Fred Van Hove: "Born 1937 in Antwerp, Belgium; piano, accordion, church organ, composer.

Fred Van Hove studied piano, theory and harmony at the Music Academy in Belgium and experimented with several jazz styles and dance music before making the transition to free improvisation with local musicians (Zinzen, Van De Ven and Wanders). He has been a professional free-lance musician since 1964.

1966 saw the beginning of Van Hove's collaboration with Peter Brötzmann, initially in quartet or larger groupings (eg Machine Gun), then stabilising in a trio format (with Han Bennink) for five to six years; in 1995 contact with Brötzmann was renewed when the two played a duo as part of the 'Pool' at the Free Music XXII in Antwerp in August. His first solo concerts were played at the Avant-garde festival Gravensteen, Ghent, in 1970 and Jazz Middleheim, in Antwerp in 1971. In 1972, working as a duo with Belgian sax player Cel Overberghe, he refused to play at the Middelheim festival as a result of a dispute over the grossly differential fees being paid to visiting American musicians on the one hand and European musicians on the other. This dispute led to the foundation of the musicians collective WIM vzw, Werkgroep Improviserende Musici, whose aim was to improve the situation of free music in Belgium. Fred Van Hove has been Chairman of WIM since then.

From 1976, and in collaboration with, for example, De Andere Film Antwerp & Ghent, Dommelhof Neerpeilt (Belgium), and Filmhaus Berlin, he has provided solo accompaniment to silent movies, particularly experimental films of the 1920s (Griffiths, Porter, Murnau, Lang, Dreyer, among others) as well as comedies and animations. He has also performed regularly with duo partners who have included: Steve Lacy; Vinko Globokar; Lol Coxhill; Albert Mangelsdorf; Annick Nozati; Phil Wachsmann; André Goodbeek; Paul Van Gyseghem.

From the end of the 1970s, Van Hove formed a number of groups utilising the initials MLA (Musica Libera Antverpiae) and MLB (Musica Libera Belgicae) or similar. The first MLA, formed in 1978, was a group of variable composition from a nucleus of seven musicians: three strings; three brass; piano. This undertook several tours and festivals (e.g. at Jazz Middelheim, and London). In 1979, MLA Blek comprised Marc Charig on trumpet and Radu Malfatti and Paul Rutherford on trombones and toured Italy. Formed in 1980, though recorded in 1982, the ML DD 4 consisted of Marc Charig, Phil Wachsmann and Günther 'Baby' Sommer on percussion and toured through several ex-DDR European countries. In 1983, Fred Van Hove was invited to Berlin by the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) as artist in residence for six months, April to October. During this time he took the opportunity to play concerts with MLA, MLA Blek and ML DD 4, but also to play extensively with local musicians in a series of MLBB: Berliner Begegnungen or Berlin Encounters.

In the mid-80s, Fred Van Hove undertook several tours of Japan playing solo and duos with a wide variety of musicians including percussionist Sabu Toyozumi, bass player Tetsu Saitoh; and US and European musicians such as: Ned Rothenberg; Douglas Ewart; Peter Kowald; Hans Reichel; Evan Parker; and Barry Guy. A three-day Van Hove festival was held at the concert hall Space Who, Saitama, celebrating its 5th anniversary.

The Belgisch Pianokwartet was formed in 1984, four pianists at 2 grands, originally consisting of Walter Hus, Christian Leroy and Eddy Loozen, but more recently with Marilyn Crispell replacing Hus and the group name becoming 't Pianokwartet. The MLB III trio with André Goudbeek, saxophone, and Ivo Vander Borght, percussion was formed around the same time, recorded in 1988 and toured the former DDR (with trumpeter Andy Altenfeldert), Spain and the Netherlands. Since 1988 the trio with the French singer Annick Nozati and the German trombonist Johannes Bauer has recorded and toured and, from 1991, 't Nonet has performed, comprising: Marc Charig or Axel Dörner, trumpet; Annick Nozati, voice; Paul Rutherford and Johannes Bauer, trombones; Benoit Viredaz, tuba, Evan Parker or John Butcher and André Goudbeek, saxophones; and Ivo Vander Borght, percussion. Cooperation with other musicians has included Luc Houtkamp, Connie Bauer and Wolfgang Fuchs.

Fred Van Hove has cooperated with poets and painters (the action painter W.J.C. Free) and held seminars and workshops on improvisation in Antwerp, Tilberg, Ghent, Amsterdam, in England and Germany and, since 1990, at Département d'Etudes Musicales, University Lille 3, France. In June 1996 the Belgium government conferred on Fred Van Hove the title of Cultural Ambassador of Flanders 1996, an award that included a grant for touring outside of Belgium."

"Roger Turner (born 1946, Whitstable, England) is an English jazz percussionist. He plays the drumset, drums, and various percussion, and was brought up into the jazz and visual art cultures inhabited by his older brothers, playing drums from childhood in informal jazz contexts.

Turner studied English literature and contemporary philosophy at Sussex University, playing with Chris Biscoe for the British Council in 1968, a first concert in improvisation. His move to London gave him contact with the first and second generation improvisers and he began to play primarily with Lol Coxhill, Gary Todd, John Russell, Hugh Davies, Steve Beresford, and Phil Minton.

In the years immediately after 1974 his work was primarily concentrated on opening the way to a more personal percussion language. This was also a period of intense collaborations that structured many of his future approaches to music-making and saw the formation of two long-lasting acoustic duos with Phil Minton and with John Russell. Recordings of these duos document an extreme attention to timbre and pitch, as well as a constantly shifting speed that typified much of his work at the time. The duo with Minton toured extensively throughout Europe, USA and Canada.

In 1979 he established CAW records with John Russell and Anthony Wood, and recorded the solo album The Blur Between focussing on single surface improvisations: a linear and reduced equipment approach he had started using with Carlos Zingaro and others in live performances.

In addition to forming Trump music with Gary Todd to promote improvised music in London, he also involved himself in formative activities of the London Musicians Collective during this period. He was awarded Arts Council of Great Britain bursaries for solo percussion in 1980, and in 1983 for investigation into percussion with electronics. Extensive festival and club solo work followed, including the Bracknell Jazz Festival and the Brussels Festival of Percussion.

In 1982 the trio The Recedents was formed with Lol Coxhill and Mike Cooper exploring the possibilities of electro-acoustic music, in which Turner initially played drumset and EMS Synthi A as a means of bending the sounds of various metal percussion instruments. This group, still existing, mixes song, jazz, punk/thrash, with acoustic detail in always shifting sonorities, and has worked throughout Europe, Canada and the UK, also recording for the French Nato label. Involvements with experimental rock musics and open-form song included extensive work in duo with Annette Peacock 1983-5, with whom he toured in Europe and Scandinavia. They recorded the album I have no feelings for Ironic.

In 1984-5, he was invited for workshop residences at Alan Silva's Institute Art Culture Perception in Paris, where long-term collaborations with Alan began, culminating in The Tradition Trio with Johannes Bauer. This group was central to his explorations of forms of free jazz, an interest that has seen him working with musicians on both sides of the Atlantic (including Elton Dean, Irene Schweizer, Cecil Taylor, Roy Campbell, Henry Grimes, The Wardrobe Trio and Charles Gayle).

Since the early 1980s his work has focussed on numerous projects with improvising musicians and groups, touring Europe, Australia, USA and Canada. Perhaps the most important of the later groups would be Konk Pack, formed in 1997, with Tim Hodgkinson and Thomas Lehn, a group whose use of volume and sense of detail continues the exploration of an electro-acoustic dynamic that forms one of his main musical concerns. This group has toured extensively in Europe and USA.

He forged working relationships with Japanese musicians over the years: in the 1980s with Toshinori Kondo in the trio with John Russell, but since the mid-1990s in concerts and recordings with guitarist Kazuhisa Uchihashi in Austria, Japan, and U.K, and in the recent (2009) Hana-Bi three-day event in London that included the guitarist and the pianist Chino Shuichi.

An active involvement in visual art has always been in dialogue with his music, and an inspiration for it. In the forefront of this is his work with Susan Turcot (the investigation/documentation of music and sound-drawing both in Europe and Canada-including the Being Rich box collection --, and music for her 2008 animation film Bitumen, Blood, and the Carbon Climb.

His music for dance/performance includes work with Alexander Frangenheim's Concepts of Doing, Stuttgart ; Carlos Zingaro's Encontros projects in Lisbon and Macau; and most recently in the Josef Nadj production etc.etc. (premiered Vandeouvre, France, 2008) and which is a continuing involvement.

In March 2009 he was invited to travel and perform on the Arctic island Svalbard, and was also invited to attend and play in the Comprovise event in Cologne, Germany in June 2009, set up to examine any possible relationship between improvisation and composition.

Turner's music-making with international improvisers in ad hoc and group collaborations have since the 1970s to the present day included Toshinori Kondo, Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, Otomo Yoshihide, Shelley Hirsch, Joelle Leandre, Keith Rowe, Ab Baars, Barry Guy, Barre Philips, Henry Grimes, Paul Rutherford, Gunter Christmann, Marilyn Crispell, Irene Schweizer, Frederik Rzewski, and Malcolm Goldstein."