"Double bass player and composer, Carlos Bica, is one of the most prolific and innovative sound artists of Portugal. Known for his lyrical tone on the double bass, Bica has the rare ability to write melodies that essentially are songs without words, haunting and unforgettable.

"Both a remarkable composer and musician who knows how to mix his folkloric, lyrical roots with any modern style he encounters".

Among the several musical projects he leads along with various theatre, film and dance projects, his trio AZUL with Frank Möbus and Jim Black has become his showcase as a bass player and composer.

His debut album, Azul, recorded for Polygram/ Emarcy, features guitar player Frank Möbus and drummer Jim Black, and special guests, singer, Maria João and, trombone player, Ray Anderson. It was voted "Best jazz record of the year" in Portugal in 1996 and it's widely accepted as the best portuguese jazz album ever done. Azul's next albums, Twist (1999) and Look What They've Done To My Song (2003), released by Enja Records, have received international critical acclaim. Believer (2006) is Azul's fourth album celebrating this Portuguese-German-American band's 10th anniversary. As visionary as its predecessors, the new album features the turntables of DJ Illvibe (aka Vincent von Schlippenbach). Pushed by DJ Illvibe's scratch sounds Azul's multi-urban grooves open a bright window into the future. "The magic of shaping" (Fono Forum)

Things About (2011) is Azul's fifth album celebrating this Portuguese-German-American band's 15th anniversary. "It is an achievement in itself that Carlos Bica and his trio Azul - with Frank Möbus and Jim Black - have never produced a less than extraordinary recording. In each edition the band seems to reborn, and after "Believer", here are Bica, Möbus and Black again, with fresh ideas, a renovated drive and a deeper poetic feeling. Things About is the most recent and probably the most perfect of Carlos Bica album's with his trio Azul.

In October 2005 Bor Land Records released Single, Carlos Bica's first bass solo CD. This album was recorded at the Radio Berlin-Brandenburg Studios and was nominated by the music magazine "Blitz" as one of the best albums of the year in Portugal.

Started by a commission from the Expo 1998 in Lisbon, Bica embarked upon his project "DIZ" (meaning "Speak to me") together with the extraordinary singer and actress Ana Brandão. His fruits were recorded and released in April 2001 for Enja Records. The album DIZ represents a new development in his music. Together with João Paulo (piano), Katharina Gramss (violin), Mike Rutledge (viola), DIZ leaps across the stylistics borders of chamber music, Portuguese folk, theatre, jazz and the art of song, with the entertaining ease and serious intensity of musical virtuosity. Jazz Podium termed it "Grandiose music"; Tip-Berlin "An elegy of beauty".

Carlos Bica has also composed for several theatre as well as dance and film productions. He worked for many years with renowned vocalist Maria João - a cooperating that established him on the international scene. He has played at the most important festivals in Europe and Asia and has worked with Ray Anderson, Kenny Wheeler, Aki Takase, Lee Konitz, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Albert Mangelsdorf, Joey Baron, Matthias Schubert, John Ruoco, John Zorn, Paolo Fresu, Markus Stockhausen among others. In the traditional music of his native Portugal - o fado - he performed with singer Carlos do Carmo, the best known musician of this popular genre, and recorded several albums with him. Among further important and inspiring authorities of the Portuguese musical tradition with whom Carlos Bica has performed and recorded rank such names as - José Mário Branco, Camané, Pedro Caldeira Cabral and Janita Salomé. "

"Daniel Erdmann was born in 1973 in Wolfsburg, Germany. He has been playing the saxophone since 1983 and studied a.o.with Gebhard Ullmann at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler. He recorded albums for various labels, i.a. BMC, ENJA, ACT, LABEL BLEU, INTAKT and plays concerts worldwide with bands and musicians like Das Kapital, Vincent Courtois, Aki Takase, Carlos Bica, Heinz Sauer, Samuel Rohrer, Henri Texier. In 2014 he founded the German-French company DAS ATELIER and his new band Daniel Erdmann's Velvet Revolution with Théo Ceccaldi and Jim Hart. The first album of the band ( BMC Records ) was awarded the Year Award of German Critic and an Echo Jazz. Daniel Erdmann also collaborates with dancer Nicolas Fayol and painter Jean Michel Hannecart, and in autumn 2019 Velvet Revolution's second album will be released."

"João Barradas is one of the most reputable and widely acknowledged European accordionists, working simultaneously between classical music, jazz and improvised music.

He has won some of the most prestigious international classical accordion contests of which, among others, the World Accordion Trophy (CMA), which he has won twice, the Coupe Mondiale of Accordion (CIA), the International Castelfidardo Contest and the Okud Istra International Competition, stand out.

Despite his young age, João Barradas was the first ever classical accordionist to perform solo recitals in some of the most prestigious concert halls such as WienerKonzerthaus, Tonhalle Maag Zurich, Sage Gasteshead, Festival d'Aix en Provence, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Culturgest and he has played in Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Kolner Philharmonie, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Casa da Música Porto, Bozar Brussels, Philharmonie de Paris, L'Auditori Barcelona, Mupa Budapest, La Monnaie, Stuttgart Opera House, Sadlers's Wells Theatre London, Onassis Cultural Center Athens, L'Arsenal Metz, Sava Center Belgrade, Centro Cultural de Belém, Tribeca Performing Arts Center New York.

Alongside his activity as a classical musician, Barradas is one of the most active musicians in Jazz accordion nowadays. His first album as leader with the New York label Inner Circle Music, "Directions", produced by saxophonist Greg Osby, was praised highly by the critics all over the world and made to the restrict Downbeat's Best Albums of the Year.

At the same time, he starts being noticed by some of the top names of American Jazz, such as Joe Lovano, Nicholas Payton, Randy Brecker, Lenny White or Walter Smith III and his name comes up at the most important national and international Jazz festivals and venues.

As an outstanding improviser he has collaborated with various renowned musicians, namely Greg Osby, Mark Turner, Peter Evans, Aka Moon, Mike Stern, Rufus Reid, Gil Goldstein, Fabrizio Cassol, Jacob Sacks, Miles Okasaki, Jerome Jennings, Ben Van Gelder, Francesco Cafiso, Federico Malaman, Stephanne Galland, Fabian Fiorini, Michel Hatzigeorgiou, Wayne Escoffery, Philip Harper, Florian Arbenz, Tineke Postma, among many others.

João Barradas was nominated ECHO Rising Star 2019/2020 by the European Concert Hall Organization and BBC Music Magazine nominated the accordionist as one of the current year's classical music rising stars."

"DJ Illvibe, who is known as Vincent von Schlippenbach, was born in Berlin in 1980 as the son of the freejazz pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. Even today he is rooted in the jazz scene and occasionally accompanies him or other freejazz legends at their concerts. At the age of 14, Illvibe, who had learned to play several instruments during his childhood, began to deal with DJ-ing. As a Hip Hop DJ, he learned how to dance the records to his will, but he quickly realized that he wanted to get more out of the black discs than challenging scratching tricks. The long exercise units, in which other turntablists trained their dexterity, were quickly too desolate to him, so he renounced a career as a Battle DJ. He was interested in what was in the discs. As a producer, he discovered the possibilities of sampling and explored them in his numerous musical projects. He also performed with Lok 03, Carlos Bica's AZUL, Tony Buck, Christopher Rumble, and Infinite Livez alongside Lychee Lassi to improvise with them live, while simultaneously starting for his Hip Hop Crew Moabeat and the Berlin Dancehall Collective SEEED to produce the beats. Between 2000 and 2004, he was tour DJ for SEEED before all these different activities were bundled into one project. In 2007, DJ Illvibe, together with David Conen and Dirk Berger, founded The Krauts, a company that has been able to present numerous hit productions as by Miss Platnum, Peter Fox and Marteria. The Krauts are also characterized by the fact that they break the basic structures of urban music such as hip-hop, R & B, blues and soul and combine them with unusual experimental sound pieces. Therefore, Sampling is still the basis of DJ Illvibes work, even if at the end of the work process it is no longer about the individual sound chip. "Sometimes the sample is just an inspiration for a whole song," he says, explaining his approach, "and sometimes the sample is kicked out at the end and we just use what we ourselves have played. "

Still, it is the unusual noises that he is looking for on his records and which form the basis of his musical work. Whether as a producer in the pop universe, as a live DJ in hip hop or free jazz projects, or as creator of abstract soundtracks, which he creates for the transcendent Rap projects of Taktloss and his alter ego Real Geizt, Illvibe is and remains a sound tinkerer. A gold digger for the craziest soundtracks. A manic dis spreader. A vinyl user. A disc jockey."