"John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.

Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musical experience made it a popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces. The best known of these is Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48).

His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933-35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various East and South Asian cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started composing in 1951. The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text on changing events, became Cage's standard composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music, he described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living"."

"Born in 1957 Burkhard Schlothauer is German composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator and producer who lives in Gera in Eastern Germany. With Antoine Beuger he was the founder of Editions Wandelweiser in 1992. He performs with Zeitkratzer and the Wandwelweiser Composers Ensemble."

"Ulrich Krieger is well known as a saxophone player in contemporary composed and free improvised music as well as a composer of chamber music and electronic music.

His recent focus lies in the experimental fields and fringes of contemporary Pop culture: somewhere in the limbo between Noise and Heavy Metal, Ambient and Silence.

His original compositions go back and forth between Just Intonation, Silent Music, Noise, Instrumental Electronic, often asking for elaborate amplification, and works in the limbo of Rock culture - not accepting stylistic boundaries.

Krieger developed his own, often amplified style of saxophone playing, he calls 'acoustic electronics'. He uses refined acoustic, quasi-electronic sounds, which then get processed, the saxophone often becoming more an 'analogue sampler' rather than a traditional finger-virtuoso instrument. By amplifying his instrument in various ways, he gets down to the 'grains of the sounds', changing their identity and structure from within.

Ulrich Krieger was commissioned to write works for: Soldier String Quartet, oh-ton ensemble, Ensemble United Berlin, KontraTrio, zeitkratzer, Ensemble Experimente, Seth Josel, intersax, Text of Light, and others. His compositions are widely performed by ensembles in Europe and the USA.

He has managed to transcribe and arrange Lou Reeds infamous 'Metal Machine Music', everybody thought impossible to do, for classical instruments, performed by zeitkratzer and other groups.

He also arranged works by Merzbow, Throbbing Gristle, Deicide, Terry Riley, Henry Cowell and others for chamber ensemble.

He collaborates with: Lou Reed, LaMonte Young, Phill Niblock, Text of Light, Lee Ranaldo, Phill Niblock, John Duncan, Zbigniew Karkowski, Merzbow, Thomas Köner, DJ Olive, Christian Marclay, Kasper T Toeplitz, Antoine Beuger, Radu Malfatti, Mario Bertoncini, Michiko Hirayama, Miriam Marbe, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Ensemble Modern, Berliner Philharmoniker, Soldier String Quartet, zeitkratzer, just to name a few.

Krieger has received prizes, grants and residencies from: Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, Villa Aurora Los Angeles, Deutsches Studienzentrum Venedig e.V., Akademie der Künste Berlin, 'Meet-the-Composer' Forum New York, DAAD, Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, and many others.

He lived in Berlin and New York, and was 'Composer-in-Residence' in Los Angeles, Rom, Venice, Bologna, and Townsville (Australia).

He studied saxophone, composition and electronic music at the UdK Berlin (University of the Arts) and the Manhattan School of Music New York and performed with orchestras like: Berliner Philharmoniker, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Rundfunk-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Ensemble Modern, Musikfabrik, and many more.

Since 2007 he lives in Southern California, where he is associate professor for the composition faculty at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles."

"Born in 1957 Burkhard Schlothauer is German composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator and producer who lives in Gera in Eastern Germany. With Antoine Beuger he was the founder of Editions Wandelweiser in 1992. He performs with Zeitkratzer and the Wandwelweiser Composers Ensemble."

"Julia Eckhardt is a musician and organiser in the field of the sonic arts. She is artistic co-director of Q-O2 workspace for experimental music and sound art, and of Oscillation festival in Brussels.

She has performed and released internationally, and has been engaged in a number of artistic collaborations, among which extensively with composer Éliane Radigue.

Julia is (co-)author of books such as The Second Sound - Conversations on Gender and Music, Grounds for Possible Music, and Éliane Radigue - Intermediary Spaces/Espaces intermédiaires, among others. She is a researcher at the philosophical faculty at VUB Brussels, and has been teaching and lecturing on topics related to sound, music, gender, and space."

"Marcus Kaiser was born 1967. He studied cello at the Robert Schumann-Musikhochschule in Düsseldorf and visual arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf by Klaus Rinke. In 1997 he started Kaiserwellen, a space for interdisciplinary artistic presentations. He creates large-scale performative installations which include architecture, objects, video-projections and performing musicians, in which music and film are equivalent disciplines. 2001 he was awarded the Upcoming Artists Prize of the City of Düsseldorf."

"Pianist/conductor Guy Vandromme is a performer within the fields of opera and music theatre, dance, working as a soloist, accompanist, conductor and artistic director. He has been a major driver behind the program of the European Cultural Capital of Brugge 2002. More recently he became responsible for the festival Klankenstroom bringing cultural heritage, classical music and tourism together. His main focus is to open the boundaries of music theatre, collaborating with contemporary artists, and exploring scores of forgotten music. This year his first solo recording of music of John Cage will be edited by Wandelweiser records."

"Tobias Liebezeit is a classical percussionist, a member of Philharmonic Orchestra Of Europe, The Barton Workshop, and Wandelweiser Komponisten Ensemble."