"Meinrad Kneer is a double bass player, composer, improviser, band-leader and label owner. His music moves along the musical boundaries of jazz, improvised, contemporary-composed and ethnic music.

He studied double bass and music in the Netherlands (conservatories of Hilversum and Amsterdam), where he quickly entered the Dutch jazz- and subsequently the international scene of free improvisation.

In 2002 he receives one of the most prestigious Dutch music awards: the 'Jur Naessens Music Award' for the project 'New Anatomy', realized with his band 'Dalgoo' and inspired by the work of the Russian writer Daniil Kharms.

His compositional work has been supported between 2001-2011 by the Dutch 'Funds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst' (today 'Funds Podiumkunsten') and in 2013 he recieved a grant from the Berlin senate to compose music for his Phosphoros Ensemble.

From 2007 to 2011 he organized the concert series 'U-Ex(perimental)' devoted to free improvisation, in cooperation with flutist Mark Alban Lotz, the Centraal Museum and the SJU Jazz Podium in Utrecht (NL).

Since 2011/2012 he lives in Berlin.

He currently leads the Meinrad Kneer Quintet, the Trio Baars / Kneer / Elgart, the Phosphoros Ensemble, and works as a co-leader in the groups Dalgoo, Rose/ Kneer/ Barrett and Sequoia.

He also plays a.o. with the following ensembles: Julie Sassoon Quartet, Andreas Willers Septet, Peter Van Huffel Octet and Bite the Gnatze, and worked with musicians as Najma Akhtar, Richard Barrett, Johannes Bauer, Han Bennink, Iva Bittová, Axel Dörner, Bill Elgart, Ceylan Ertem, Fred Frith, Tristan Honsinger, Paul Lovens, Roscoe Mitchell and Jon Rose, and ensembles as different Baraná formations, the Ab Baars Quartet, House of Mirrors, the Gravitones, Play Station 6, the Astronotes, the Joost Buis tentet, the AXYZ-Ensemble, the bigtet Tetzepi, the Ig Henneman String Quartet, the Marc Sinan Company, the KNM Ensemble and realized, with his own bands and as a side man, about 30 records.

During the last years he has been touring extensively in most countries of Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Turkey, North Africa and Mexico.

His internationally renowned label 'Evil Rabbit Records', founded together with pianist Albert van Veenendaal in 2006, is dedicated to contemporary improvised music rooted in the European culture."

"Rudi Fischerlehner plays drums in various different musical projects that fall between improvised and experimental music, jazz and post-rock. He also composes and produces music for bands, film and performances.

Born in 1977 in Austria he was introduced to the drums in his childhood and quickly started playing in bands as a teenager around Linz. Following a period studying classical percussion he moved to Vienna, travelled to Africa and China, spent a few month in New York and now resides in Berlin.

His current projects include Xenofox with Olaf Rupp, RMF with Rupp and Matthias Müller, Parrot´s Feathers with Matthias Schubert and Antonio Borghini, Fiium Shaarrk and Gorilla Mask.

Rudi works or has also worked in collaboration with Erste Stufe Haifisch, Andreas Willers, Tristan Honsinger, Julie Sassoon, La Tourette, Dominique Pifarely, Ingrid Laubrock, Tony Buck, Frank Paul Schubert, Zsolt Sőrés, Edoardo Maraffa and many more.

Projects in which he features have been regularly invited to important festivals and clubs worldwide and featured on radio programmes such as Ö1, BBC Radio 3 and Deutschlandfunk.

As a producer and composer for film soundtracks he contributed to movies by Ella Raidel, Johanna Kirsch and Katharina Lampert and was involved in the video or performance work of Katrin Plavcak, Wilhelm Groener, Rainer Kohlberger, Haroon Mirza and Tarek Atoui."

"Olaf Rupp (*1963) plays Improvised Music on the acoustic and electric guitar. The organic flow of his music is controlled neither by chance nor by dominant, wilful decisions. In his music he explores how more or less dense murmurations of notes (motion-clusters) can be perceived as one agglomerated sound in motion. This means that every note is a dot in a higher matrix and its colour is more important than the position of that note in any hierarchic classification system. So a sequence of notes creates a moving sound, not a melody. And the intrinsic colour of every note is more important than the melodic or harmonic burden which the listener may or may not put on it.

Besides many cooperations five solo albums are published so far on the labels FMP, GROB and GLIGG. Olaf Rupp has been touring in many countries and performed with extraordinary musicians such as Paul Lovens, Tristan Honsinger, Peter Brötzmann, Butch Morris, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn und Michael Wertmüller. Important groups are among others XENOFOX, his duo with Rudi Fischerlehner, a Duo with cello player Ulrike Brand, DIE DICKEN FINGER with Oli Steidle and Jan Roder (also a quartet with Peter Brötzmann) and WEIRD WEAPONS with Tony Buck and Joe Williamson."