Andreas Nordheim is a german trumpeter, pianist and percussionist, a member of the groups Ensemble Open Music Gera, and Simultanquartett.

"Ole Schmidt

- Born 1963 in Mainz, Germany, raised in Frankfurt am Main. After graduating secondary school, saxophone studies with Christof Lauer and Alfred Harth, followed by project and ensemble work with Harth. Solid performance practice as an active participant in the dynamic Frankfurt scene of the time, centered around Heiner Goebbels/Alfred Harth.

- 1986 Jazz studies (saxophone major) at the Amsterdamse Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten in the Netherlands. After graduating in 1991, relocation to Cologne (D), several years collaboration, as soloist and composer, with various formations in the area of jazz/improvised music, including Blue Seven and the Ghosts (Bruno Leicht), Workshopensemble MHS (Joachim Ullrich) and Novotnik 44 (Udo Moll), et al.

- Growing interest in improvised and composed music outside the boundaries of jazz, active engagement with contemporary classical music, which has an increasing impact on personal compositional content and gives important impulses for experiments with notation methods for improvised music and sounds.

- 1993 grant from the Paul Woitschach-Foundation to attend a composition master class with Bob Brookmeier at the Cologne Musikhochschule, followed by the premiere of the composition TERMINUS for 15 improvising musicians, inspired by meeting John Zorn in the summer of 1993 in NYC.

- End of 1993 founding of the ensemble POST NO BILLS (PNB), comprised of 5 composing and improvising musicians.- - Concerts and recordings with PNB, as well as initial projects with the theatre director Beat Faeh as (partially) improvised live music/performance in his Shakespeare productions at various "Stadt/Staatsheater" (German municipal and national theatre system) in Mainz, Bonn, et al.

-Further important encounters and collaborative work with artists from fine arts genres in the environs of Cologne/Duesseldorf and Frankfurt (sound installations, performances, such as: Installations developed with the photographer Manfred Bogner in the chapel of the former Rommersdorf abbey), as well as, beginning in 1995, first compositions for the theatre (Vivienne Newport dance theater, Staatstheater Kassel, Mainz, Landestheater Schwerin).

- First work with/compositions for player piano obtained in 1995.

-1995 concert tour with the band Art de Fakt (Aachen) and the American writer Raymond Federman inspired subsequent compositions using text and music. (e.g. "Trombotraktat" for female speaking voice and trombone).

-Parallel to this, continued intensive activity as instrumentalist (Loft, Stadtgarten/Cologne, and various festivals - Leverkusen and Getcxo, Spain, et al, where the world-folk-jazz project Novotnik 44 was awarded 2nd place in 1996). Since 1998, in-depth clarinet studies with David Smeyers.

Continuation of PNB's theatrical performance work with Beat Faeh in the form of an original improvised music theatre project called "Blauzone" - created for the Blickfelderfestival, Zurich - performed afterwards in various clubs, galleries, theatres as well as at festivals in several countries, and finally, in 2OOO, together with Theater Hora /Zurich, further developed and performed in a 24-hr. improvisation entitled: "Die Lust am Scheitern" (The Joy of Foundering).

Since 1996 numerous compositions for the theatre, including the Schauspielhaus Duesseldorf and the Berliner Ensemble, et al. recorded with local chamber ensembles and soloists, as well as making use of computer generated (montage) sound production and compositions for player piano.

- Most significant work for the theatre primarily with the directors Markus Dietz (Leipzig), Patrick Schloesser (Duesseldorf/Bochum) and Philip Tiedemann (Berliner Ensemble, Burgtheater, Vienna)."

"Chris Weinheimer (* 1964 in Saarbrücken) is a German jazz and improvisation musician, composer and theater director.

Weinheimer studied philosophy, musicology and archeology in Cologne and jazz flute in Hilversum. He has been a freelance musician since 1985. He has been composing drama and ballet music since 1991. In 1994 he founded the group Post No Bills with Ole Schmidt, Tom Lorenz, Robert Schleisiek and Carl Ludwig Hübsch, which, in addition to jazz music, specializes in improvisation music and new music (e.g. John Cage's "Variations" and "Number Pieces" and Christian Wolff's "Exercises").

Since 1996 he has been running the Blauzone performance project with Ole Schmidt, Sebastian Gramss and Carl Ludwig Hübsch, and since 2000 it has been expanded to include actors from the HORA theater under the name Lust am Scheitern. He is also, together with Karoline Schulz, a member of the Neue Dresdner Kammermusik (since 2004) and the Saxon Improvisation Ensemble. Weinheimer has been organizing thematic concert evenings at the LOFFT in Leipzig since 2005 under the title System Critic Material Issue.

Since the late 1990s he has composed compositions for chamber music ensembles, including a string quartet. Since 2009 Weinheimer has devoted himself increasingly to work as a theater director.

Chris Weinheimer lives in Leipzig."

"The pianist Jan Gerdes is one of the most interesting and versatile musicians of his generation. As a pianist between tradition and the avant-garde he is a master of both the classical-romantic and contemporary repertoire. Jan Gerdes studied piano and percussion at the colleges of music in Hanover and Detmold with Kurt Bauer, Nerine Barett and Renate Kretschmar-Fischer, and took master classes with well-known pianists such as Anatol Ugorski, Halina Czerny-Stefanska and Edith Picht-Axenfeld.gerdes_02.jpgConcerts all over the world have taken this award-winning musician to countries in Europe, South America and the Far East. He has given guest performances at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Maerzmusk Berlin, the Rotterdam Gaudeamus Week, Festival Musica Straßburg, the festival Chiffren, Ultraschall Berlin, the Stockhausen Courses, the Centre Acanthes in Metz, the Haller Bachtage, Kunstfest Weimar, the Beethovenfest Bonn, the WDR Musikfest, the Weingartener Tage Neuer Musik, the Darmstadt Summer Course and elsewhere, and has appeared in concert halls such as the Berliner Konzerthaus, the Kölner Philharmonie, the Essener Philharmonie, the Konzerthaus Wien, the Freiburger Konzerthaus, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, the Alte Oper Frankfurt and the Berliner Philharmonie.

He has made television, radio and CD recordings for NDR, WDR, MDR, HR, RB, ORF, Deutschland Radio Berlin and the label Ambitus. His solo CD Gelände/Zeichnung with very recent piano music appeared in 2008 with the label Zeitklang.Jan Gerdes has worked with a number of leading contemporary composers, including Karlheinz Stockhausen, Wolfgang Rihm, Peter Ruzicka and Helmut Lachenmann, and has given the first performances of works by Sidney Corbett, Peter Gahn, Moritz Eggert, Annette Schlünz, Markus Bongartz, Brice Pauset, Alex Nowitz, Marcus Antonius Wesselmann and many others.

A traveller between the worlds of classical and new music, electronica and performance, in 2004 he founded the composing and improvising duo `EROL`, which explores the interface between piano music and electronic club culture. In 2011 he started working extensively on his electro- acoustic project `KAUM` with the argentinian-spanish sound artist Silvina Avila, since 2014 with the italian composer, Techno- producer and DJ Fabrizio Nocci as `Mutant TP`.

The music-theatre platform solosymphonie-productions, a joint venture with the actor Michael Fuchs, develops innovative programmes and interdisciplinary projects that juxtapose traditional and modern elements in music, theatre, literature, visual art and dance in a dramaturgy that turns them into a sensory experience. One example was the production 4.48 Psychose, a confrontation of the play by Sarah Kane with contemporary notated and improvised music, which was premiered at the Nationaltheater Mannheim. Jan Gerdes currently lives in Berlin and teaches piano and contemporary music at the University of Potsdam."