"Initially a radio character, drummer, and composer, Michel F. Côté became a member of the collective Ambiances Magnétiques in 1988. Since that time, his activities have got encompassed free of charge improvisation along with his groupings Bruire and Klaxon Gueule, sound-art collaborations with Diane Labrosse and Christof Migone, and composing for dance, movie theater, and film. Côté was raised with rock and roll, admiring drummers like Led Zeppelin's powerhouse John Bonham and Yes/Ruler Crimson's man-of-finesse Costs Bruford. But he initial got into the music globe through radio, starting to transmit programs of innovative music in the first '80s at Montreal's community place, CIBL. In 1985, he begun to are a researcher and web host for "Chants Magnétiques" and afterwards "Musique Actuelle" at Radio-Canada, Canada's nationwide francophone radio. A music buff, he sucked in a huge selection of noises and affects, developing his drumming abilities but most of all his studio appearance. In 1988, Côté became the 8th person in Ambiances Magnétiques and documented his first recording beneath the name Bruire. An clothing of unpredictable geometry centered across the drummer, Bruire reinvented itself with each recording. Côté's evolution like a musician could be witnessed through the deconstructed pop tracks of Le Barman A Tort de Sourire (1989) towards the sensitive miniatures of Les Fleurs de Léo (1992) as well as the abstract improvised compositions on L'Âme de l'Objet (1995), a focus on in his discography. In the meantime, Côté started to create incidental music for theatre, dance, and film. This facet of his function quickly became probably the most time-consuming and commercially, aswell as artistically, practical, though it intended employed in the shadows. Since 1995 he is a regular collaborator of playwright/filmmaker Robert Lepage, composing and carrying out the music for the play Les Sept Branches de la Rivière Ota, carrying out in the theatrical cabaret Zulu Period, and composing as well as Bernard Falaise the music of his film Nô. The drummer also caused the dance troupe Carbone 14, and playwrights Wajdi Mouawad and Brigitte Haentjens. The single recording Compil Zouave culls excerpts from these different ratings. In the past due '90s, Côté created a pastime in live consumer electronics and shifted his music toward freer and more-textural pastures. A cooperation with sound designer and Avatar member Christof Migone (Vex, 1998) activated an exploration of the electro-acoustic improvisation that created in Austria and Germany at the same. This fresh vision is recorded on Muets, the next recording by his trio Klaxon Gueule (with Falaise and Alexandre St-Onge)."

"Alexandre St-Onge. Born Montréal, Québec, 1976. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (double bass).

Alexandre St-Onge is an audio artist, a musician/improviser (acoustic bass, bass, voice and electronics) and a sound performer. He has studied literature and philosophy and he is currently doing his PhD in art. He is fascinated by creativity as a pragmatic approach of the ineffable and he has released seven solo CDs: Entités (Oral), Joseph Carey Merrick (Oral), Mon animal est possible (Alien8 Recordings), L'amitié ou les rumeurs insoutenables du désir (Squint Fucker Press), kasi naigo (Squint Fucker Press), Une mâchoire et deux trous (Namskéio Records), Image/négation (Alien8 Recordings). He also plays in quite a few bands, including Et Sans, K.A.N.T.N.A.G.A.N.O., Klaxon Gueule, Pink Saliva, Mineminemine, Shalabi Effect and Undo. As a composer he has worked for interactive/mixed-media company kondition pluriel, as well as composing for artists such as Marie Brassard, Karine Denault, Lynda Gaudreau, Line Nault, Jérémie Niel, Maryse Poulin and Mariko Tanabe."

"Bernard Falaise. Born Montréal, Québec, 1965. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (guitar).

Bernard Falaise was born in Montréal, where he currently lives. He plays electric guitar, composes and improvises - all with evident joy - for Miriodor, Klaxon Gueule, les Projectionnistes, Diesel and other groups. He has written for the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM), Quartango and the Isis Quartet, and has created music for exhibitions, television, the theatre and dance. Allergic to labels, Falaise explores acid rock, twelve-tone waltzes and industrial tangos with equal enthusiasm."

"Jean Derome. Born Montréal, Québec, 1955. esidence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (saxophones (alto, baritone, soprano), flutes (flute, bass flute, piccolo, alto flute, recorders), keyboards, small wind instruments (ocarinas, jew's harp, game calls, toys...), percussion, invented instruments, voice)

One of the most active and eclectic musicians on the Canadian creative music scene, Jean Derome has managed to earn the recognition of a larger public, a rare feat in that field. Thanks to his large-scale musique actuelle projects, his compositions, his work as an improviser, his jazz groups and his music for the screen and the stage, Derome ranks as a major creative force, in Québec and abroad. He is experienced and innovative on both saxophone and flute, and his unique writing style cannot be mistaken for anyone else's. Sensitive and powerful, his music often features a funny strike that makes its complex nature more inviting.

Ever since Nébu (one of Québec's first avant-garde jazz groups) in the early '70s, Derome has been consistently renewing and diversifying his approach of composition. He impressed audience and critics first with the flute, then with the saxophone, as a lead character in the musique actuelle underground. He took part to the various artists' collectives looking for new ways to express themselves freely, without esthetic or social constraints, including the Ensemble de musique improvisée de Montréal. Later, in the early '80s, he co-founded Ambiances Magnétiques, a collective and record label that raised his profile at home and introduced his name to the outside world. Among his numerous projects, let us mention the duos Les Granules, Nous perçons les oreilles and Plinc! Plonc!, the dynamic group Jean Derome et les Dangereux Zhoms, and the large-scale projects Confitures de gagaku, Je me souviens - Hommage à Georges Perec and Canot-camping. Most of these projects are based on a unique form of synergy between composition, structured improvisation and genuine creative madness, all this articulated with unmatched playfulness. In 1992, Derome became the second artist to be presented with the Freddie Stone Award (bassist Lisle Ellis was the first).

Besides improvising on a regular basis with Ambiances Magnétiques' members and appearing in their projects, Derome has also shared the stage with several musicians of international stature, among others Fred Frith, Lars Hollmer, Louis Sclavis and Han Bennink. He performs regularly all over Canada, in the US and in Europe. He received a Prix Opus in 2001 for his exposure abroad.

Lately, jazz circles have been praising his undisputable qualities as a jazzman, thanks to the Thelonious Monk tribute project Évidence, the Normand Guilbeault Ensemble (whose Mingus Erectus CD is devoted to Charles Mingus' music), and the much-lauded Derome Guilbeault Tanguay Trio.

Although Jean Derome writes tirelessly for his own projects, he is much in demand in the fields of film, theatre and dance. A short list of this side of his work would have to include his numerous scores for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), especially for films by John Walker, Jacques Leduc, Fernand Bélanger and animated films by Pierre Hébert, Michèle Cournoyer and Jean Detheux; his incidental music for Théâtre UBU, Théâtre de Quat'Sous and Théâtre du Nouveau Monde; not forgetting his work with several top choreographers, including Louise Bédard, Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood, Daniel Soulières and Ginette Laurin. Other music ensembles have commissioned works from him, including Tuyo, Bradyworks, the Hard Rubber Orchestra from Vancouver and Fanfare Pourpour. Incidentally, Derome is the musical director of the latter.

Over thirty years of music and 70 record credits later, Jean Derome still has sleeves bursting with tricks."

"Ellwood Epps was born in Toronto and grew up in nearby Mississauga. His father and grandfather played trumpet in the past, and when he began band classes in junior high school at age 11, the trumpet was chosen for him, despite having put down alto, tenor, and baritone saxophone as his three instrument choices. He attended an intensive arts highschool called Cawthra Park, where his first trumpet teachers were Mary Ann Fratia and Jim Lewis. At Cawthra he began improvising, composing, and falling in love with jazz music. During this time he played trumpet, bass clarinet, clarinet, flute, piano, and baritone saxophone, and also studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

He spent a brief period of time studying jazz at the University of Toronto and York University. He took private lessons from David Mott, meditated, wrote poetry, and travelled to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder Colorado, attending the classes of Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman and Reed Bye. Back in Toronto, he copublished a poetry journal and hosted a reading series called Poetry On The Roof at the Parliament Street loft where he lived. He also travelled to Bennington Vermont to study with Bill Dixon.

During the late 90's, Epps hosted Full Circle, a weekly jazz program on CIUT FM which featured in-studio performances, and organized the AS IS concert series at the Oasis on College Street. Some of Epps' first performances as an improviser were with the Woodchoppers Association, a large orchestra co-led by drummer Dave Clark and multi-inistrumentalist Lewis Melville. He joined the David Mott Quintet, which recorded two very under-recognized albums, and had a week-long performance residency at the Vancouver Jazz Festival.

In 2004 and 2005 Epps attended the Banff Jazz and Creative Music Workshop and the Vancouver Creative Music Institute, where he learned from George Lewis, Dave Douglas, Han Bennink, Mark Dresser, and Bill Frisell, and met Montreal musicians Pierre-Yves Martel and Philippe Lauzier. In 2004 he was invited to perform with Steve Lacy and an 8-piece ensemble in Montreal in a concert recorded and broadcast on French CBC Radio. Sadly Lacy passed a few months later, and the band never got to perform again. The experience made an impression, and Epps moved to Montreal in 2005, where he has worked regularly with the Montreal members of that band: Nicolas Caloia, John Heward, Lori Freedman, Jean Derome, and Rainer Wiens. That band also included American saxophonist Joe Giardullo; Epps played on Joe's 'Red Morocco', which was released on the French Rogue Art label.

In Montreal, Epps also began working with players of his own generation including Martel, Lauzier, Josh Zubot, and Isaiah Ceccarelli. Epps was an original member of Martel's Quartetski, and appears on its debut recording, ''Quartetski does Prokofiev''. In 2007 he formed Pink Saliva with Michel F Côté and Alexandre St-Onge. The band has released 6 recordings, and won the François Marcaurelle prize at the Off Jazz Festival in 2012. He is also a longstanding member of Nicolas Caloia's Ratchet Orchestra, and has performed with John Heward's Murray Street Band, Land of Marigold (a duet with Josh Zubot), as a duet with saxophonist Yves Charuest, and in many groups with Jean Derome. Currently his principal activity is the band Togetherness!, a quintet which plays music from South Africa and beyond.

Epps has performed in ad-hoc ensembles with Montreal improvers of all ages and backgrounds including Scott Thomson, Martin Tétreault, Émilie Girard-Charest, Malcolm Goldstein, Raphael Foisy-Couture, Ivan Bamford, Stéphan Diamantakiou, and Bernard Falaise. Since coming to Montreal he has also performed with many American and European musicians including William Parker, Bill Dixon, John Butcher, Matana Roberts, Henry Grimes, Axel Dörner, Marshall Allen, Xavier Charles, Wilbert DeJoode, Butch Morris, and Nate Wooley. He has completed two coast-to-coast Canadian tours, first playing solo concerts, and then with violinist Josh Zubot. He has performed often at the Guelph Jazz Festival, Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV), FONTMusic Canada, and l'Off Festival de Jazz de Montréal, and has appeared in New York at the Stone, CBGB's, the Jazz Gallery, and the FONT Festival.

In 2008 Epps and fellow trumpeter Philippe Battikha co-founded l'Envers, a loft venue in the Mile End that was a welcoming home for creative music, film, dance and more, and hosted over 400 concerts during its four years in business. In the same year he was one of four musicians who started the stilll-active Mardi Spaghetti series, just down the street at Le Cagibi café. In 2014 Epps and Aaron Shragge started the annual Festival of New Trumpet Music Canada, modelled after the FONT Festival in New York. FONTMusic Canada has presented great trumpet artists including Nicole Rampersaud, Lina Allemano, Amy Horvey, Ingrid Jensen, and Nate Wooley.

While living at l'Envers, Epps and Lévy Bourbonnais started a series of improvised music workshops called the Studio d'Improvisation de Montréal. SIM continues to operate, with nearly 200 students over the years, and has included workshops by guest teachers such as Henry Grimes, Lori Freedman, Joe Morris, and Tatsuya Nakatani. He has given workshops across Canada: in Vancouver (through the NOW Orchestra Society), as artist-in-residence at the 2015 Something Else! Festival in Hamilton, in Calgary, Kitchener, and at Carlton University in Ottawa. Epps has been teaching private trumpet lessons since his teenage years, following in the footsteps of master teacher Laurie Frink, with whom studied in New York over a 10-year period.

Ellwood has recorded on over 60 records for diverse labels including Ambiances Magnetiques, &Records, and Constellation (Montreal), VICTO, Rogue Art (France), Majmua (Philadelphia), Kakutopia (UK), Panospria and Drip Audio (Vancouver), Barnyard (Toronto), and Bug Incision (Calgary)."

"Composer, improviser, instrumentalist (clarinet & saxophone) and sound artist, Philippe Lauzier participates in several projects that tour regularly in Canada and Europe, but also in USA, Latine America and Australia. In his solo and collective work, his ideas incorporate influences of contemporary musical languages as well as sounds from non-Western sources. Creative extended techniques, complex drones from which polyphonies emerge, and a certain compositional rigour are typical of his style. His interest for collaborative intermedia practices also leads him to create sound installation pieces, live performances for contemporary dance, theater music and many sound designs for visual art projects. Philippe lives in Montreal, Quebec."

"Christof Migone is an artist, curator and writer. He often works with language, voice, bodies, performance, intimacy, complicity and endurance. He co-edited the books Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language (Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press, 2001) and Volumes (Blackwood Gallery, 2015). His writings have been published in Aural Cultures, S:ON, Experimental Sound & Radio, Musicworks, Radio Rethink, Semiotext(e), Angelaki, Esse, Inter, Performance Research, etc. He obtained an MFA from NSCAD in 1996 and a PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University in 2007. He has released nine solo audio cds on various labels (Avatar, ND, Alien 8, Locust, Oral). He has curated a number of exhibitions and events: Touch that Dial (1990), Radio Contortions (1991), Rappel (1994), Double Site (1998), stuttermouthface (2002), Disquiet (2005), START (2007), STOP.(2008), and Should I Stay or Should I Go (Nuit Blanche 2010), and numerous others for the Blackwood Gallery between 2008 and 2013. He has performed at Beyond Music Sound Festival (Los Angeles), kaaistudios (Brussels), Resonance FM (London), Nouvelles Scènes (Dijon), On the Air (Innsbruck), Ménagerie de Verre (Paris), Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Méduse (Québec), Images Festival (Toronto), Send+Receive (Winnipeg), Kill Your Timid Notion (Dundee), Liquid Architecture (Melbourne), Mutek, Victoriaville Festival, Oboro, Casa del Popolo, Théâtre La Chapelle, DHCArt, CAFKA, Museum Leuven, Whitney Museum, etc. His installations have been exhibited at the Banff Center, Rotterdam Film Festival, Gallery 101, Art Lab, eyelevelgallery, Forest City Gallery, Studio 5 Beekman, Mercer Union, CCS Bard, Optica. He has collaborated with Lynda Gaudreau, Martin Tétreault, Tammy Forsythe, Alexandre St-Onge, Michel F. Côté, Gregory Whitehead, Set Fire To Flames, and Fly Pan Am. A monograph on his work, Sound Voice Perform, was published in 2005. In 2006, the Galerie de l'UQAM in Montreal presented a mid-career survey of his work accompanied by a catalog and a DVD entitled Trou. A book compiling his writings on sound art, Sonic Somatic: Performances of the Unsound Body was published in 2012 by Errant Bodies Press. He has been the recipient of commissions from the Tate Modern, Dazibao, Kunstradio, Centre for Art Tapes, New Adventures in Sound Art, Radio Canada, New American Radio. He is a founding member of Avatar (Québec City). He currently lives in Toronto and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University in London, Ontario."

"Sam Shalabi is a central node in Montréal's free improv scene. One cannot count the many projects he is a part of. He is best known as a founding member of Shalabi Effect, who have recorded 2 albums on Alien8 Recordings which have earned the band extremely good response from critics and music enthusiasts alike. Apart from Shalabi Effect, he is also part of a number of bands, among which Detention, Molasses, Balai Mécanique, Po, 'Gypt Gore, and a trio with David Kristian and Alexandre St-Onge. He is also known for three solo albums, Luteness (Squint Fucker Press, deleted), On Haschisch (Alien8), and of course Osama, his investigation of arabophobia in a "post-9-11 world". His style ranges from freeform psychedelic rock to the most oddball abstract performance. Although mostly known as a guitarist, the highly versatile Shalabi also performs on oud and a variety of other instruments."