"Ab Baars (Magrette, 1955): Dutch musician-composer and bandleader Ab Baars performs on tenor saxophone, clarinet and shakuhachi. He focuses mainly on Ab Baars Solo, Baars-Buis, Fish Scale Sunrise, Perch Hen Brock & Rain, Ab Baars Trio, Duo Baars-Henneman and the ICP Orchestra.

In reviews Baars' music has been characterized as joyfully obstinate, but surely appealing and as colourful as it is astonishing. It embodies the best typically Dutch improvised music has to offer. Although he seldomly uses recognizable song forms or ongoing swing rhythms, the music stays catchy, because it is stripped to the essence and clearly presented.

Ab Baars has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music performed in hundreds of concerts throughout Europe, North America, Brasil, Japan and Australia in the past 30 years.

Influenced by the American saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, whom he worked with in 1986, and by his participation in the Monk Project (performed by the Instant Composers Pool, directed by Misha Mengelberg), Baars adopted a very personal style, or 'ab music' as Misha Mengelberg calls it.

At the age of 15, Ab Baars began playing the saxophone in the Philips Marching Band and other local bands in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. From 1976 to 1981, he studied saxophone with Leo van Oostrom at the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music. He was granted a scholarship by the Dutch Ministry of Culture in 1989 to study with clarinettist-composer John Carter in Los Angeles. That same year Baars was presented with the prestigious Boy Edgar Award. In 2005, Baars set out playing the shakuhachi (a Japanese end-blown bamboo flute) and took lessons with Kees Kort, Christopher Blasdel and Takeo Yamashiro.

So far, Ab Baars has worked with improvisers such as Han Bennink, Jaap Blonk, Alberto Braida, Anthony Braxton, John Carter, The Ex, Cor Fuhler, Ben Goldberg, Tristan Honsinger, François Houle, George Lewis, Michael Moore, Sunny Murray, Sonic Youth, Fabrizio Spera, Cecil Taylor, Roger Turner, Ken Vandermark, Veryan Weston, Wolter Wierbos, Michiyo Yagi, poets H.C. ten Berge and Diane Régimbald, dancers Beppie Blankert, Hisako Horikawa, Masako Noguchi and Katie Duck's Magpie Company."

"Dutch musician-composer and bandleader Ig Henneman performs on viola, and writes compositions for orchestras, ensembles, soloists, including pieces for film and theater. As an improviser, she mainly focuses on the Ig Henneman Sextet, Duo Baars-Henneman and Perch Hen Brock & Rain.

According to critic Ed Hazell "... an artist incapable of remaining satisfied with any music that lies strictly within the boundaries of any one style. Her working free of received wisdom to an individual voice and clarity of vision is the exhilarating story told by the discs. (...) it's a beautiful, functioning musical world all it's own that Henneman developed organically out of poetry, jazz, classical, improvised music-and birdsong. (...) Melodies were entirely her own, again blending an ancient and modern sensibility similar to the Tentet recording and using rhythm and nonstandard intervals to shape and color them. (...) Not that she doesn't have chops, but she seems determined to subvert classical notions of instrumental prowess in favor of a deliberately simple approach with more emphasis on timbre and more directly expressive (perhaps this is a legacy of her rock experience?) (...) Here the deliberately awkward rhythms, the dry textures and subdued colors of her playing, the concentration of thought and her ability to pare down to essentials take on an intense vulnerability and humanity.(...) It is sound discovered and organized with no preconceived notions and it is both incredibly touching and intellectually thrilling at the same time."

As of 1985, Ig Henneman leads her own groups, showcasing improvisers as well as her own compositions, in hundreds of concerts throughout Europe, North America, Brasil and Japan.

Self-taught composer Ig Henneman received some years of coaching by Dutch composer Robert Heppener. Since the nineties the music of the Russian composers Galina Ustvolskaya en Sofia Gubaidulina has been an inspiration for Henneman, who is attracted by the extremes of the former's structural severity and the latter's improvisational freedom.

As a five year old, Ig Henneman took piano lessons; at eleven she began to play the violin as well. At the conservatory, she initially studied the piano, later she majored on the violin, but ultimately the viola became her instrument. Ig Henneman played in several symphony orchestras before co-founding the legendary rockband FC Gerania, which performed Henneman's first compositions. One of her early works is the soundtrack to the 1927 silent movie Baby Ryazanskye by Olga Preobrasjenskaja. Nowadays she is renowned for being one of the 'New Dutch Swing' improvisers of the Amsterdam scene as well as for being a prolific and much sought-after composer. She performs at venues and festivals in Europe, Japan and North America. Grants and commissions were given her by the Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst, the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, the Fonds voor de Amateurkunst en de Podiumkunsten and the Dutch Ministry of Culture.

So far, Ig Henneman has worked with improvisers such as Ingrid Laubrock, Tom Rainey, Dave Burrell, Misha Mengelberg, Alberto Braida, Han Buhrs, Axel Doerner, Martin van Duynhoven, Katrien Ex, Lori Freedman, Mark Helias, Tristan Honsinger, François Houle, Wilbert de Joode, Theo Jörgensmann, Takuji Kawai, Peggy Lee, Marilyn Lerner, Sabina Meyer, Michael Moore, Phil Minton, Ernst Reijseger, Roswell Rudd, Fabrizio Spera, Roger Turner, Veryan Weston, Wolter Wierbos, dancers Hisako Horikawa and Masako Noguchi and poets Anneke Brassinga, H. C. ten Berge and Diane Régimbald."

"Distinguished composer-pianist Dave Burrell is an African-American performing artist of singular stature on the international contemporary music scene. His dynamic compositions with blues and gospel roots recall the tradition of Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson and Duke Ellington, as well avant garde composers Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.

Dave and his parents moved from New York to Hawaii in 1946. After majoring in music at the University of Hawaii, he enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts graduating with degrees in composition/arranging and performance in 1965. He moved to New York City, where he quickly established himself as one of the most innovative and original pianists, collaborating with the emerging leaders in contemporary jazz, joining the groups of saxophonists Marion Brown, Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp.

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Dave Burrell has 40 recordings under his own name, among them High, High Two, Echo, La Vie de Boheme, After Love, In-Sanity, Only Me, Dreams, Black Spring, Lush Life, 'Round Midnight, Teardrops for Jimmy, Windward Passages, Daybreak, Brother to Brother, In Concert, Jelly Roll Joys, Esquisses for a Walk, Live at Caramoor, Changes and Chances, Recital, Expansion, Margy Pargy, Momentum, Dave Burrell Plays His Songs, No Fools No Fun, Dave Burrell Conception. Dave Burrell appears on 130 recordings, among them his pivotal recordings with tenor saxophonists Archie Shepp: Live from Pan-African Festival, There is a Trumpet in MySoul, Blasé, Kwanza, Attica Blues, Cry of My People, Montreaux One, Montreaux Two, Lover Man, Pharoah Sanders: Tauhid, Marion Brown: Jubalee, Three For Shepp, Live in Japan, David Murray: Hope Scope, Lovers, Deep River, Ballads, Spirituals, Remembrances, Lucky Four, Picasso, Windward Passages. Other important recordings are 360 Degree Music Experience: From Ragtime to No Time, In:sanity, Grachan Moncur: New Africa, Sunny Murray: Homage to Africa, Bob Stewart: Here and Now, and Consequences with drummer Billy Martin. The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield and Essence of Ellington with William Parker's Ensembles. Horo Records in Italy recently released a live duo recording, No Fools No Fun with Ellington-drummer Sam Woodyard from a 2 months long engagement in Paris (1979). Dave Burrell appears on the Argentine saxophonist Roberto Pettinato's Sony/Columbia Argentina Records releases Purity and Same Egg. A live duo recording with guitarist Garrison Fewell, New Earth to be released in 2015.

A frequent lecturer, Burrell's Master Classes include Strasbourg Conservatory, Tremblay Conservatory (Paris), Conservatoire Municipal (Paris), Guildhall School of Music and Dance (London), Columbia University, New York University, Queens College, Bard College, New York. University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, Bryn Mawr College, Duquesne University, School of Music, Pennsylvania. Brandeis University, Massachusetts. Rice University, Houston, Texas. DePauw University, Indiana. Library of Congress and Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. Burrell's most recent commissions include Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia, and Whitney Museum, New York City.

Dave Burrell is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including National Endowment for the Arts, Philadelphia Music Foundation, William J. Cooper Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Pennsylvania State Council on The Arts, MidAtlantic Foundation, John Garcia Gensel Award, and the Pew Fellowship in Jazz Composition. Dave Burrell joined the Steinway Artist Roster (www.Steinway.com) in 2007."