"Vancouver-based guitarist/composer Ron Samworth is a high profile presence on the Canadian scene, equally at home playing in the jazz tradition or the extended sound worlds of new and improvised music. Nominated for the 2002 National Jazz Writers Award "Best Jazz Guitarist", he leads the acclaimed quartet Talking Pictures and co-leads the 15-piece NOW Orchestra. He has appeared at all of the major jazz festivals across Canada, the Jazzfest Berlin, Chicago Jazzfest, New York's Knitting Factory, Vienna's Let's Cool One Chamber Jazz Festival, and at prestigious venues in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. He has performed and recorded with many leading international artists including John Zorn, John Medeski, Han Bennink, Marc Ribot, Wayne Horvitz, Butch Morris, Bobby Previte, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, and Canadian jazz legend Claude Ranger. His inter-disciplinary work includes composition, performance and sound design for theatre, spoken word, film, and dance."

"Barbara Adler is a musician, poet, and storyteller based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a past Canadian Team Slam Champion, was a founding member of the Vancouver Youth Slam, and a past CBC Poetry Face Off winner.

She was a founding member of the folk band The Fugitives with Brendan McLeod, C.R. Avery and Mark Berube until she left the band in 2011 to pursue other artistic ventures. She was a member of the accordion shout-rock band Fang, later Proud Animal, and works under the pseudonym Ten Thousand Wolves.

In 2004 she participated in the inaugural Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, winning the Spoken Wordlympics with her fellow team members Shane Koyczan, C.R. Avery, and Brendan McLeod. In 2010 she started on The BC Memory Game, a traveling storytelling project based on the game of memory and had been involved with the B.C. Schizophrenia Society Reach Out Tour for several years. She is of Czech-Jewish descent.

Barbara Adler has her bachelor's degree and MFA from Simon Fraser University, with a focus on songwriting, storytelling, and community engagement. In 2015 she was a co-star in the film Amerika, directed by Jan Foukal, which premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival."

"JP Carter is a multiple Juno award-winning musician from Vancouver, Canada. Carter's singular approach to the trumpet and versatility as an improvisor and composer make him a vital contributor to the Vancouver music community. JP incorporates a variety of techniques into his trumpet playing, utilizing and experimenting with acoustic (traditional, extended) and electronic (effected, amplified) methods to create a wide spectrum of sound. Currently a member of several Vancouver-based groups, including Destroyer, Dan Mangan, Fond of Tigers, the Tony Wilson 6tet, Handmade Blade (with Peggy Lee & Aram Bajakian), Gordon Grdina's Haram, Michael Blake's Variety Hour, and the various New Orchestra Workshop ensembles. JP's main projects as a composer/performer continue to be Inhabitants, Aeroplane Trio, and Carsick. These three long-standing original projects have all released albums on Vancouver's Drip Audio label [dripaudio.com]. Most recently, JP has been working on a solo amplified trumpet project. He will be releasing a self-produced document of this solo work in 2017 entitled "Toy & Tool".

Awards & Achievements: Juno Award Winner (2012, Dan Mangan, Alternative Album of the Year); Juno Award Winner (2011, Fond of Tigers, Instrumental Album of the Year); Juno Award Nominee (2016, Destroyer, Alternative Album of the Year); Juno Award Nominee (2012, Destroyer, Alternative Album of the Year); Juno Award Nominee (2009, Inhabitants, Instrumental Album of the Year); Polaris Prize Short List (2011, Destroyer, "Kaputt"); Galaxie Rising Star Award (2005, Inhabitants, Vancouver Int'l Jazz Festival)

Education:

JP studied Jazz Performance with Kevin Dean and Andre White at McGill University in Montreal from 1993-96, and Jazz Trumpet with Alan Matheson at Vancouver Community College in 1992/93. As a teenager, JP studied privately for a brief time in 1990/91 with Vancouver-based trumpeter Bill Clark, while studying under David Proznick in the award-winning jazz program at Semiahmoo Secondary in Surrey, BC."

"Vancouver-born pianist, keyboardist and composer Tyson Naylor has toured extensively across Canada, the US and Europe. A JUNO award recipient, he has played with Dan Mangan, Frazey Ford, the Warsaw Improviser's Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Turning Point Ensemble, Destroyer and Wayne Horvitz. Current and past collaborators include Jesse Zubot, François Houle, Tony Wilson and Peggy Lee. Naylor spent three years living in Berlin, Germany, where he immersed himself in the city's vibrant improvised music scene. In Europe he's played with Tobias Delius, Axel Dörner, Mats Äleklint and Joe Williamson. Current projects include Limbs of the Stars, Tiny Pyramids, Sun Ra's Star System, Dalava, Sick Boss, Sun Belt and Longhand.

His own project, the Tyson Naylor Trio, has toured Canadian and U.S. Jazz Festivals and his debut album, Kosmonauten, on the Vancouver-based Songlines label, has received very positive reviews from the New York Jazz Record, Georgia Straight and Signal to Noise.

Tyson composed the soundtrack to short film, Lynnwood, and was included on the soundtrack to feature film, Hector and the Search For Happiness."

"Cellist, improviser, composer Peggy Lee was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She studied classical cello, completing a bachelors degree in performance at the University of Toronto as a student of Vladimir Orloff and Denis Brott. She furthered her studies on the cello with lessons with Martha Gerschefski in Atlanta Georgia. In the fall of 1988 Peggy began a year residency with a string quartet at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. It was here that she first became interested in collaborating with artists from different mediums and in veering away from the classical path. This led to a decision to move away from the known and thus to her relocating to Vancouver, B.C. where she now makes her home.

Peggy's first forays into improvisation in Vancouver happened with dancers at the EDAM (experimental dance and music) studio at the Western Front and eventually led to her meeting and joining guitarists Ron Samworth and Tony Wilson in their respective bands; as well as becoming a member of the New Orchestra Workshop, which went on to have interesting and fruitful collaborations with Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, René Lussier, Barry Guy and George Lewis.

Peggy continues to collaborate frequently with Ron and Tony and with her husband, drummer Dylan van der Schyff, as well as with many other longtime musical associates including Dave Douglas, Wayne Horvitz, Robin Holcomb, Veda Hille and Lisa Miller. She also leads or co-leads a number of musical projects: The Peggy Lee Band, Film in Music, Waxwing (with Tony Wilson and Jon Bentley) and Beautiful Tool (with Mary Margaret O'Hara).

She has also collaborated extensively in theatre and dance with companies and artists such as Ruby Slippers, Rumble Theatre, Presentation House, David Hudgins, Peter Bingham and Delia Brett.

In 2005, Peggy received the Freddie Stone Award for integrity and innovation in music and in 2010 she was awarded a Jesse Richardson Theatre Award for outstanding composition."

"James Meger was born and raised in Surrey, British Columbia. He began playing the electric bass in early high school and took up the double bass upon entering post-secondary. After a brief stint studying music and Capilano College in North Vancouver, James moved to Montreal where he earned his Bachelors in Jazz Studies from McGill University and studied with drummer/composer Chris McCann.

Despite working and studying primarily in the fields of jazz and improvised music, James' experience on the bass spans many different areas of music. In his late teens he was a member of the acclaimed Vancouver based indie-roots band, The Sumner Brothers, with which he recorded two studio albums over 3 years. Later he went on to tour Eastern Europe with art-rock band, Dark Blue World, as well as tour all over Canada with Vancouver folk act, The Fugitives.

While attending McGill University, James helped form the collective saxophone trio, Braveheart. They have toured several times around Canada and self-released one album of original music entitled Acoustic Music.

James currently resides in Vancouver, where he is an active member of many diverse groups including: The Bruno Hubert Trio, Squareheart, 4=4, O.A.B., Tom Wherrett Trio, Proud Animal, The Jaclyn Guillou Band and Cow Trance."

"Torsten Müller (born November 25, 1957 in Hamburg, Germany) is a free improvising bassist in Vancouver, Canada. He plays a 5 string double bass. He lived in Bremen and Hamburg from 1976 to 2001, where he started his musical career and worked as a radio host and producer at Radio Bremen, a public radio and television broadcaster.

He came into the free improvised music scene in the mid 70s, first playing with Free Music Communion (an ensemble with guitarist Herbert Janssen and pianist Udo Bergner) recording three LPs on their own Fremuco Records label. He was a member of the large improvising ensemble King Ubu Orchestra for 10 years.

Torsten Müller has performed concerts all over the world with a diverse array of improvisers, including Evan Parker, John Russell, Jon Rose, Joelle Léandre, John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Lol Coxhill, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Paul Lovens, Phil Minton, Charles Gayle, Melvin Poore, Paul Rutherford, Peter van Bergen and Alfred Harth.

He moved to Vancouver, Canada in 2001 where he has been performing at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival and acts as co-curator of the annual Time Flies Improvised Music Festival. He plays in various ensembles, including Vancouver based drummer Dylan Van Der Schyff's Bande X and his own ensemble, Hoxha, with British trombonist Paul Rutherford and Dylan Van Der Schyff."

"Dylan van der Schyff was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1970. He now makes his home in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives with his wife, cellist Peggy Lee, and their two children. Van der Schyff attended the schools of music at the University of Victoria and, briefly, McGill University; and he studied military drumming while with the Band of the Ceremonial Guard in Ottawa. He received his MA from Simon Fraser University and is currently engaged in graduate research in music psychology at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

As a performer and producer, van der Schyff has appeared on close to 100 recordings spanning the genres of jazz, electro-acoustic, improvised, experimental and new music; he has performed in almost every major centre in Europe and North America including international festivals in Berlin, Lisbon, Stockholm, New York, Chicago, Montreal, Trento (Italy) and Molde (Norway); and he has collaborated in numerous interdisciplinary projects involving theatre, dance and film. A partial list of notable performance and recording collaborators includes: George Lewis, Joelle Léandre, Dave Douglas, Mark Helias, Peggy Lee, Eyvind Kang, Nicole Mitchell, Brad Turner, Tony Wilson, Wayne Horvitz, Marilyn Crispell, Torsten Muller, Robin Holcolmb, Michael Moore, Ellery Eskelin, Sylvie Courvoisier, Rob Mazurek, Talking Pictures, Ken Vandermark, Paul Rutherford, John Butcher, Tobias Delius, Louis Sclavis, Evan Parker, Mark Dresser, Fred Frith, and Gary Peacock. Van der Schyff has also performed as a sideman with Roswell Rudd, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Misha Mengelberg, Georg Graewe, Oliver Lake, Wadada Leo Smith and the Kenny Werner Sextet with Randy Brecker.

Van der Schyff has served on the music faculty at Capilano University in Vancouver, Canada, since 2009. He also served on faculty at the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music between 2002-2005, and at the Vancouver Institute for Creative Music in 2006. Additionally, he has given seminars and workshops at the University of Indiana and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Van der Schyff has appeared on Austrian television and Swedish radio as well as NPR, the CBC and Radio Canada. Articles about his work as an improviser have appeared in publications such as Downbeat, Jazz Times, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Chicago Reader, The Wire, Coda, and MUZIK."

"On the Vancouver jazz scene, the Talking Pictures era began in the '90s, not the '30s. Trumpeter Bill Clark has been recording and performing with the ensemble of that name since its initial formation in 1993; his collaborative gait reliably pliable; his long-term dedication a hallmark of his own career as well as the ensemble itself. Clark has been intrinsic to a series of invitations involving musicians from outside Vancouver to work on specific projects with Talking Pictures, a casting call which has brought forth respondents from across the border in the United States as well as across the ocean in Europe -- such as Wayne Horvitz and Jorrit Dijkstra, respectively.

The other original members of Talking Pictures are cellist Peggy Lee, guitarist Ron Samworth, and drummer Dylan van der Schyff. Clark has also performed with another cooperative venture, the Vancouver Ensemble of Jazz Improvisation. He is a freelance composer who is particularly proud of "Pavel and the Puck," a piece originally written to be performed by a theater group on ice. Having contributed to the unusual genre of "ice theater" makes this artist distinct among other performers named Bill Clark, something a trumpet by itself cannot. Thus, this trumpeting Clark should not be confused with the one in the horn section of the Esther Phillips band, nor is he the same William Clark who played drums on many mainstream jazz records."

"Pianist, composer, librettist, singer and songwriter Robin Holcomb has performed internationally as a solo artist and the leader of various ensembles at venues including Carnegie Hall, The Meltdown Festival, The United Nations, Teatro Manzoni, the Moers Music Festival, The Festival of Perth, The Hong Kong Arts Festival, Arts at St. Ann's, the Guimarães, Verona, San Francisco, Vancouver and Earshot Jazz Festivals, Roulette, Royce Hall at UCLA and the Seattle Opera House.

Recent recordings include The Point of It All, Solos (Songlines) and John Brown's Body (Tzadik). The Big Time, Little Three, Rockabye and Robin Holcomb are four critically acclaimed recordings of Ms. Holcomb's songs and instrumental compositions on the Nonesuch label. Other recordings featuring her performances and innovative arrangements include Things About Comin' My Way: A Tribute to the Music of the Mississippi Sheiks (Red Hen), Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys, The Anthology of American Folk Music: Revisited (Shout Factory), Burt Bacharach and Serge Gainsbourg tribute compilations (Tzadik) and Bill Frisell's Nashville and Kaddish.

Ms. Holcomb is a founder and co-director of The New York Composers Orchestra and WACO (The Washington Composers Orchestra), ensembles for which she is also conductor, pianist and a principal composer. Other current performing ensembles include a longstanding duo project with cellist Peggy Lee and The Robin Holcomb Ensemble. Composing instrumental and vocal music for a wide variety of chamber ensembles and soloists, she has been commissioned to create scores for dance, film and theatre.

Her most recent song cycle We Are All Failing Them, a sidewise regard of the Donner Party saga with film and magical objects, premiered at Seattle's Northwest Film Forum. An earlier song cycle with film, The Utopia Project was based on histories and artifacts from utopian communities which thrived in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s and premiered at Mass MoCA. Angels at the Four Corners, a song cycle reflecting the composer's experiences sharecropping tobacco in North Carolina and O, Say a Sunset, regarding of the life and work of American environmentalist and author Rachel Carson both toured the United States. Ms. Holcomb collaborated with composer Wayne Horvitz on the song cycle Smokestack Arias (tales of women involved in the Everett Massacre), The Heartsong of Charging Elk (based on the novel by James Welch) and was a featured performer in his Joe Hill: Sixteen Actions for Orchestra, Vocalists and Soloist. In recent years, she has created extended suites celebrating the historic legacy of Seattle landmarks (Washington Hall, Hitt Fireworks Factory) for youth orchestras, bands and choir.

Ms. Holcomb's work has been recognized and generously supported by grants and fellowships from, among others, The MAP Fund, The National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, 4Culture, Artist Trust, The National Performance Network and the Office of Arts & Culture."

"Wayne Horvitz is a composer, pianist and electronic musician who has performed extensively throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America. He is the leader of the Gravitas Quartet, Sweeter Than the Day, Zony Mash, The Four plus One Ensemble and co-founder of the New York Composers Orchestra. He has performed and collaborated with Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, John Zorn, George Lewis, Robin Holcomb, Fred Frith, Julian Priester, Michael Shrieve and Carla Bley, among others. Commissioners include the NEA, Meet the Composer, Kronos String Quartet, Seattle Chamber Players, BAM, and Earshot Jazz. Collaborators include Paul Taylor, Liz Lerman, Bill Irwin and Gus Van Sant. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including two MAP grants and the NEA American Masterpiece award. Recent compositions include The Heartsong of Charging Elk based on the novel by James Welch and 55: Music and Dance in Concrete: a site-specific collaboration with dancer Yukio Suzuki and video artist Yohei Saito. He is the music programmer for The Royal Room, a performance venue in Seattle, Washington, and a professor of composition at the Cornish College of the Arts."