"David Birchall: Born in Leicester 1981.

A musician living and working in Manchester in real time with sound and instruments.

This performance practice as an improviser becomes a way to think more widely about how small elements make up bigger elements and how sound functions in space and the built environment.

Improvising solo and with others using guitars, objects and non-fixed instrument structures.

Making drawings to try and understand what I am doing and what I hear.

Designing, building and fabricating instruments and electronic units that can become parts of non-fixed instruments based on electromagnetic principles.

With Vicky Clarke designing, building and fabricating audio circuits which become instruments as part of the artist duo Noise Orchestra.

Doing some or all of these things at different times in Europe, Russia, North America and Japan.

Performing with many Manchester based/related improvisors including Sam Andreae, Andrew Cheetham, Otto Willberg, Greta Buitkute, THF Drenching, Richard Scott, Philip Marks, Adam Fairhall, Luke Poot, London based Colin Webster and Amsterdam native Rogier Smal. One-offs and random stage/studio collaborations have involved working with figures such as Marshall Allen, Rhys Chatham, Mick Beck, Phil Minton and Mark Sanders."

"Over the past decade, Adam Fairhall has forged an international reputation as a jazz pianist and improviser of exceptional versatility. Based near Manchester, England and highly active on that city's burgeoning creative music scene, he is perhaps best known as the pianist in Nat Birchall's Coltrane-inspired band, and as a free improviser with such acclaimed groups as The Spirit Farm. His previous release under his own name, The Imaginary Delta (SLAM 2012), was named Album of the Year by influential US blog Bird Is The Worm, and revealed a deep understanding of early jazz and the ways in which it can connect to free jazz and contemporary idioms. He has continued this synthesis in his recent solo piano album, Friendly Ghosts (Efpi 2017); in Adam's playing, idioms drawn from any period of jazz history may be blended, collided, subverted, hinted at or played completely 'straight'. His aim is to place his deep knowledge of jazz piano techniques, from ragtime to free jazz, at the service of playful, spontaneous invention, within a freewheeling and sometimes rough-edged improvisational style that creates its own momentum and energy. Friendly Ghosts garnered excellent reviews from the Wire, Jazzwise and various websites, and received airplay on BBC Radio 3 (Late Junction), Daniel Spicer's radio show The Mystery Lesson and multiple plays on Jazz FM. Adam is due to perform solo sets at Brighton Alternative Jazz Festival 2018 (on the bill with Matthew Shipp, Ivo Perelman and Peter Brotzmann) and the London Jazz Festival 2018 (as part of Ethan Iverson's residency at King's Place).

Adam began, like many pianists, by practising boogie and blues with friends during school lunchtimes. He received piano lessons covering jazz harmony and repertoire in his teens, before moving north to study Contemporary Arts at MMU Cheshire, where he received a first class honours degree and an MA with distinction. Having decided towards the end of his undergraduate studies to devote his time to the study of jazz, Adam followed his studies at MMU with Master's study at Leeds College of Music, receiving a MMus in Jazz Studies (Performance) in 2005. While at Leeds he studied with pianist Mark Donlon and also took lessons with pianist Matthew Bourne. In 2005 he received the college's Sam Hood Rosebowl for Outstanding Jazz Performance. Returning to MMU to teach and continue his practice and research, Adam received a PhD in 2008 and continues to hold a part-time post as Senior Lecturer in Popular Music in the Cheshire faculty's Department of Contemporary Arts.

Adam's most ambitious ensemble project as a leader is The Imaginary Delta, which involves a seven-piece band. The Imaginary Delta was commissioned by Manchester Jazz Festival, and premiered at Band on the Wall, Manchester, in July 2011 to considerable acclaim; the premiere was named the no. 1 gig of 2011 by journalist Chris Ackerley. The project includes a 3-horn front line and also features Paul J Rogers on laptop, turntable and diddley-bow. The music revisits early jazz forms in a surprising, passionate and at times highly deconstructive way. A live recording was released on SLAM in spring 2012 to consistently 4 and 5 star reviews in magazines, newspapers and blogs, and the band appeared as part of the Vortex's programme for the London Jazz Festival 2012, and at the Forge, Camden in February 2013. In addition to being named Album of the Year by Bird is the Worm, the album placed on eMusic's Best Albums of 2012 and received an Honorable Mention on eminent American critic Ted Gioia's Best of 2012 list. In 2014 Adam was commissioned by Manchester Jazz Festival and Manchester Literature Festival to re-work The Imaginary Delta in collaboration with acclaimed poet Jackie Kay, using her poems about Bessie Smith in addition to new poetry. The resulting work was performed at the Royal Northern College of Music and as part of the Manchester Literature Festival in 2014. Adam and Jackie performed new material from the collaboration on Radio 3's Women's Hour in July 2014.

In addition to The Imaginary Delta and his solo playing, Adam leads the six-piece improvising ensemble The Spirit Farm, who are fast becoming known as an unusually inventive and powerful group of improvisers. Described as an 'improv supergroup' and 'devastatingly creative' by Jazzwise in their 4-star review of the group's 2015 eponymous debut album, the band consists of some of the most accomplished and noted members of Britain's new generation of improvisers, and all the members are based north of London. The group has been praised in The Wire and Jazz Journal, and received a lengthy, highly positive write-up in the New York City Jazz Record. The band recently played to capacity crowds in an Arts Council-funded tour of English venues.

Adam also leads or co-leads projects in a variety of other formats, from an organ trio (The Revival Room, due to support Uri Caine at the Howard Assembly Rooms in November 2017) to piano trios (Fragments trio and The Markov Chain). His work frequently involves him playing keyboard instruments other than the piano, including prepared electric piano, Indian harmonium, toy piano and drawbar organ, and he is becoming increasingly active as an accordionist in several projects. On all these instruments Adam enjoys exploiting and subverting conventional techniques while investigating the idiosyncratic, individual qualities of the instrument and its potential for free playing. In developing a free vocabulary for instruments relatively rare in that field, Adam is becoming increasingly sought after as a free player, both in the northern scene and the London scene. In 2015 he took his collection of prepared toy pianos to New York for a solo set at ABC No-Rio in the Lower East Side, where he performed after renowned saxophone player Daniel Carter. [...]"

"A graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music, Michael studied clarinet and composition with Linda Merrick, Larry Goves and Gary Carpenter. In 2009, he won the NCEM Composers Award which resulted in a performance of his piece God by the Tallis Scholars in York Minster, a performance subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

An occasional writer, he was awarded second prize in the 2013 Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism for his article John Cage is 102 and originality is overrated which was subsequently published in The Observer.

As a clarinettist he has recently played with the house of bedlam, ACM Ensemble and in the ddmmyy series."

"Info

Yoni Silvers plays the bass clarinet (extended/constricted/strangulated), as well as alto sax, violin, piano, voice, some computer fiddlings and some general fiddlings. Improvisation, composition, performance, and much in-between.

These are some of the combos I am a part of these days:

- Hyperion Ensemble, led by Rumanian Hyper-Spectralist composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram.

- Denis D'or, with Grundik Kasyansky on electronics and Tom Wheatley on double bass

- Trio with Mark Sanders on drums and Tom Wheatley on double bass

- Duo with Steve Noble

I also play or have played with people such as Jean Claude Jones, Harold Rubin, Steve Noble, Eddie Prevost, Angharad Davies, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O'Malley, Eran Sachs, Alex Drool, Maya Dunietz, Wolfgang Fuchs, John Edwards, Toshimaru Nakamura, Ghédalia Tazartès, Ehran Elisha, Alex Ward, Sharon Gal, Mark Sanders, Günter Baby Sommer, Eyal Maoz, Daniel Davidovsky, Ofer Bymel, Damon Smith, Birgit Ulher, Fritz Welch, Daysuke Takaoka, Neil Davidson, Tim Hodgkinson, Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides, Seymour Wright, Catherine Lamb, Hannes Lingens, Tom Wheatley, Dylan Nyoukis, Yonatan Avishai, Steve Beresford, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, London Improvisers Orchestra, Thanos Chrysakis, Mazen Kerbaj, Heiner Metzger, Ute Kanngiesser, Dominic Lash, Ariel Shibolet, Eivind Lønning, Sophie Angel, Grundik Kasyansky, Konzert Minimal, Crank Sturgeon...

I've composed and arranged music for film directors Avi Mograbi ('Z-32'), and Josef Pitchhadze ('Year Zero'); theatre director Ariel Efraim Ashbel (The Empire Strikes Back); artists Alona Rodeh ('Over and Above') and Gilad Ratman ('The Workshop' for Venice Biennale 2013); and poets/spoken-word-artists Roman Baembaev and Pyotr Shmugliakov. Also did arrangements for singer-Israeli songwriters Rona Kenan, Shlomi Shaban, and others have been played by ensembles such as the Israeli Philharmonic and Tel Aviv Soloists Ensemble, and been a member of the Israeli rock band Habiluim and metal/circus-core band Midnight Peacocks.

I've also composed pieces for ensembles such as the Israeli Contemporary Players, and numerous ad-hoc ensembles."

Otto Willberg is a professional double bass and bass guitarist, with considerable experience playing both jazz, classical and popular music. He has toured Europe and the US with different groups, and has a strong passion for sharing his skills and knowledge of music. He has worked with Alex Ward, Andrew Cheetham, Colin Webster, Andrew Lisle, Toshimaru Nakamura, Sam Andreae, Ashley Paul, Hannah Marshall, Dirk Serries, Ianncu Dumitrescu, &c. &c.