"Bill Dixon (October 5, 1925 Ð June 16, 2010) was an American musician, composer, visual artist, and educator. Dixon was one of the seminal figures in the free jazz movement. He played the trumpet, flugelhorn, and piano, often using electronic delay and reverberation.

Dixon hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts. His family later moved to Harlem, New York City when he was about 7. His studies in music came relatively late in life, at the Hartnette Conservatory of Music (1946Ð1951). He studied painting at Boston University and the WPA Arts School and the Art Students League. During the early 1950s he had a job at the United Nations, and founded the UN Jazz Society.

In the 1960s Dixon established himself as a major force in the jazz avant-garde movement. In 1964, Dixon organized and produced the 'October Revolution in Jazz', four days of music and discussions at the Cellar CafŽ in Manhattan. The participants included notable musicians Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra among others. It was the first free-jazz festival of its kind. Dixon later founded the Jazz Composers Guild, a cooperative organization that sought to create bargaining power with club owners and effect greater media visibility. He was relatively little recorded during this period, though he co-led some releases with Archie Shepp and appeared on Cecil Taylor's Blue Note record Conquistador! in 1966. In 1967, he composed and conducted a score for the United States Information Agency film The Wealth of a Nation, produced and directed by William Greaves.

He was Professor of Music at Bennington College, Vermont, from 1968 to 1995, where he founded the college's Black Music Division. From 1970 to 1976 he played "in total isolation from the market places of this music", as he puts it. Solo trumpet recordings from this period were later released by Cadence Jazz Records, and later collected on the self-released multi-CD set Odyssey along with other material.

He was one of four featured musicians in the Canadian documentary Imagine the Sound (along with Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, and Paul Bley), 1981.

In recent years he recorded with Cecil Taylor, Tony Oxley, William Parker, Rob Mazurek, and many others.

Dixon's playing was noted for his extensive use of the pedal register, playing below the trumpet's commonly ascribed range, and well into the trombone and tuba registers. He made extensive use of half-valve techniques and the use of breath with or without engaging the traditional trumpet embouchure. He largely eschewed the use of mutes, the exception being his use of the harmon mute, with or without stem.

On June 16, 2010, Bill Dixon died in his sleep at his home after suffering from an undisclosed illness."

"Trumpeter-composer Arthur Brooks is one of the unsung heroes of the new music. In his 40+ year career he has collaborated with such legendary figures as Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Sonny Sharrock, Alan Silva, and Frank Wright among others. For over 20 years he taught alongside Dixon in the Black Music Division at Bennington College. Brooks founded Ensemble V at Bennington College in 1973 and the music has continued to evolve. Though Brooks is technically the leader and creator - or perhaps curator - of Ensemble V, he emphasizes that the band is a democracy. "Everybody's a leader. And everybody has big ears. We find ourselves in areas that I would like to take home and develop and write, but I wouldn't want to limit what we're going to do." "

Stephen Haynes-trumpet: "I am an improvising composer, teaching artist, arts organizer and advocate; a product of the historic and fertile Black Music Division at Bennington College, directed by Bill Dixon. My early foundational studies were with the wonderful Frank Baird, who chaired the brass department at the University of Colorado's Boulder campus during the sixties and seventies. I currently lead several ensembles: Parrhesia (a trio w/Joe Morris and Warren Smith) and Pomegranate (a quintet with Ben Stapp, William Parker, Joe Morris and Warren Smith. My debut recording as a leader, Parrhesia, is on the Engine Studios label. With Joe Morris, I curate the long-running music series, Improvisations, at Real Art Ways. I am very concerned with the plight of the local artist in his/her hometown and region, and with the importance of well-developed support for those of us who enjoy working close to home and being treated properly. Over the years I have worked with a range of musicians, with a primary interest in large ensembles and composition: Bill Dixon, George Russell, LaMonte Young, Butch Morris, Rhys Chatham, Adam Rudolph, Leroy Jenkins, JD Parran, Gunter Hampel, Cecil Taylor and the Dells."

"Stephen Horenstein: Born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA; immigrated to Israel in 1980. Stephen Horenstein's works for ensemble, small orchestra, soloist and electronics have been performed and recorded in venues worldwide. Many of those works have used Jewish sound sources, themes and historical content. Horenstein is known for his experimentation with new orchestral sounds, mixed media and interactive computer-electronics.

Horenstein has collaborated with many well-known artists, including Isamu Noguchi, Steve Paxton, Israeli Hadany, Rena Schoenfeld, Kibbutz Dance Company, Vertigo Company, Esti Kenan-Ofri, Jean Claude Jones and others. Festivals have included: Festival D'Ile de France (Paris); New York International Arts Festival; Festival Chaillol (France), Other Worlds (Milan); Media Mix (University of York); International Computer Music Festival (Hong Kong; Thessoloniki, Greece); Israel Festival, Jerusalem; Helsinki Festival; Festival D'Automne (Paris), Red Sea Festival, and International Harp Festival (Vienna, Austria). Recordings include: Collages (Black Saint Soul Note, Italy), Between the Silences & The Natives Are Restless (JICM Recordings). Recordings on Kadima, including Raw and the Cooked and a forthcoming release of TempDuo (Lydian Aug). Extensive performances with innovator Bill Dixon, Horenstein's key mentor and ultimate creative inspiration. (Festival D'Autumne, Verona Festival; Vision Festival, CD-IREC Italy). His latest project is a collaboration with Butterfly Effect Ensemble, breathing new life into silent films (with Lior Navok, Jeffery Kowalsky).

Education and Teaching: Trinity College/ Hartt School of Music (BA); University of Wisconsin (MM composition); PhD, Hebrew University. Composition studies: Bill Dixon. Private Studies: Virgil Thomson, Marcel Moyse. Faculty member: Bennington College (1973-'80), Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (1981-86; 2006-2018), Tel Aviv University (1982-1986), Brandeis University (1999-2001). Artist-in-residence: University of York (England); Stanford University; SUNY, Purchase; College of William and Mary."

"Alan Silva (born Alan Lee da Silva; January 22, 1939 in Bermuda) is an American free jazz double bassist and keyboard player.

Silva was born a British subject to an Azorean/Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian father known only as "Ruby". He emigrated to the United States at the age of five with his mother, eventually acquiring U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19. He adopted the stage name of Alan Silva in his twenties.

Silva was quoted in a Bermudan newspaper in 1988 as saying that although he left the island at a young age, he always considered himself Bermudian. He was raised in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, where he first began studying the trumpet, and moved on to study the upright bass.

Silva is known as one of the most inventive bass players in jazz and has performed with many in the world of avant-garde jazz, including Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Sunny Murray, and Archie Shepp.

Silva performed in 1964's October Revolution in Jazz as a pioneer in the free jazz movement, and for Ayler's Live in Greenwich Village album. He has lived mainly in Paris since the early 1970s, where he formed the Celestrial Communication Orchestra, a group dedicated to the performance of free jazz with various instrumental combinations. In the 1990s he picked up the electronic keyboard, declaring that his bass playing no longer surprised him. He has also used the electric violin and electric sarangi on his recordings.

In the 1980s Silva opened a music school I.A.C.P. (Institute for Art, Culture and Perception) in Central Paris, introducing the concept of a Jazz Conservatory patterned after France's traditional conservatories devoted to European classical music epochs.

Since around 2000 he has performed more frequently as a bassist and bandleader, notably at New York City's annual Vision Festivals."

"Frederick "Freddie" Douglas Waits (April 27, 1943 - November 18, 1989) was a hard bop and post-bop drummer.

He never officially recorded as leader, but was a prominent member and composer in Max Roach's M'Boom percussion ensemble.

He worked as sideman with a number of influential pianists, including McCoy Tyner, Kenny Barron, Andrew Hill, Gene Harris, Billy Taylor and Joe Zawinul.

In 1967, Waits recorded with Freddie Hubbard.

He was a member of the last Lee Morgan Quintet, a journey cut short by Morgan's murder in 1972.

In the late 1970s, Waits formed Colloquium III with fellow drummers Horace Arnold and Billy Hart. In the 1980s he became a music faculty member of Rutgers University. He died of pneumonia and kidney failure in New York in 1989.

His son is the drummer Nasheet Waits."