Matt London - Saxophonist & Composer, D'Addario Woodwinds Performing Artist | Leader of Ensemble Entropy | Nominated for a 2018 British Composers Award: "Over time free improvisation has grown in great significance in my music making as a performer-composer. I try to create music that has the emotive freedom and intensity of free improvisation - I love its energy, focus and agility - but captured in scores (in some type of form) from which musicians can perform! This fundamental approach towards the improvised is considered from Wadada Leo Smith's ideal of creative music - dedicated to developing a heightened awareness, appreciation and understanding of improvisation as an equal art form alongside western classical art music."

"Georgia Cooke (1994) is a British flautist and composer, living and working in London, UK. She is currently studying at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance with Anna Noakes, and previously at Brunel University with Colin Riley, Peter Weigold, Sarah Nichols and John Croft, achieving a first class honours degree in music and the Sheridan Award for Music Performance.

Georgia specialises in contemporary classical and free improvisation performance. Her current projects include playing with Ensemble Entropy alongside Matt London, performing original works based on graphic scores and free improvisation; presenting lesser known contemporary works with flexible ensemble; Crosscontemporary Project; singing soulful jazz standards with her trio Bouffant; and premiering her own compositions. When alone, she performs solo flute music, specialising in living composers such as Dave Heath and Robert Aitken.

Georgia composes in a number of styles, from contemporary minimalism, to 21st century romanticism, with the main aim of creating something enjoyable and accessible to the audience. Her most recent composition, Hebe, was premiered in January 2017 at The Old Royal Naval College Chapel by Anna Noakes, Freyr Sigurjónsson, Gabriella Dall'Olio and Leo Nicholson. Current projects include expanding the repertoire for flute choir, working closely with Trinity Laban flute choir.

Georgia continues to play in a number of well-known UK venues including The Royal Festival Hall and Snape Maltings."

"Tom Ward is a musician, composer and computer programmer from Yorkshire, currently based in London. His primary instrument is the saxophone, but in recent years he has also been involved in a variety of projects playing clarinets and flute. Tom leads the Madwort Saxophone Quartet, formed to play his compositions with three other exciting young saxophonists: Chris Williams (Led Bib, Let Spin); Cath Roberts (Sloth Racket, LUME) and Andrew Woolf (Button Band, Alvorado). Their recent debut album "Live at Hundred Years Gallery" on Efpi Records received a four-star review from John Fordham in the Guardian. Tom also explores his compositions with other ensembles, most recently Madwort's Menagerie - a sextet comprising flute, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, cello and double-bass.

Tom has a strong interest in freely improvised music. His collaborative group Ma/ti/om featuring Swedish percussionist Matilda Rolfsson and double bassist Tim Fairhall released their first album "Ashes" on Raw Tonk Records in 2016. They subsequently toured the UK and Scandinavian early 2017, leading to their second Raw Tonk release "Live in London" in Oct 2017. He is also establishing a working duo partnership with Manchester-based keyboard player Adam Fairhall, which will tour in September 2018. Tom is also part of the collaboration that runs BRÅK, a regular free improv night in a South London homebrew shop.

Tom is a regular member of anarchic London big band Overground Collective, as well as performing across Europe, Canada and the US with Beats & Pieces Big Band, Cath Robert's Favourite Animals, Article XI, the London Jazz Orchestra and Yazz Ahmed's Family Hafla. He was a member of the Peter Whittingham award-winning ensemble Porpoise Corpus, Combustible Alarms Big Band and Quadraceratops."

"Seb Silas is a UK saxophonist, a member of Mimika Orchestra, Don't Problem and Orchestra Entropy."

"Sarah Gail Brand: trombonist composer arranger tutor workshop leader. Born in London, 1971.

Described by The Wire magazine as the most exciting trombone player for years, Sarah Gail Brand has recorded and performed on the international Jazz and Improvised Music since the early 1990s with Mark Sanders, John Edwards, Martin Hathaway, Billy Jenkins, Elton Dean, Evan Parker, Phil Minton, Lol Coxhill, Alexander Hawkins, Maggie Nicols, Rachel Musson, Wadada Leo Smith, Jason Yarde, Steve Beresford and countless others. She appears in Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, series 1 & 2 (BBC TV) and with Stewart in the 2014 documentary film Taking the Dog for a Walk.

Current ongoing performing projects include:

Brand/Sanders duo with Mark Sanders (drums);

Deep Trouble Trio with Paul Rogers (7 string double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums);

Brand/Beresford/Edwards/Sanders (Steve Beresford- electronics, piano,John Edwards- double bass) This ensemble also works as a quartet with Mark Sanders (drums)

SGB Sextet: SGB (trombone), Nicholas Malcolm (trumpet), Martin Hathaway (reeds), Liam Noble (piano), Dave Whitford (double bass) Mark Sanders (drums)

Rosenblatt with Sam Eastmond: SGB (trombone), Hannah Marshall (cello), Mick Foster (bass clarinet), Moss Freed (guitar), Mark Lewandowski (double bass), Will Glaser (drums).

Sarah's composing credits include an original score for the Charlie Chaplin classic Easy Street, premiered at the Barbican Cinema, London in 2013; incidental music for the 2014 short Low Down Alley Blues; We Should Consider The Possibility- Piece for Improvising Ensemble and Chamber Orchestra, premiered by the Guildhall Improvised Music Ensemble and the Southbank Sinfonia in 2014.

Sarah was a guest presenter on Jazz on 3 (BBC Radio 3) 2009-2016, is a professor of Improvisation at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, and a qualified Music Therapist.

Sarah is currently studying for her PhD in Improvised Music at Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent."

"Rebecca Raimondi is an Italian violinist, born in 1996. She is now attending a Master in baroque violin and historical performance praxis with Mechthild Karkow at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst of Frankfurt am Main. In 2018, she has completed a Fellowship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Jacqueline Ross, where she also obtained the Master (CRD) with David Takeno and studied baroque violin with Pavlo Beznosiuk . She previously studied with Salvatore Accardo (Accademia W. Stauffer of Cremona, Accademia Chigiana) and Marco Fiorini (Music School of Fiesole) and with Roberto Gonzalez-Monjas (Accademia Praeneste). She graduated at the Conservatorio "O. Respighi" in Latina, under the guidance of Antonio De Secondi obtaining the highest degree cum laude and honors . She has partecipated in masterclasses with: Dora Schwarzberg, Sergey Girshenko, George Mönch, Harald Herzl and Lorenzo Fabiani.

She has founded the Ardorè Duo, devoted to Contemporary Music succesfully performing at the Accademia Chigiana of Siena, the Museo del violino in Cremona - playing on the Nicolò Amati ex-Collin 1669 -, the Macro Museum in Rome and the Milton Court Concert Hall in London.

She is also member of the Avant Piano Trio (Urska Horvat, cello and Alessandro Viale, piano), which is specialized in Romantic and Contemporary repertoire, successfully performing in UK and Italy.

As a soloist she has performed the Brahms Concerto with the International Orchestra of Rome, Mozart Concerto no. 4 with the Symphonic Orchestra of Latina, Bach Brandenburg Concerto No.4 with the Guildhall Baroque Ensemble in Milton Court Concert Hall in London and the Double Concerto with "I Solisti Aquilani" and the violinist Gaia Trionfera under the baton of Amaury Du Closel. In 2016 she performed as a soloist "The Four Seasons" by Vivaldi with Rest Ensemble in London and in Rome, on period instruments.

Since 2014 she has been invited to play in the Orchestra da Camera Italiana. In her numerous orchestral experiences, she performed in the Freiburger Barockorchester , in the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, in the Dresden Festival Orchestra and in the Leonore Orchestra, and worked with conductor such as Simon Rattle, Andreas Staier, Ivor Bolton, Alexander Lonquich and Mikhail Jurowski.

Particularly devoted to contemporary music, she has been invited by the Mantova Chamber Music Festival to play with the Imago Sonora Ensemble in a concert dedicated to American contemporary composers. In 2017 she held a contemporary music recital for violin solo at the Filarmonica Romana in the season "Assoli II", performing premières by Marco Quagliarini and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. With Duo Ardorè she performed the première of "Ricercare II" by Marco Quagliarini who subsequently dedicated "Ricercare III" for solo violin to her. She was then invited to perform again in 2019 for "Assoli IV".

She is also member of Il Quadro Animato - an Historically Informed ensemble that performs Late-Baroque and Early-Classical Music-, Rest Ensemble, of the Entropy Ensemble and the Metapraxis Ensemble. She recorded the music of Michele Paradiso for violin and piano and violin and orchestra in two CDs, a monographic CD of David Collins violin sonatas and violin solo pieces and Robin Holloway chamber music for Sheva Contemporary.

She won many National and International competitions such as Anemos, Clivis, Città di Giussano, Marco Dall'Aquila and Riviera Etrusca. She has been awarded the "Excellentissimus" Prize, released by appointment of the President of the Italian Republic, the "Monte dei Paschi di Siena" Scholarship for the best students of Salvatore Accardo's class of the Chigiana International Summer Academy, and the "Scuola di Musica di Fiesole" Scholarship. In 2016 she has been selected for "Chamber Music Festival 2016", and in the same year she has been awarded a Scholarship by the "Guildhall School of Music and Drama". In 2018 she has been invited to take part in the East Neuk Festival retreat. With duo Ardorè she won in 2017 the Scotese festival, as best young ensemble of Nuova Consonanza Festival. She has been selected for Lucerne Festival Academy 2018.

She plays a 1907 Riccardo Antoniazzi and a Klotz-school violin from the late 18th Century."

"Benedict Taylor is an award winning composer & solo violist specialising in contemporary music and improvisation. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music & Goldsmiths College, and is a leading figure within the area of contemporary composition & string performance, at the forefront of the British & European new and improvised music scene.

He composes, performs & records internationally, in many leading venues and festivals including: Royal Court Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, BBC Arts Online, Berlinale, Venice International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Festival, London Contemporary Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Cantiere D'Arte di Montepulciano, Edinburgh Festival, CRAM Festival, Cafe Oto, The Barbican, Royal Albert Hall, Southbank Centre, The Vortex, Ronnie Scott's, ICA, BBC Radio 3 & 2, Radio Libertaire Paris, Resonance FM London.

Through his work he is involved with a number of higher education institutions, giving composition, improvisation & performance lectures at the Royal College of Music, City University and Goldsmiths College amongst others. He is the founder and artistic director of CRAM, a music collective and independent record label dedicated to new music."

"I've been earning money and having fun playing music for over twenty years, firstly as a bass guitarist, trumpet player and trombonist, and, for the last twelve years, primarily as a double bass player. I first bought a bass guitar on my eighteenth birthday, and started gigging with it shortly afterwards, in bars and cafes around Sheffield, where I lived at the time. On moving to Leeds to study in 1993, I formed my first proper band, Baby Harp Seal, playing Hardcore Punk, and, in 1994, did my first tour with them, in France, Belgium and Germany. We released our first 7 inch record shortly afterwards, and an LP in 1996. Two days after my last university exam , I left on tour with the band Headache, with whom I toured extensively in Europe for the next three years; we were on tour for an average of seven months out of each year. We released an album in 1997, and continued until 1999, when the band split up. I returned to Leeds, working on several different projects, including Snail Racing, a bass guitar trio with added drums, and touring with the band Almanac.

In 2001 I moved to London, and found work with the "nu-jazz" electronic act Hefner, with whom I toured several times, as well as recording a session for Gilles Peterson's Worldwide, and playing on his stage at the North Sea Jazz festival. Lee Jones, who ran the band Hefner, also asked me to play on an album he was producing by an act called Abraham, and I subsequently played live with them too, as well as recording a session for Jonathon Ross' show on BBC Radio 2. It was during this time that I bought my first double bass, and embarked on the lifetime's work of learning how to play it. Returning to Leeds in 2003, I started to concentrate more on the jazz and improvised music side of my practice, and around this time started playing in the band 7 hertz, an improvising ensemble who used their 'classical' instrumentation - violins, bassoon, clarinets and horn - to explore chamber ensemble playing in an improvisational context. In 2008, having slimmed down to a quartet, we released an album on the label Birdwar called 'Tender, Almost Vulgar'. During this period I was also working in a band called McWatt, a duo with flautist and accordionist Sarah McWatt, with whom I released an album in 2006.

Other projects around this time included the jazz band If Destroyed Still True, who won a Parliamentary Jazz Promoter's Choice award, as well as Jazz Yorkshire's band of the year award in 2010. They released the album 'Seven Dials' in 2009, and undertook a Jazz Services funded tour. The improvised Music and Dance project 'Mathilde' started around this time too, an attempt to reconcile improvisation in two different media, dance and music. You can watch video of Mathilde elsewhere on this site. The project continues to this day, with a recent performance in Leeds on a bill along with Jer Reid and Solene Weinachter from Glasgow. The project blog is here. More recently, I have been working as a sideman for Mary Hampton, the superb folk singer from Brighton and Laura Cole's Metamorphic. Alongside this, I have been running my own trio Nut Club, the Bennett-Cole Orchestra, and a co-operative trio with pianist Laura Cole and drummer Peter Fairclough. I recently stopped playing trombone in Swiss Afro-punk dadaists rchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp.

I have been teaching at Sheffield Jazz Workshops for the last three years, for which I jointly won a Jazz Yorkshire award for Best Teacher. In the summer of 2012 I taught on the Sound and Music Composer's Summer School at the Purcell School in Hertfordshire, and I am building a busy individual teaching practise."

"Moss Freed is a composer, guitarist and improviser. He studied music at the University of Edinburgh and Berklee College of Music (Boston), before completing a masters in composition at Goldsmiths College. He has received scholarships from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, the Bucher/Fraser Trust and the Berklee World Scholarship Tour. Moss has composed for Aisha Orazbayeva, Joseph Houston, Joshua Hyde, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, DriftEnsemble, Via Nova and several of his own projects, with broadcasts including BBC Radio 3, Jazz FM and BBC 6Music, and TV credits including BBC 1's The One Show.

Moss founded and runs Let Spin ('an electrifying live band whose grooves could wake the dead' Guardian) and Moss Project ('nothing short of breathtaking' All About Jazz), also performing as a guitarist with Counter's Creek, Arun Ghosh, and the Spike Orchestra, whose albums of John Zorn's music have been released on Tzadik. Performances include HCMF, the Barbican Centre, the Southbank Centre, Ronnie Scott's, Pizza Express Soho, and various European festivals.

Moss works as a teacher, examiner and workshop leader, and presents his research regularly. He is currently researching composition at the Universities of Hull and Huddersfield as a NECAH PhD scholar and lives in London."

"Mark Sanders has played with many renowned musicians including Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Derek Bailey, Henry Grimes, Roswell Rudd, Peter Brotzmann, Barry Guy, Otomo Yoshihide, Jah Wobble, Sidsel Endresen , Charles Gayle, Peter Evans and William Parker. He works with John Edwards in a duo and with groups including Evan Parker, `Foils` with Frank Paul Schubert and Matthius Muller and groups with Veryan Weston, John Tilbury, Agusti Fernandez and Mathew Shipp. Mark works in a regular improvising duo with John Butcher and also performing John`s composition `Tarab Cuts` which has played festivals in Rio de Janiero, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Glasgow, Bristol and London. In a trio with cellist Okkyung Lee, John and Mark have played in Belgium, France, England and Scotland. He also has a longstanding duo with Sarah Gail Brand which has featured on the BBC`s `The Stuart Lee Show`and in the film `Taking the dog for a Walk`.

He has performed solo for a Christian Marclay exhibition at The White Cube Gallery in London, Evan Parker`s festival`Unwhitstable` in Wroclaw, Poland for `Solos Festival` The 100 Years Gallery London, an improvised music series in Derby and Cafe Oto in London. Working with Christian Marclay in his `Everyday` piece for film and live music, he has performed in Aldeburgh, Ruhr Trienalle, Vienna Bienalle, Holland festival and London`s QEH and has also collaborated with him playing for the film `Screenplay`in London and Lisbon. In situations using composition in one form or another Mark works in various projects including `13 Vices` with Brian Irvine/Jennifer Walshe, Alex Hawkins Ensemble featuring Peter Evans, Simon Fell Ensembe, groups with Hasse Poulsen and Luc Ex , Sarah Sarhandi`s `Both Universe`, Elaine Mitchener`s `Sweet Tooth` and has played in the groups of Shabaka Hutchings including`Sons of Kemet` Conceptual Artist Sam Belinfante collaborated with Mark in his piece `On the One Hand, and the Other` in two exhibitions at Camden Arts Centre, London For Conceptual artist Henrik Hakensen`s film `The End` he has performed as an improvising soloist with orchestras conductedd by Jessica Cottis, playing the music of John Coxon in Glasgow, Sydney and Monte Carlo As a guest with New York`s ICE Ensemble he has performed John Zorn`s `The Tempest` in London and at Huddersfield New Music Festival.

Mark also works in the groups of Paul Dunmall including Deep Whole Trio with Paul Rogers, in duo and `Frisque Concordance` with Georg Graewe , and the ensembles of Mikolaj Trzaska, Uwe Oberg and Peter Jaquemyn. He has performed in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Morrocco, South Africa, Australia, Mozambique and Turkey, playing at many major festivals including Nickelsdorf, Riga, Ulrichsburg, Glastonbury, Womad, Vancouver, Isle of Wight, Roskilde, Berlin Jazz days, FMP, Mulhouse, Luz, Minniapolis, Banlieue Bleues, Son D`hiver and Hurta Cordel."