Ellen Christi

Since the mid-seventies, Ellen Christi has steadily gained ground as an important contributor to American improvised music and contemporary jazz. As a composer/vocalist, Ms. Christi has worked in varying performance venues ranging from multi-media theatrical productions to solo vocal concerts. She has also been an active advocate in supporting innovative performing artists through organizations that she has co-founded or directed.

Ms. Christi has studied piano technique, composition, and arranging with Jaki Byard, an internationally acclaimed pianist/composer and a professor at the New England Conservatory of Music. She had studied the bel canto technique with Galli Campi, a coloratura singer with the Metropolitan Opera. Earlier on in her career, she studied vocal technique and movement with Jeanne Lee, an avant-garde jazz vocalist. Presently, Ms. Christi working with vocal coach, Dr. Virgina Davidson, composer/conductor and founder of New York Treble Singers.

Ms. Christi was one of the co-founders of New York City Artists’ Collective, a non-profit organization committed to developing creative independence for artist and fostering appreciation of visual and performing arts through educational seminars, concert productions, and record documentation/ production (N.Y.C.A.C. Records) She is also the founder of Network Records, an independent record label promoting contemporary jazz music.

She has received numerous grants and commissions from the New York State Council of the Arts and Meet the Composer. As well as having received varied commissions for dance and theater performances throughout the years, her most recent commission has been funded through the prestigious Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. She is currently performing and teaching master classes in vocal technique/improvisation and movement throughout the United States and Europe…

More info @ http://www.ellenchristi.com/

Hans W. Koch

Living in Cologne as freelance composer, performer and soundartist.

together with bettina wenzel he runs the duo &2 an ongoing series of experiments in dance/voice/music/video

member of the cologne society for contemporary music (kgnm e.v.) (boardmember from 1996 – 2002)

member of the board of the ensemble krahnenbaum company koeln

together with anke eberwein and bernhard koenig foundation of the buero fuer konzertpaedagogik (bureau for concert-pedagogical activities)

organisation of concerts, performances and intermedia-events

giving workshops and trainings for teachers and pupils of every age for contemporary / experimental music and improvisation

he has collaborated with artists like

tomomi adachi, sam ashley, peter behrendsen, jens brand, michael duch, annegret heinl, lasse morhaug, ortrud kegel, thomas lehn, manuel mota, harald muenz, tisha mukarji, joker nies, josef novotny, joscha oetz, marian palla, ben patterson, zdenek plachy, allan purvess, ernesto rodriguez, jan steklík, david subik, chao-ming tung, michael vorfeld, andreas wagner, bettina wenzel, joachim zoepf.

his works have been performed by (a.o.)

trio e-vent, (duo)2 archeopteryx, alter ego ensemble, apartment house, black jackets company, krahnenbaum company koeln, mengano quartett, mutare musiktheater ensemble, beth griffith, lucia mense, seth josel, holger peters.

recordings were made / played by

deutschlandfunk, wdr, radio de la universita cattolica de santiago de chile, kxlu (los angeles), kpfa (berkely).

concerts / performances

a.o. at sklenena louka, brno (cz); rhiz, vienna, experimental intermedia & tonic, new york; mex, dortmund; de overslag, eindhoven; metronom, barcelona; at the festivals audio art, krakow (pl); next wave, prag; festival der ungewoehnlichen musik & kryptonale, berlin; identa 99 & experimentelle musik 99 muenchen; castle of imagination, gdansk (pl), festival of not so good music, nove zamky (sk); spritzenhaus hamburg; instants chavirés, paris; cal-arts, los angeles; koeln…

(sound) installations

a.o. at deutzer bruecke, koeln; moltkerei werkstatt, koeln; galerie rachel haferkamp, koeln; kunstverein baden/wien; studio five beekman, new york; symposion lindabrunn (at); galeria jána koniarka, trnava (sk); maerzmusik, berlin; ccnoa, brussels, niederoesterreichisches kunstzentrum, st. poelten (at)…

More info @ http://www.hans-w-koch.net/

Thomas Lehn

Since the early 1980s Thomas Lehn has been working as a author and performer of contemporary music.

After studying recording engineering – piano with Prof. Wilfried Kassebaum – at the Music Academy of Detmold in Germany, studies at the Music Academy of Cologne with Peter Degenhardt and Prof. Klaus Oldemeyer (classical piano) and with Frank Wunsch and Francis Coppieters (jazz piano) completed his academical education. In the 80ies he took part on courses of Studio for pianistic interpretation held by Prof. Jürgen Uhde. […]

More recent projects are GRAUZONE, a trio researching on appropriate forms of notation for composer-performer ensemble (with violinist Tiziana Bertoncini and bassist Achim Tang), ensemble]h[iatus, an ensemble for interpretation and improvisation of contemporary music (in collaboration with Le Quan Ninh, Martine Altenburger a.m.o.), trios with Frech saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet and Austrian quartertone trumpet player Franz Hautzinger, as well as with Günter Christmann and Roger Turner, and a quartet with reed player Ken Vandermark, trombonist Johannes Bauer and drummer Paal Nilsson-Love.

Thomas Lehn has been touring in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungaria, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the USA.

He has been involved in projects promoted and/or supported by Goethe-Institute in Belgrade, Bratislava, Budapest, Chicago, Copenhagen, Glasgow, Lille, London, Manchester, Marseille, Montreal, Rome, Tokyo, Toronto, Warsaw, Wellington and York.

More info @ http://www.thomaslehn.com/

Jean-Marc Montera

A French guitarist with origins in rock, specialising in free improvisation and sound experimentation, he performs solo and in different groups, AMP (Trio of guitarists, Akchoté / Montera / Pauvros), The Room (Duo with Sophie Gonthier), Meditrio (with medievalist musicians Julien Ferrando – clavicytherium / Jean-Michel Robert – theorbo and electronic). Exploiting the full range of amplified and acoustic strings: resonances, percussion, distortions, extensions and misappropriations of all styles, he evokes a world of abstract sound and the daily mechanisms of life and the city. Amongst the most active musicians in the field of improvisation, since the 1970’s he has increased encounters and contact with other artistic worlds so much so that he is breaking the barriers between the different genres. He has collaborated with Fred Frith, André Jaume, Barre Phillips, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Louis Sclavis, Michel Doneda , Ahmad Compaoré, Christine Wodrascka… Jean-Marc Montera co-founded GRIM (Group of Musical Research and Improvisation) in 1978. He joined forces with stage director Hubert Colas in 1999 to found Montévidéo, centre of contemporary art creations in Marseille. The centre’s priority is to create links, to establish interactivity between music and theatre in their most modern forms and to increase confrontations between artists and disciplines. In 2001 he created l’Ensemble d’Improvisateurs Européens bringing together Hans Koch, Thomas Lehn, Hélène Breschand, Dan Vandewalle, Lelio Giannetto, Chris Cutler and Taavi Kerikmaé. This ensemble specialised in the interpretation of existing graphic scores (Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Earl Brown…), and of those commissioned by young composers (Pierre- Yves Macé and Annette Schlünz)…

More info @ http://www.montera-tempsreels.org/, http://www.myspace.com/jeanmarcmontera and http://www.grim-marseille.com/

David Moss

David Moss is considered one of the most innovative singers and percussionists in contemporary music. In 1991 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship: in 1992, a DAAD Fellowship (Berlin). He is co-founder and artistic director of the Institute for Living Voice.

In 2005 he was soloist in the opening concerts of both the Venice Biennale and the Queensland Biennial Music Festival.

In 2003 Moss made his Carnegie Hall debut with the American Composers Orchestra, under Steven Sloane. He was soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle; sang in “Lost Highway” by Olga Neuwirth ; performed his solo music at the Venice Biennale; and appeared at Lincoln Center, in the Great Performers Series.

Moss performed at the Salzburg Festival in 1999 as featured soloist in Luciano Berio’s “Cronaca del Luogo”, and in 2001 as Prince Orlovsky in “Die Fledermaus”.

Moss has sung at the Edinburgh Festival, Spoleto Festival, and the Lucerne Festival in Heiner Goebbels orchestra work, “Surrogate Cities”. He has been a guest soloist with the Ensemble Modern since 1995.

More info @ http://www.davidmossmusic.com/

Michel Doneda

Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone, born in 1954, comes from the French South-West. He is a self-taught musician.

In 1980 he founded in Toulouse a reed trio: HIC ET NUNC, a group that toured quite a lot in France, playing mostly improvised music. At the same time he founded with musicians, dancers and actors a place called IREA (Institute for research and exchange between arts of improvisation).

In the following years, he participated in music projects with other artists and he became a regular guest of the Chantenay-Villedieu festival. Meeting other artists he developed a very personal approach with his music and his instrument in improvised music. During this period he played with Europeans musicians: Fred Van Hove, Phil Wachsmann, Max Eastley, Steve Beresford and Americans: John Zorn, Eliott Sharp, Elvin Jones…

More info @ http://puffskydd.free.fr/neda/

Paolo Angeli

Paolo Angeli grows in Palau, a Sardinian sea-village with 2500 inhabitants.

He starts playing in an old bus – which used to be a mobile agriculture chair, then a deposit of melons, the natural habitat for chickens, and the prodom of rock groups.

In an early stage, the Angeli (Alessandra, Paolo, Nanni) use the guitar as a cart: each of them pushes the instrument’s arm, while one sits on the cassa. Soon the father, Gigi, initiates Paolo to a more traditional use of the instrument by teaching him the Re as the first accord. In the total absence of musical alphabetisation, Paolo’s formation is that of an ‘autodidatta’ who learns through the people he meets.

The family friend Jack is fundamental to his upbringing: he teaches Paolo ‘finger picking’ songs. From him Paolo learns how to play with his fingers. It is no less important the role of Uncle Nino who travels throughout the world on mercantile ships and who, from his journeys, brings back lots of 45 giri that Maria Vittoria, Paolo’s mother, listens to without censure. Nannitteddum, instead, Nanni’s godfather, is a brilliant solo guitarist and often plays with Gigi in duo. For the Angeli family, music represents a joyful everyday practice. […]

Since 1998, he has an intense concert activity appearing in the international circuit of improvised Jazz and contemporary music, with concerts and tourneé in the whole of Europe. He plays with Jon Rose, Otomo Yoshide, Frank Schulte, Lukas Simonis, Elliot Sharp, Carlo Actis Dato.

He also works for the Regional Ethnographic Institute, in order to constitute a phonoteque of traditional music, the “Archivio Musicale Mario Cervo”. Here the circle opens onto the ‘canto in Re’: the Re as the first accord that Gigi showed him, the Re as the King (re) of all chants given to Paolo by Zio Giovanni – before bringing his own bus to sleep.

More info @ http://www.paoloangeli.it/ and http://www.myspace.com/paoloangeli

Michael J. Schumacher

Michael J. Schumacher is a composer, performer and installation artist based in New York City.

Working predominantly with electronic and digital media, he creates sound environments that evolve over long time periods. He imbues these generative, algorithmic structures with an abundance of sonic material, resulting in forms that flow through a wide range of moods, timbral combinations and textural densities. In their realization, Schumacher uses multiple speaker configurations that relate the sounds of the installation to the architecture of the exhibition space. Architectural and acoustical considerations thereby become basic structural elements.

Schumacher’s sound installations have been heard at Art in General, Apex Art, PS 1, The Kitchen and Sculpture Center in New York City, CCNOA in Brussels, Singuhr Gallery and Tesla in Berlin, the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt , the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, Triskel Arts Center in Cork, Ireland, Transmissions Festival and ESS in Chicago, Tone Deaf Festival in Kingston, Ontario, The Sound Art Museum in Rome, )toon Festival in Haarlem, RADAR in Mexico City and others.

His “Living Room Pieces” is permanently installed in an apartment at the Chelsea Hotel, and runs 24 hours/day, continuously generating new forms. XI Records has just published a set of five sound installations as computer applications, playable on up to eight speakers, that may be installed on a computer to create sound environments in the home. Schumacher’s composition “Grid”, a computer generated score that unfolds in real time, was part of the exhibition “Between Thought and Sound” at the Kitchen, as well as group exhibitions in Barcelona, San Francisco and Houston…

More info @ http://www.michaeljschumacher.com/

Francisco López

Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. Over the past 30 years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion.

He has realized hundreds of concerts, projects with field recordings, workshops and sound installations in 60 countries of the five continents. His extensive catalog of sound pieces (with live and studio collaborations with over 100 international artists) has been released by more than 200 record labels worldwide, and he has been awarded three times with honorary mentions at the competition of Ars Electronica Festival.

More info @ http://www.franciscolopez.net/

Ferran Fages

FERRAN FAGES |1974| Barcelona, Spain.
Improviser and composer.
He plays guitar, amplifiers, radios, resonant objects, acoustic turntable and electronics: “feedback mixing board”, pick-ups and oscillators.

He’s currently involved in:
SOLO PROJECTS: acoustic turntable, electronics and solo guitar.
IN COLLABORATION: Cremaster with Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Fages-Barberán-Costa Monteiro trio, Fages-Gross-Guthrie trio, Fagus with Pascal Battus, Ap’strophe with Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga and Las Manos. Son dos with Constanza Brncic and Octante with Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Ruth Barberán and Margarida Garcia.

He was member of the collective IBA col·lectiu d’improvisació from 1999 to 2006. As an improviser he has played with many musicians from 1998 until now.
He has collaborated with:
Olga Mesa, Carme Torrent and Constanza Brncic |DANCE|
Adolf Alcañiz |VIDEO ART|
Cristina Casanova |THEATRE| piece “Paisatges en 18 escenes”
Besides his activities as musician, he’s currently working on the project DESORIENT MITJÀ: experiences and experiments about listening….

More info @ http://www.ferranfages.net/