"Jean-Marc Foussat (born March 19, 1955 in Oran ) is a French composer and improvisational musician ( guitar, piano, live electronics ).

Since the mid-1970s, Foussat had belonged to groups such as Lézard Marçio, in which he contributed the sounds of concrete music with magnetic tapes. In 1981, he finished his first solo album, Abattage, which was released in 1983. In the ensemble Marteau Rouge (with the guitarist Jean-François Pauvros and the drummer Makoto Sato), he also collaborated with Evan Parker. Together with the saxophonist Sylvain Guérineau, he formed the duo Aliquid, which also appeared with Joe McPhee ( Quod, 2014). In addition to soloprograms, he also starred with Noël Akchoté / Roger Turner, Samuel Blaser, Émilie Lesbros, Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Sophie Agnel, Daunik Lazro and numerous other musicians, as well as the Fortuna 21 Octet of Raymond Boni and the department of education psychique on."

"Falling into the small fanfare, Matthias Mahler begins a copper course alongside his trumpet father. Trumpet and tuba first, his last word will be the trombone. He studied the instrument with his first teachers, Charles Hassler and Patrick Hanss then at CNR Stasbourg and CNSM Paris. After various experiments in chamber music and symphonic orchestra, he takes the path of cross and privileges spaces of freedom and improvisation. Meetings with Francois Corneloup, Marc Ducret, Eric Exhampart and Francois Raulin comfort in this direction.

He is currently active in the following formations: the Little Big Campania of Musiques à Ouïr directed by Denis Charolles, X'tet and Ciné X 'tet directed by Bruno Regnier, The Life of Issiba with André Minvielle, Ozma, Taranta Babu, the False Brothers .."

"Jean-Luc Cappozzo was born in Belfort, France, in 1954. He started playing the trumpet in the local orchestra of his native town where he performed both jazz and classical music. Following a meeting with the diatonic accordionist Serge Desaunay, he started to perform traditional music as well.

His meeting with Dizzy Gillespie in 1984, who invited him to participate in his concert, was a turning point in Jean-Luc Cappozzo's career.

In 1988 he obtained the State Diploma of Professor of Jazz and subsequently taught trumpet improvisation at the Music School of Lyon (CNSM).

He has taken part in various groups of musicians of the ARFI.

He has been a member of he Louis Sclavis Quintet "L'Affrontement des Prétendants" and of Claude Tchamitchian's "Grand Lousadzak". In addition he has played in Sophia Domancich's Quintet "Pentacle", the Denis Fournier Quartet and with Joelle Léandre's Quintet "Fragments et suite lyrique". He has formed a quartet with Jean Aussanaire , Rémi Charmasson and Bernard Santacruz and created a musical work "Du Vent chez Johannes" with the Johannes String Quartet.

In 2005 he joined the European Mythical Orchestra: the Globe Unity Orchestra. He has played with the Apollo Trio and composed duo s with the cellists Joelle Léandre or Eric Brochard, the singer Géraldine Keller, the drummer Paul Lovens, the tuba player Michel Godard, the pianist Umberto Petrin and the trumpet players Axel Dorner or Herb Robertson. Actually, he is playing with: - "The Bridge" with Joëlle Léandre (cb), Bernard Santacruz (cb), Mickaël Zerang (dms) and Douglas Ewart (sax - flûte) - - " Can You Hear Me" of Joëlle Léandre (cb) - " 2 ème étage " with Christine Wodrascka (p) and Gerry Hemingway (dms) - Duo with Famoudou Don Moye (dms) - Duo with Cécile Cappozzo (p) - Quartet à l'Ouest with Jean Aussanaire (sax), Eric Brochard (cb) and Alfred Spirli (dms) - Duo with Géraldine Keller (voice) - Duo with Eric Brochard (cb) - Trio with Didier Lasserre (dms) and Paul Rogers (cb) For his strength, his creativity, his magnificent sonority, the clarity of his phrasing, Jean-Luc Cappozzo is today an indispensable trumpet player on the European musical scene and is in increasing demand. Jean-Luc Cappozzo, powerful and mellifluous trumpet player, is "a discreet man who would blush to be labeled one of the most relevant soloists and the most complete on the French jazz scene. He may blush".(S. Siclier, Le Monde 1/08/2002)"

"Nicolas Souchal: trumpet, bugle, composition. Born in 1979.

Nicolas Souchal is a French trumpet player, active in contemporary jazz and improvised music. He is recognized for his sense of construction in improvisation, his expressive sonority, and his playing including the extended techniques of the instrument. His approach is borrowed from musicians such as Don Cherry, Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Axel Dörner, and Daunik Lazro.

In 1997 in Clermont-Ferrand, he was a founding member of the Collectif Musique en Friche, a bubbling crucible of experiments, close to the ARFI (Association for the Research of an Imaginary Folklore). He developed two wind duets, one with Franck Pilandon, the other with Christiane Bopp, and more recently the quartet Les arbres moved during the night, improvised instrumental music and sound diffusion.

Since 2000, composer and arranger with the Balkan Brass Band, as well as the nebabylonian jazz quartet Humbaba, he appropriates and recomposes the traditional music of Eastern Europe.

Since 2010, he has been heard in various formations on the Parisian scene: Pavillon Rouge (Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Matthias Mahler, Jean-Marc Foussat), ARBF & Hmadcha in Essaouira (meeting between big band free jazz and Sufi musicians Yoram Rosilio), Quintet Cuir (improvised epidermic music, with Jean-Brice Godet, John Cuny, Yoram Rosilio, Jérôme Fouquet)"

"Dirar Kalash resides in Ramallah, Palestine and is one of the foremost improvisors in the Middle East. He works with a range of improvised sound/music and art practices.

Dirar Kalash's live performances combine text, sound, image, video and movement. Regularly using free and open-source software in the field of real-time audio, video and image processing, he is also a multi-instrumentalist and engages in musical composition and free improvisation. His work is based on everyday life as a phenomenon, which is then subjected to live processing, composition and decomposition in order to transcend time and matter to a ritualistic live performance.

His group participations include a live audio-video performance for the 2011 /si:n/ Festival of Video Art and Performance in Ramallah, and a video and sound installation for the 2011 Open Studio exhibition at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre (Ramallah), in addition to regular musical performances in Palestine and Egypt, in the field of free and improvised music."

"Maria Luisa Capurso is an Italian singer, sound artist, composer and performer based in Berlin. Her work is multidisciplinary and focused on the connection between voice, sound, field recordings, body and improvisation. She investigates and explores the realm of acoustic sounds and electronic interfaces as extension of human voice. Art and life, sound and movement, the common line is the improvisation which leads her to research and to create new worlds. She studied Theater and dance at "Accademia Stabile del Musical", she graduated with a bachelor of jazz music at Conservatory "N.Piccini" in Bari, Puglia, and with a Master of new musical languages and technology at the Conservatory "N.Rota" in Monopoli, Puglia. She studied with Meredith Monk, Faheem Mazaar, Chiara Guidi, Michela Lucenti, Patricia Bardi, Barry Harris, Zeno Gabaglio, Carlos Zingaro, Dave Moss, Kent Carter, Karl Berger, William Parker, etc. She sang the contemporary solo pieces for voice "Lettura di Braibanti" with and for Sylano Bussotti. She recorded with the Hocus Pocus Orchestra and William Parker the album "What Shall We Do" for Silta Records."

"Joe McPhee, born November 3,1939 in Miami, Florida, USA, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He began playing the trumpet at age eight, taught by his father, himself a trumpet player. He continued on that instrument through his formative school years and later in a U.S. Army band stationed in Germany, at which time he was introduced to performing traditional jazz. Clifford Thornton's Freedom and Unity, released in 1969 on the Third World label, is the first recording on which he appears as a side man. In 1968, inspired by the music of Albert Ayler, he took up the saxophone and began an active involvement in both acoustic and electronic music.

His first recordings as leader appeared on the CJ Records label, founded in 1969 by painter Craig Johnson. These include Underground Railroad by the Joe McPhee Quartet (1969), Nation Time (1970), Trinity (1971) and Pieces of Light (1974). In 1975, Swiss entrepreneur Werner X. Uehlinger release Black Magic Man by McPhee, on what was to become Hat Hut Records.

In 1981, he met composer, accordionist, performer, and educator Pauline Oliveros, whose theories of "deep listening" strengthened his interests in extended instrumental and electronic techniques. he also discovered Edward de Bono's book Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity, which presents concepts for solving problems by "disrupting an apparent sequence and arriving at the solution from another angle." de Bono's theories inspired McPhee to apply this "sideways thinking" to his own work in creative improvisation, resulting in the concept of "Po Music." McPhee describes "Po Music" as a "process of provocation" (Po is a language indicator to show that provocation is being used) to "move from one fixed set of ideas in an attempt to discover new ones." He concludes, "It is a Positive, Possible, Poetic Hypothesis." The results of this application of Po principles to creative improvisation can be heard on several Hat Art recordings, including Topology, Linear B, and Oleo & a Future Retrospective.

In 1997, McPhee discovered two like-minded improvisers in bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen. The trio premiered at the Vision Jazz Festival in 1998 but the concert went unnoticed by the press. McPhee, Duval, and Rosen therefore decided that an apt title for the group would be Trio X. In 2004 he created Survival Unit III with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Michael Zerang to expand his musical horizons and with a career spanning nearly 50 years and over 100 recordings, he continues to tour internationally, forge new connections while reaching for music's outer limits."

"Fred Marty was born in Blaye (Gironde) in 1970. After studying classical bass studies, he devoted his work to improvisation and experimentation of various game modes on bass. He strives to develop a personal language, inspired by everyday sounds, making some forget the bass itself (distorted sounds, harmonics "gaps" in incomplete or misleading spectrum percussion sounds without specific height, sounds The rubbing of the fingers or the hand on the body of the double bass). He also modifies the timbre by inserting between ropes of wooden or metal rods. Each part of the body of the double bass becomes an instrument of its own.

Thus, co-creation he also collaborated in multidisciplinary projects combining dance, music, and video playback, including Anne Ropers collective recidiva in UNICA, a project calling itself "night moves" around the collection of poems of the same Title of Henri Michaux, or with Bérengère Altieri-Leca in the duo OKAMI.

Fred Marty has played with Yuko Oshima, Ai Watanabe, Birgitte Lyregaard, Yoko Arai, Frederic Blondy, Edward Perraud, Itaru Oki, Claude Speaks, Xavier Lopez, Michel Doneda Sebastien Bouhana, Marcos Fernandes, Usui Yasuhiro, Alvise Sinivia Michael Nick, Daunik Lazro, Isabelle Duthoit, Benoit Cancoin, Matsumoto Kenichi, Jean Marc Foussat, Yoko Arai, Eric Dambrin John Cuny, Jean Brice Godet, Alexandre Bellenger, Nush Werchowska Mathieu Garrouste Pascal Marzan, Cyprien Busolini, Nicolas Souchal, Deborah Walker, Patricia Bosshard, Jean-Marc Foussat, Yoko Miura, Francesco Pastacaldi Richard Comte, Hideo Ikegami, Ugo Boscain and works with dancers of butoh Gyouhei Zaitsu, Maki Watanabe and dancer Bérengère Altieri-Leca.

Since 2012 he is a member of ONCEIM, an orchestra conducted by Frédéric Blondy."

"Born in Aachen, Germany, 6 June 1949; Drums, percussion, musical saw, etc.

Paul Lovens played the drums as a child. Self-taught, from the age of 14 he played in groups of various jazz styles and popular musics and from 1969 has worked almost exclusively as an improvisor on individually selected instruments. He has worked internationally with most of the leading musicians in free jazz and free improvisation, among whom have included the Globe Unity Orchestra, the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, the Schlippenbach trio, Quintet Moderne, Company, and a duo with Paul Lytton. He has undertaken concert tours in more than 40 countries, is a founder member of a musician's cooperative and has produced recordings for his own label, Po Torch Records since 1976. He has worked with painter Herbert Bardenheuer. Despite very rare solo performances, and although giving occasional concerts with ad-hoc groups and an involvement in projects with film, dance and actors, Paul Lovens' main interest and work is musical improvisation in fixed small groups. In the mid-1990s these small groups numbered around 16, of which a few were part of a special selection, called 'vermögen'.

Paul Lovens somehow epitomises the free drummer/percussionist who is not there to lay down the beat and kick everyone else into action but to listen, colour, contribute, guide, and occasionally direct, the overall cooperative sound. In concert one cannot fail to be moved by his intensity and concentration and there is an overiding feeling that even the most random events are somehow planned in time. In this respect, there is a nice irony that on the Nothing to read CD with Mats Gustafsson, Lovens describes his kit as consisting of 'selected and unselected drums and cymbals'. Miking seems to be a problem at times with some recordings giving him undue prominence and others insufficient. Good recordings are Elf bagatellen, Nothing to read, Pakistani pomade, and ,stranger than love."

"noid /aka Arnold Haberl *1970, studied cello and mathematics. He is teaching at the Multimedia-Art department of the University for Applied Science in Salzburg.

The composer, sound-artist, cello player and improvisor understands his work as fundamental research leading to a wide range of contradictory outcome. Spanning from cello-solo and tape-pieces to compositions for ensembles, improvisation scores or performances with electronic or hybrid instruments, from sound-installations to videos and imaginary music. Also his contributions as a programmer for the freeware "ppooll" (http://ppooll.klingt.org) can be seen in this context. What makes his cello playing special is his approach to find a world within instead of trying to expand the range of the instrument. Looking at the instrument as a fact or maybe even a score in itself without obeying the historical connotations."

"Influenced by musicians as diverse as Django Reinhardt and Cecil Taylor, French guitarist Raymond Boni has developed a unique and dazzling style derived from gypsy technique. After studying the piano and switching to the harmonica, Raymond Boni learned how to play the guitar with Gypsies living near his home. This empirical experience would leave a permanent imprint on Boni's approach to the instrument. In the early '60s, still a teenager, he decided to go study in London. Surrounded by a very diverse and creative musical environment, Boni decided to get serious about the guitar and to break from the musical framework of musical academia. Back in France, he settled in Paris where he was among the first French musicians to embrace free jazz and free improvisation. His first major collaboration was a long-lived duo he formed with guitarist Gérard Marais in 1973. In 1976, he joined the André Jaume/Gérard Siracusa duo and worked with saxophonist Claude Bernard. The latter was also responsible for allowing Boni to fulfill his ambition to compose for and perform with dancers.

In 1978, he started a long relationship with Joe McPhee, which produced some stellar albums such as Old Eyes & Mysteries and Oleo & a Future Retrospective and a tour in the U.S. and Canada (1985). In 1981, Boni moved to Marseille where he was not able to perform as often as in Paris. As an alternative, he focused on writing and diversified his projects. In 1982, he met dancer and choreographer Geneviève Sorin and started to compose music for her company. Raymond Boni also continued to foster some old partnerships while developing new ones with accomplished artists such as Les Mistrals with British improvisers Terry Day and Max Eastley. In the '90s, the guitarist worked extensively with musicians from younger generations, most notably Claude Tchamitchian and Eric Echampard. Boni also multiplied collaborations with artists having a background other than jazz but a bent for improvisation. Another worthy project is Boni's Family with Sorin and son Bastien Boni, which honors his Gypsy legacy and capitalizes on his talented household. In 2001, Boni reunited with McPhee for an album, Voices & Dreams, and several concerts in the U.S. and Europe."