornweb, Wolfscarers, Murmurists and with Trio Uroboro, and has recently begun a new collaboration, Pollen Count, with Lou Birks and Richard Knight."

"Hervé Perez: Improviser, sound and visual artist, hervé performs spontaneous compositions with saxophones and laptop, using processed field recordings. His work is influenced by practices such as jazz, electro-acoustic, contemporary music, experimental electronics, free improvisation, immersive sound art and techniques of sound therapy.

His research approaches sound as vibration, the relation between sound and objects or spaces, architecture and the body.

Hervé works in sound design, sound recording and editing, post-production, mastering and composition, sound art and installation as well as performance which remains his main focus.

He has developed a very personal way to process and sculpt location recordings to reveal their musical features and maximise resonance with the listener and their experience of sound.

Hervé's use of field recordings is concerned with frequencies and harmonic relationships found in nature. How they relate to the real, physical world, and how the sounds of natural elements connect to our experience.

Playing the saxophone, hervé focuses on extended techniques and abstract peripheral sounds structural to the instrument as a physical resonant object - although he has been known to play melodies at times...

'sounding out', one of his current projects, is an exploration of architecture, outdoor acoustics and sacred sites. These recordings are documents of in situ improvisations, inspired by the spirit and the special characteristics of a location.

Further work in sound design, music for film/video:

Rain (dir. Carla mackinnon), cellotape (dir. Aitor gutierrez), henri & may (dir. Sally pierce)

sound art and video installation:

The pursuit of happiness (arsenal gallery, poznan), catalyst (bank street arts, sheffield), one square foot (mile end art pavilion, london).

Photography and graphic design.

Greatly interested in collaboration, hervé has performed with musicians and dancers whose practice is immersed in free improvisation,closely working with mick beck (sax, bassoon), martin archer (winds, electronics), peter fairclough (drums), philip thomas (piano), jez riley-french (el.), shaun blezzard (electronics), ian simpson (electronics, guitar), charlie collins (vibraphone, drums and percussions), constantin popp (live processing, diffusion), adam woolf (piano), aysegul balkose (dance, paint) etc. In the ukand also michel doneda (sop sax), jonas kocher (accordion), simon berz (dr, electro), christian muller (electro), rodolphe loubatiere (dr), d'incise (electro, objects), cyril bondi (dr), heddy boubaker (alto and bass sax), sebastien cirotteau (trumpet, electronics), andré darius (ebass), cia barbet (dance), anastasia hvan (dance), joe formanek (dr, el), roger mills (trumpet, el), henri herteman (p, trombone), guy bayssac (dr), marin beranger (p), mark alban lotz (fl) in europe."