"Tristan Honsinger told Kevin Whitehead, 'I grew up in New England, took up cello at age nine in Springfield, Massachusetts... My first teacher was a Dutch Jew. Almost all my teachers were European immigrants. Later I went to the New England Conservatory. It was quite a good school, but I didn't feel very welcome, so I went to Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore from '68 to '69. By then I'd had it, really, with the whole classical music world. I changed teachers so many times, I suppose I was confused by their contradictory advice'.

It was after moving to Montreal in 1969 that Honsiner began improvising and, after meeting Dutch percussionist Peter van Ginkel and listening to his copy of Topography of the lungs, decided he could play this music and uprooted to Europe, moving to Amsterdam in 1974: 'They arrested me the first time I played my cello in the street... confiscated our instruments'. As a result, he moved to Paris, travelled around France, eventually finding his way back to Amsterdam where he began playing with Maarten van Regteren Altena, Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg as well as being involved in Derek Bailey's Company Weeks and playing with Globe Unity.

The late '70s and early '80s were spent in Italy with Katie Duck, working with theatre - Duck had her group the Great Salt Lake Mime Troupe - and Italian and Sardinian musicians. During this time, Honsinger started his group This, That and the Other, the early version including Tiziana Simona, Sean Bergin, Toshinori Kondo, Jean-Jacques Avenel and Michael Vatcher which recorded Picnic in Amsterdam in 1985. 'Because of a promoter's brilliant organising, the group kind of fell apart', but there have been fairly regular and recent incarnations, including an appearance at the Italian Angelica Festival in 1996.

Since the memorable set of concerts in Berlin in 1988, released on the much sought-after FMP box set, Honsinger has been a fairly regular member of Cecil Taylor's groups. At those concerts, Honsinger performed in a trio with Taylor and Evan Parker as well as being a member of the large European Orchestra but since then he has been a member of various Taylor groups, including the now-disbanded European Quartet with Harri Sjöström and Paul Lovens, including an unusual combination that performed at the Total Music Meeting in November 1999: the Cecil Taylor Ensemble with Franky Douglas, Tristan Honsinger and Andrew Cyrille."

"Wolfgang Fuchs. Born on 21 February 1949 in Landau/Palatine, died of a heart attack in Berlin 3 February 2016; contrabass clarinet, bass clarinet, sopranino saxophone.

Wolfgang Fuchs' first musical instruments, at the age of nine, were violin and mandolin but, during his studies at the Music Academy of Karlsruhe between 1969 and 1974 he studied saxophone and clarinet. Moving to Berlin in 1974 he has, since 1976, worked as freelance musician primarily in the area of freely-improvised music but also in a wide range of mixed-media projects featuring music and other arts. Over the years, he has played with a large number and variety of musicians including Fred van Hove and Peter Hollinger or Paul Lytton in Berliner Begegnung (1983-1987), Paul Lytton and Mats Gustafsson (toured Sweden as a trio in 1994), Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton (toured England as a trio in 1995), and Lingua (with Thomas Lehn and Fabrizio Spera, 2000). He has been a member of Butch Morris' Berlin Skyscrapers large group conduction (1995 and 1999) and a member of various Cecil Taylor projects including the 1986 European American Group, the 1990 Orchestra that appeared at Total Taylor Total, a 1991 Scandinavian tour featuring Taylor with Tony Oxley, Barry Guy and Harri Sjöström, and the 1999 Workshop Ensemble. In 1996 he was founder and leader of berlin factory, a workshop ensemble with young Berlin-based musicians which has since performed at Soundworkshop 97: Contemporary Music in Kreuzberg and performed Fuchs' composition Aqua libre at the festival Kryptonale IV in Berlin in 1998.

Perhaps the most well-known, long-standing large group with which Fuchs has been associated is King Übü Örchestrü. He was founder of the tentet in 1983 and has been leader ever since with changes in personnel and size, regrouping periodically for concerts and recordings: a tour in Germany in 1989; a recorded performance in 1992 at the Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; appearance at Nickelsdorf Festival, Austria in 1995; a recording made at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin in 1998; and an extended performance with guest vocalists and narrators to mark the group's 20th anniversary at Total Music Meeting 2003. A spontaneous octet of some members of King Übü Örchestrü with other European improvisers and US musicians - Mount Washington from 2003 - works in a similar soundworld.

Fuchs has also worked extensively over a long period with George Katzer, Hans Koch and Peter van Bergen. His first encounter and collaboration with Katzer occured in 1988 to be followed over the next few years with participation at the Electron-Music-Festival at Skinnskatteberg, Stockholm, in Innergerman Encounters at Rostock, Potsdam and in Katzer's multimedia project, Rooms, in Berlin, (all 1990); a trio performance with Hannes Bauer at Festival Syntèse in Bourges, France (1991); concerts at Villa Massimo, Rome in trio with Helmut Zapf (1996); a trio concert with Hannes Bauer at Festival Brandendburgische Kunsttage (1998); and a duo in Löbau, Scharoun-Villa in 2001. Katzer has also been a member of King Übü Örchestrü.

The contrabass clarinet trio with Hans Koch and Peter van Bergen was formed in 1993 under the name Holz für Europa and has made almost two-yearly appearances since then. In the mid-1990s, Alexander von Schlippenbach was commissioned to provide new arrangements of eleven Eric Dolphy compositions, performed in 1997 by the trio as the Eric Dolphy Project. The trio undertook a concert tour of the Netherlands in 1999, played concerts in Switzerland and Germany in 2000, and toured the US, including a performance at the Empty Bottle Festival in Chicago, in 2001.

Fuchs work in mixed media has included:

improvised music to experimental films by, among others, Vikking Eggeling, Ernie Gehr, Kurt Kren, Helmut Nickels, Junichi Okujama, Michael Proksch, Hans Richter, and Diter Rot
various work with Sven-Åke Johansson, including a film music concert tour in 1981, SAJ's operetta Der Spaten und die Harke in 1984 and participation in Über die Ursache der Meinungsverschiedenheiten beim Turmbau zu Babel an operetta by Alexander von Schlippenbach and SAJ, performed at the Staatstheater Stuttgart and Stadttheater Gütersloh (Germany)
other work with Alexander von Schlippenbach, including a tour of film and improvised music in 1984 and, in 1985, a live performance with improvised music to the newly reconstructed integral version of director Erich von Stroheim's film Queen Kelly, staged at the International Filmfestival of Berlin
collaborations, which began in 1997, with writer and poet Gerd-Peter Eigner and which includes Musica Lingu (Improvisation & declamation) a trio with Alexander von Schlippenbach
participant of the multi-media performance Large Area (music, dance, actors, acrobats) staged in Oberhausen in 1986
in 1996, participation in Fahrtenbuch, a scenic-musical collage by director Alexander Stillmark with texts by poet Durs Grünbein and others and compositions by Georg Katzer, first performed at the Hebbel-Theater, Berlin, subsequently on tour in Poland
in 1997 participation in And now - where to?, a homage to Heinrich Heine (Goethe-Institut Marseille)
his close interest in painting is indicated by his regular use of the work of Max Neumann on his LP and CD covers.

More recently, Wolfgang Fuchs has become involved in two new trios: Three October Meetings and The New Flags. Three October Meetings comprises Fuchs along with two young North American musicians: Damon Smith on double bass and Jerome Bryerton on percussion who first played together in 1997 during Fuchs solo tour of the US. They recorded the excellent CD which subsequently gave rise to their name in 2001 and have since toured the US west coast and Germany, playing important festivals in San Francsico, Berlin and Austria. The New Flags was formed in June 2002 with Xu Fengxia, guzheng, voice and Roger Turner, drumset; they appeared at Total Music Meeting in 2002.

Wolfgang Fuchs has received a number of awards and grants, including a 3-month grant in 1996 from the Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin to be artist in residence at Villa Serpentara, Olevano Romano, Italy. From 2001, he has been artistic director of the Total Music Meeting in Berlin."

"A West Coast experimentalist who is an innovative performer on the harp as well as a composer embracing unusual challenges, Anne LeBaron's compositions have been performed around the globe. Venues in Italy, Mexico, Sydney, Vienna, Sweden, Kazakhstan, New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere have programmed her works for chamber groups, opera, cantatas, and presented her as a performer. Her operas celebrate legendary figures such as Pope Joan, Eurydice, Marie Laveau, the American Housewife, and Aldous Huxley. Her current opera-in-progress, Huxley's Last Trip, (formerly LSD: The Opera) was awarded one of the first Discovery Grants from Opera America. The orchestra includes instruments built by American composer and inventor Harry Partch. Excerpts have been performed at three LA venues: at the Wallis Annenberg Theater in Beverly Hills, at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, and at the REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles.

LeBaron was recently awarded a Copland House Residency in New York, a Djerassi Program residency in Santa Cruz, and a residency at the Corporation of Yaddo in Saratoga Springs. Radiant Depth Unfolded: Settings of Rumi, commissioned by The Sorel Organization and SongFest, premiered in Zipper Hall at the Colburn School in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Library Foundation commissioned her to compose a work inspired by the Oxford English Dictionary: A - Zythum premiered at the Hammer Museum. Mark Robson performed her work for speaking pianist, Los Murmullos, on the LA series PianoSpheres, and more recently at the American Center in Paris. The acclaimed French harpist Helene Breschand performed her work Harpestra: Concerto for Two Harps, One Player.

Current projects include Resonare-a work commissioned by Aaron Khan for trumpet and spatialized audio; a new installment for The Well-Read Clavier for pianist Lorezo Marasso based on writings by Beppe Fenoglio and commissioned by the Ferrero Foundation; and an opera, This Lingering Life, blending and updating five ancient Noh dramas to convey their universal relevance. In the fall of 2017, she will be the featured international artist and keynote speaker at the Totally Huge New Music Festival in Perth, Australia.

Recordings of her music are available on Mode, New World Records, Ear-Rational, Innova, Music and Art, and Albany. As a member of the School of Music faculty at CalArts, she has developed highly original courses blending theater, art history, cultural topics, and music while encouraging students to actively create work incorporating what they are absorbing. These include HyperOpera; Concert Theater; Musical Reflections of Surrealism; Music of Harry Partch; Contemplative Practices, Musical Arts, Compassionate Mind; and Writing for Everything Else.

LeBaron serves on the boards of the American Composers Forum, where she is Vice-Chair, and as a Member of the Corporation of Yaddo. Also an accomplished harpist, she is renowned for pioneering methods of extended harp techniques, electronic enhancements, and notation in compositional and improvisational contexts. In the current season, she lectured on her music at the University of California Irvine, the University of Southern California, the University of California Los Angeles, and Cal State Fullerton. For the past two years, she led a master class for composition students visiting LA from Shanghai, under the auspices of the Bright Institute."

"Born in Aachen, Germany, 6 June 1949; Drums, percussion, musical saw, etc.

Paul Lovens played the drums as a child. Self-taught, from the age of 14 he played in groups of various jazz styles and popular musics and from 1969 has worked almost exclusively as an improvisor on individually selected instruments. He has worked internationally with most of the leading musicians in free jazz and free improvisation, among whom have included the Globe Unity Orchestra, the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, the Schlippenbach trio, Quintet Moderne, Company, and a duo with Paul Lytton. He has undertaken concert tours in more than 40 countries, is a founder member of a musician's cooperative and has produced recordings for his own label, Po Torch Records since 1976. He has worked with painter Herbert Bardenheuer. Despite very rare solo performances, and although giving occasional concerts with ad-hoc groups and an involvement in projects with film, dance and actors, Paul Lovens' main interest and work is musical improvisation in fixed small groups. In the mid-1990s these small groups numbered around 16, of which a few were part of a special selection, called 'vermögen'.

Paul Lovens somehow epitomises the free drummer/percussionist who is not there to lay down the beat and kick everyone else into action but to listen, colour, contribute, guide, and occasionally direct, the overall cooperative sound. In concert one cannot fail to be moved by his intensity and concentration and there is an overiding feeling that even the most random events are somehow planned in time. In this respect, there is a nice irony that on the Nothing to read CD with Mats Gustafsson, Lovens describes his kit as consisting of 'selected and unselected drums and cymbals'. Miking seems to be a problem at times with some recordings giving him undue prominence and others insufficient. Good recordings are Elf bagatellen, Nothing to read, Pakistani pomade, and ,stranger than love."

"Regina Baumgart was trained at the Stuttgart State Theater under John Cranko and danced with the Stuttgart Opera Ballet. She studied modern and contemporary dance in New York with Merce Cunningham and other well-known teachers and choreographers. As a dancer, she worked with various choreographers and ensembles, including with the Tanztheater Bremen under Reinhild Hoffmann and Gerhard Bohner. From 1983 to 1999 she lived in Berlin, developed her own choreographic work and designed numerous productions with the support of the Cultural Senate. She founded the "Regina Baumgart Dance Ensemble" and an ensemble for improvised art forms "The Lost Chord", with which she performed guest performances in many countries. In addition to her choreographic work, she devoted herself intensively to improvised dance and performed worldwide in various formations with musicians of free improvised music.

Regina Baumgart is a qualified dance teacher as well as a certified teacher and therapist for EUTONIE Gerda Alexander.

In addition to her artistic work, she works as a lecturer at various colleges, universities and training institutes, as well as as a training manager for professional dance companies and for open professional classes."

"One of Europe's premier free jazz bandleaders, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach's music mixes free and contemporary classical elements, with his slashing solos often the link between the two in his compositions. Schlippenbach formed The Globe Unity Orchestra in 1966 to perform the piece"Globe Unity, which had been commissioned by the Berliner Jazztage.

He remained involved with the orchestra into the '80s. Schlippenbach began taking lessons at eight, and studied at the Staatliche Hochschule for Musik in Cologne with composers Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Rudolf Petzold. He played with Gunther Hampel in 1963, and was in Manfred Schoof's quintet from 1964 to 1967.Schlippenbach began heading various bands after 1967, among them 1970 trio with Evan Parker and Paul Lovens and a duo with Sven-Ake Johansson which they co-formed in 1976. Schlippenbach has also given many solos performances. In the late '80s, he formed the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra,which has featured a number ofesteemed European avant-garde jazz musicians including Evan Parker, Paul Lovens, KennyWheeler, Misha Mengelberg and Aki Takase. During the 90`s Duo work with Tony Oxley, Sam Rivers and Aki Takase. 1999 started performance and radiorecording of Thelonius Monks complete works, (all the compositions) with Rudi Mahall and his group "Die Enttäuschung"."

"Dietmar Diesner (born September 2, 1955 in Elsterwerda) is a German woodwind player (soprano saxophone, clarinet) who works primarily in the field of free improvisational music.

Diesner studied at the Cottbus Conservatory from 1975 to 1978 and then at the "Carl Maria von Weber" University of Music in Dresden until 1984. Since 1979 he has played in the "Dresden Music Brigade" and in the Cottbus improvisation trio "Evidence" and has been heard at international festivals since 1982. He worked with musicians such as Ulrich Gumpert, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Manfred Schulze, Hans-Günther Wauer, Hans Rempel, Joe Sachse, Hannes Bauer and Radu Malfatti, but also with Helge Leiberg's interdisciplinary project "Gokan" since 1982 and with Sasha since 1983 Waltz. Later he also appeared with Tony Oxley, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Sven-Åke Johansson (CD "Konsumdelikatessware", 1988), Heiner Goebbels, Jon Rose, Shelley Hirsch, David Moss, Günter Baby Sommer, Franz Koglmann and Theo Jörgensmann. Since 1983 he has also been giving solo concerts as a saxophone actor. He also belonged to Georg Gräwe's "Grubenklangorchester" and the "King Übü Orchestra" as well as to noise bands such as "Kixx" ("Weißer Voodoo", 1991) and "Slawtherhaus".

According to the Reclams Jazz Lexicon, the development of prepared electronic saxophone sounds and individual playing techniques earned Diesner, who promotes real-time composition, the reputation of an innovative improviser. He also wrote stage music for Heiner Müller and the film music for Das Bergwerk - Franz Fühmann."

"Born and raised in East New York Brooklyn, Vocal Artist, Performer, Composer, Storyteller, Interdisciplinary Artist Shelley Hirsch has been pushing boundaries with her unique vocal art and performance work, drawing on her life experiences, her memory, her vivid imagination for decades.

The New York Times called her "A woman of a thousand voices... She offered an enthralling demonstration of the way songs, vocal styles and language might have evolved out of more primal musical impulses".

Hirsch's multimedia performances, compositions, improvisations, electronic music pieces, sound installations, collaborations and radio plays have been presented at concert halls, museums, theaters, galleries, clubs, radio, worldwide in venues including Alice Tully Hall, Roulette, Experimental Intermedia Foundation and CBGB's in NYC; Experimenta Festival in Buenos Aires, What is Music? Festival Melbourne Australia; Beyond Innocence Festival in Kobe Japan; City of Women Festival Llubliana Slovenia; Dom Cultural Center Moscow; Akademie Der Künste Berlin; Next Festival Bratislava Slovakia; Time Festival Ghent, Belgium; Angelica Festival Bologna Italy, All Ears Festival Oslo Norway; Red House Sofia Bulgaria; Taktlos Festival Bern Switzerland; New Music America Festival Helena Montana, TBA Festival Portland Oregon, and hundreds more..

In 2018 decades of her work were acquired for the archive at The Fales Library part of NYU, for their Downtown Collection.Other prestigious honors include The John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition 2017; The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists 2017; The Creative Capital Grant 2002; New York Foundation of the Arts in Music/Sound 2010, Multidisciplinary/ Performance 2003, Music Composition1996 and the New Forms Category 1987; Two NYSCA Grants in Vocal Music 2016 and Electronic Music in 2007; The DAAD Residency Grant in Berlin 1992 and a record six Artist in Residency Grants at Harvestworks Digital Media Center in NYC from 1985-2016.In 2019, Hirsch was Artist in Residence at Queenslab in Queens New York.A collection of the writing and images she produced during her Residency will be published in Summer 2019

Hirsch can be heard on over 70 recordings with several on the Tzadik, FMP, InTakt, and on Nonesuch, Sound Aspects, Tellus, Apollo, Innocent Records, Don Giovanni and many more..

She leads the workshop Explore Your 1000 Voices in NYC, nationally and internationally."

"Sven-Åke Johansson (born 1943 in Mariestad, living in Berlin since 1968) is a Swedish drummer and composer associated with free jazz and free improvisation. He was in the Globe Unity Orchestra and played with German reedist Alfred Harth and Belgian pianist Nicole Van den Plas in E.M.T.."