"After studying the guitar at the CNSM of Paris, Didier Aschour was awarded a prize from the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation and a scholarship from the Darmastadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (1992 and 1994). A committed soloist fond of contemporary music, he premieres many works written for him and performs with Ensemble 2e2m, TM+, Aleph, L'Instant Donné, Zellig and Montpellier Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1996, he founded Ensemble DEDALUS, specializing in minimalist music and free instrumentation scores, with which he stands in favour of experimental contemporary music. He plays with Sejiro Murayama, Kristoff K.Roll duett, La Fanfare E. and Kasper T. Toeplitz.

As a composer, he works for dance - with choreographers such as Mathilde Monnier, Germana Civera, Patrice Barthès - and performance, imagining acoustic devices that question the relationship between music and sound phenomena.

Since 2007, he has been taking part in the Montpellier Sonorités Festival collective activities."

"Frank Gratkowski, saxophone. Born in Hamburg, 1963.

Started playing the saxophone at 16 and, following a period at the Hamburg Conservatory (Hamburger Musikhochschule), moved in 1985 to study at the Cologne Conservatory of Music with Heiner Wiberny, graduating in 1990.

Further studies with Charlie Mariano, Sal Nistico and Steve Lacy.

Frank Gratkowski has been working as a soloist in various international formations (Grubenklang Orchester, Klaus Koenig Orchester, Musikfabrik NRW, Tony Oxley Celebration Orchestra, Bentje Braam, BikBentBraam, All Ears, Zeitkratzer, WDR Big band, etc.). Since 1990 he has been giving solo performances throughout Europe, Canada and USA. With his first solo program, he was a 1991 prizewinner in the Musik Kreativ contest. The release of the solo CD "Artikulationen" followed the same year and a new one "Artikulationen II" in 2002.

Since 1992 he has been working in a duo with the pianist Georg Graewe (CD "VicissEtudes"). The duo is often extended through the participation of different additional musicians, such as drummer Paul Lovens (CD "Quicksand") and bassist John Lindberg (CD "Arrears").

In 1995 he founded the "Frank Gratkowski Trio" with Dieter Manderscheid (Germany), bass, and Gerry Hemingway (USA), drums, (CDs "Gestalten" and "The Flume Factor" ). In 2000 the trio has been extended to a quartet by Dutch trombonist Wolter Wierbos (CDs "Kollaps", "Spectral Reflections", "Facio" and "Le Vent et la Gorge"). Since 2003 also appearing as a Double Quartet plus Tobias Delius, Herb Robertson, Wilbert DeJoode and Michael Vatcher. In 2005 he got the SWR Jazzprize.

In 1999 the duo with the Italian trombonist Sebastiano Tramontana has been formed and since 2001 Frank Gratkowski has been performing with a trio including Wilbert De Jode (NL) on bass and Achim Kaufmann (D) on piano (CDs "Kwast" and "Unearth"). Since 2006 he's working with the Trio Gratkowski / Brown / Winant (CDs "Wake" and "Vermilion Traces/Donaueschingen 2009"). He is also a co-leader / composer of the Multiple Joy[ce] Orchestra and got a commission to compose for the ensemble Apartment House by "November Music " (Den Bosch NL) and the "Huddersfield Comtemporary Music Fesitival" (England) in 2009. Further actual projects are Fo[u]r Alto, a saxophone ensemble dedicated to microtonal music and "Artikulationen E" a solo program for saxophone with 8 channel live electronic.

Frank Gratkowski played on nearly every German and on numerous international Jazz and contemporary music Festivals including Vancouver, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Quebec, Les Mans, Muelhuus, Groeningen, Nickelsdorf, Barcelona, Lithuania, Warsaw, Zagreb, Prague, Bratislava, Sofia, Bucharest, Odessa and Roma, Huddersfield, London.

He has been teaching saxophone and ensembles at the Cologne, Berlin and Arnhem Conservatory of Music and is giving workshops all around the world.

Furthermore he has performed with Robert Dick, Phil Wachsmann, Radu Malfatti, Herb Robertson, Marcio Mattos, Eugenio Colombo, Peter Kowald, Ray Anderson, Michael Moore, Ken Vandermark, Greg Osby, Kenny Wheeler, Louis Sclavis, John Betsch, Jane Ira Bloom, Connie and Hannes Bauer, Xu Fengxia, James Newton, Muhal Richard Abrams, John Lindberg, Michael Formaneck, Ernst Reijseger, Fred van Hove, Theo Jörgensmann, Phil Minton, Peter Brötzmann, Mark Dresser, Mark Feldman, Hamid Drake, Michiel Braam, Han Bennink, Mal Waldron, Misha Mengelberg a.m.o."

"Hilary Jeffery is a self-proclaimed 'desert trombonist' and composer, born in Surbiton, England in 1971. A central and sustaining influence on his music is a sense of 'silent space', which he first experienced in the Sahara Desert in the 1990s. Hilary aims to share this experience, creating inner-spaces for listeners and fellow musicians to explore via the medium of his ensemble Lysn. He studied at Dartington College of Arts, University of York, European Dance Development Centre Arnhem, Netherlands Royal Conservatory, and has worked for more than twenty years as a musician playing in many different styles and areas of music including rock, techno, electronica, jazz, pop, afrobeat, contemporary classical and free improvisation. Groups he has played with between 1994 and 2016 include: zeitkratzer, CC Hennix and The Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, Zinc & Copper, Tonaliens, The Barton Workshop, Mir8, Jimi Tenor Big Band, Paul Dunmall Octet, Sand and Germ. Hilary's principal teacher and mentor for trombone playing is James Fulkerson, with whom he studied between 1998 and 2000. In 2013 he started a study of Dhrupad with Amelia Cuni, aiming to apply techniques of this Indian classical music tradition to the trombone. He has received composition commissions for Slagwerk Den Haag, GRM Acousmonium, David Kweksilber Big Band, Apa Ini and Lysn. He has been invited for artistic residences such as at Recollets in Paris (2012), won composition prizes such as the Henriette Bosmans Prize (Netherlands, 2009) and appears in many different recordings on various labels including Aquarellist, Col Legno, FMR, Dilemma, Important Records, Mikroton, New World Records, Soul Jazz, Sloow Tapes, Sub Rosa, Zeitkratzer Records and Karl Records."

"Reinhold Friedl, born 1964, lives in Berlin since 1987. He studied piano with Renate Werner, Alan Marks and Alexander von Schlippenbach, mathematics and musicology in Stuttgart and Berlin. As a performer, interpreter and composer, he has received various fellowships - Eurocréation Paris, the Rome Fellowship (Villa Serpentara) of the Berlin Academy of Arts, STEIM Amsterdam-, as well as various composition commissions. Reinhold Friedl has published articles in newpapers and professional journals and conducted a seminar on "Music and Mathematics" in the department of Mathematics at the Berlin Free University together with Prof. Behrends. He founded and directs the ensembles Piano-Inside-Out and ZEITKRATZER. Friedl has worked as a curator for the Podewil center for contemporary arts Berlin and directed the Off-ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) Berlin 2000. He has been invited to take part in the Jury of the Ars Electronica and Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisboa. As pianist and composer, he has worked with musicians and composers such as Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Phill Niblock, Helmut Oehring, Nicolas Collins, Lou Reed, MERZBOW a.k.a., Masami Akita, Radu Malfatti, Bernhard Guenter, Mario Bertoncini (nuova consonanza), Keiji Haino, and has made countless radio and CD recordings. Lately he realized the "spazialisation piano-project" at ZKM Karlsruhe and Asphodel Studios in San Francisco. The main focus of Reinhold Friedl's work is the inside-piano. He played all respective literature using inside-piano techniques and released several articles in this field."

"Maurice de Martin (*1969), percussionist & composer. He started playing experimental Noise-Rock with the Munich based band Brother Virus. From 1990 to 1995 he lived in New York City, studying drums and improvisation with Dennis Charles, Gene Jackson and Joey Baron and surviving as a street musician - performing in subway stations with Art Blakey's youngest daughter Evelyn. Later he studied composition with the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, Jazz at the Berlin Universtity of the Arts (UdK) and the south-east european folklore as a scholarship holder of the DAAD in Romania.

During this period he played with some of the genuine representatives of eastern European folklore, like the Romanian wedding band Musica de la Marsa and the Bulgarian clarinet-virtuoso Ivo Papsov. Maurice de Martin tours all over Europe and the US and released more than 25 albums. Besides being member of zeitkratzer, he has his own trio 3D with German vibraphonist Christopher Dell and bassist Chris Dahlgren (NY) and realizes projects between Romanian folklore and improvisation. He also composes and performs music for stage productions, recently with Thomas Ostermaier at the Schaubühne Berlin."

"Lisa Marie Landgraf was born in Dusseldorf and Studied in Berlin, Amsterdam and at Bloomington in America with Franco Gulli and Stanley Ritchie. She has sperformed Both as soloist and first violin with the Concertgebouw Orkest, with the Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam, with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and with the Musica Antiqua Köln. Recently she has recorded with Tobias Koch the Mozart and Schumann violin and piano sonatas. Her instrument is a David Techler, Rome 1720. Performed at the festival in 2008."

"Born in 1957 Burkhard Schlothauer is German composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator and producer who lives in Gera in Eastern Germany. With Antoine Beuger he was the founder of Editions Wandelweiser in 1992. He performs with Zeitkratzer and the Wandwelweiser Composers Ensemble."

"Elisabeth Coudoux (born Fügemann) is a cellist at the interface of different musical genres: free improvisation, experimental music, new composed music and jazz. After studying classical studies as a basis, a jazz study was conducted in Cologne with Frank Gratkowski and Prof. Dieter Manderscheid. In addition to her own project (eg Emissatett for what she composed), she is a cellist in many ensembles and works in interdisciplinary projects with dancers, visual artists and writers. She is the initiator and member of IMPAKT, a newly founded collective for free improvisation in Cologne."

"Ulrich Phillipp (* 1956 ) is a German contrabassist of free jazz and new improvisational music.

Phillipp founded the Wiesbaden improvisation ensemble with Dirk Marwedel and Wolfgang Schliemann. He is one of the founders of the Wiesbaden musician co-operative New Jazz (1979), from which the ARTist collective hervorging in 1983. In addition to the concert activity, the inclusion of other genres, such as Tanzimprovisation, where Phillipp performed with Fine Kwiatkowski, Günter Christmann , Erhard Hirt and others. He also worked with Birgit Ulher and Roger Turner . In 2013 he was involved in the Grand Orchestra of the ensemble."