"Susanna Gartmayer studied painting and printmaking and is self trained in bass clarinet and composition.

She is part of many ensembles of elusive musical genres, for example the experimental rock band Broken.Heart.Collector or The Vegetable Orchestra (music for instruments made of out of vegetables). She is participating in the SHAPE platform with three different projects.

Solo

2015 saw the release of Gartmayer's debut solo recording, AOUIE. In this album, mouth cavity shapes and vowel sounds, necessary for multiphonic wind instrument playing and the shift of overtones were the starting point for a multidimensional journey into the bass clarinet's sound. The Guardian wrote: "Bass clarinetist Susanna Gartmayer is a mainstay of the Viennese improvised music scene and AOUIE, her debut solo release, is long overdue.(....) This piece opens with cascading note patterns - a springboard for Gartmayer to indulge in her wonderland harmonies and her palette of flinty percussive clicks and spits."

Gartmayer's live show, based on this album, is played without amplification. She exhibits the same attention to detail - the setup for each tune is slightly different, taking into account the way the audience is sitting as well as venue acoustics and the playing position she wishes to adopt.

Möström

The trio Möström was formed in 2010 and consists of Gartmayer, Tamara Wilhelm (DIY electronics) and Elise Mory (keys). The group is specifically interested in weird sound worlds and their humorous potential, as well as playing with stereotypes. Comments about their debut album range from "genre defying", to "barking mad, laugh out loud even". Michelle Foster of The Quietus concluded her album review with the following words: "For those who will come to it open-minded and brave enough to embrace the darkness with the light, the known and the unknown, Möström's debut album is an endless journey of inspiration."

Duo with Brigitta Bödenauer

As of 2012, Susanna has often worked with Brigitta Bödenauer, who has been active in Vienna's noise and experimental music and film scene since the early '90s. Their collaborative work focuses on abstract soundscapes and polyrhythmic figures as well as stage performances as a visual statement. The duo's debut album is coming soon."

Susanna Gartmayer website

"After taking up the bass, around 1987, John Edwards co-formed The Pointy Birds who went on to win awards for their music for The Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs dance troupes. The group appeared at festivals in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Moers, Leverkusen, Copenhagen. Around 1990, Edwards played his first gigs with London improvisers such as Roger Turner, Lol Coxhill, Maggie Nicols, Phil Minton.

Between 1990 and 1995 Edwards was a member of three touring groups simultaneously: B-Shops For The Poor, The Honkies and GOD. During this period he also became an increasingly regular player on the London improvised music scene and performed his first solo gigs; he composed and performed music theatre with the bass and cello duo The Great Explorers, street-busked a lot and appeared at many more festivals in Germany, Estonia, France, Italy, Czech, etc.

Since 1995 John Edwards has become a "mainstay" of the London scene, playing with just about everybody, an activity that has seen him clocking up between 150 and 200 gigs a year. He has become regular player with Evan Parker, in many groupings, and with Tony Bevan, Veryan Weston, and Elton Dean, often in collaboration with Mark Sanders on percussion. He has become a more frequent player on the European (and festival) scene, appearing at Taktlos, Ulrichsburg, Nickelsdorf, Budapest, New Zealand and in the USA. He continues to work on solo performances."

"Mariá Portugal has been active in the Brazilian musical scene since 16 years old, recording, performing and touring throughout South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania with artists like Arrigo Barnabé, Elza Soares, Metá Metá, Maria Beraldo, Maggie Nicols, Charlotte Hug, Angelika Niescier, Gerald Cleaver, Ute Wasserman, Joëlle Leandre, Billy Martin, Burkhard Beins, Emilio Gordoa, Fred Frith, Jasper van't Hof and Paul van Kemenade.

Among her main projects is the Brazilian instrumental group Quartabê, which is currently promoting their third album. The band has already performed in festivals such as Festival Jazz & The City, in Salzburg, Austria (2017), Moers Festival, in Moers, Germany (2018), Nijmegen Music Meeting, in Nijmegen, Netherlands (2018), Frue Festival in Japan and Festival Internacional de Jazz de Buenos Aires, Argentina (2019).

As a composer, she has been performing and composing original music for dance, theatre and cinema. Her most recent work as a soundtrack composer is the score for the feature film "1976", by Manuela Martelli, which will be premiered at Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes 2022.

In 2020, Mariá lived in Moers, Germany. as the 13th Improviser in Residence of the Moers Festival, where she played with Angelika Niescier, Gerald Cleaver, Burkhard Beins, among others. She is currently living in Köln.

She is the curator for the city of Duisburg for the Soundtrips-NRW, a project that seeks to promote and connect free improvisers from Nordrhein-Westphalia.

Mariá holds a degree in Composition from UNESP (São Paulo State University) and a M.A. in Communication and Semiotics, from PUC-SP (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo)."

"Joe McPhee, born November 3,1939 in Miami, Florida, USA, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He began playing the trumpet at age eight, taught by his father, himself a trumpet player. He continued on that instrument through his formative school years and later in a U.S. Army band stationed in Germany, at which time he was introduced to performing traditional jazz. Clifford Thornton's Freedom and Unity, released in 1969 on the Third World label, is the first recording on which he appears as a side man. In 1968, inspired by the music of Albert Ayler, he took up the saxophone and began an active involvement in both acoustic and electronic music.

His first recordings as leader appeared on the CJ Records label, founded in 1969 by painter Craig Johnson. These include Underground Railroad by the Joe McPhee Quartet (1969), Nation Time (1970), Trinity (1971) and Pieces of Light (1974). In 1975, Swiss entrepreneur Werner X. Uehlinger release Black Magic Man by McPhee, on what was to become Hat Hut Records.

In 1981, he met composer, accordionist, performer, and educator Pauline Oliveros, whose theories of "deep listening" strengthened his interests in extended instrumental and electronic techniques. he also discovered Edward de Bono's book Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity, which presents concepts for solving problems by "disrupting an apparent sequence and arriving at the solution from another angle." de Bono's theories inspired McPhee to apply this "sideways thinking" to his own work in creative improvisation, resulting in the concept of "Po Music." McPhee describes "Po Music" as a "process of provocation" (Po is a language indicator to show that provocation is being used) to "move from one fixed set of ideas in an attempt to discover new ones." He concludes, "It is a Positive, Possible, Poetic Hypothesis." The results of this application of Po principles to creative improvisation can be heard on several Hat Art recordings, including Topology, Linear B, and Oleo & a Future Retrospective.

In 1997, McPhee discovered two like-minded improvisers in bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen. The trio premiered at the Vision Jazz Festival in 1998 but the concert went unnoticed by the press. McPhee, Duval, and Rosen therefore decided that an apt title for the group would be Trio X. In 2004 he created Survival Unit III with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Michael Zerang to expand his musical horizons and with a career spanning nearly 50 years and over 100 recordings, he continues to tour internationally, forge new connections while reaching for music's outer limits."