"Born on November 2, 1957 in Bad Godesberg, Germany saxophonist (tenor and soprano), bass clarinetist, bass flutist and composer Gebhard Ullmann studied medecine and music in Hamburg and moved to Berlin in 1983.Since then he has recorded more than 50 CDs as a leader or co-leader for prestigious labels such as Soul Note (Italy), Leo Records (UK), Between The Lines (Germany), CIMP (USA), NotTwo Records (Poland), Clean Feed (Portugal) Unit Records (Switzerland) and others.

For many years he is considered one of the leading personalities in both the Berlin and international music scenes and has received numerous awards for his work including the Julius Hemphill Composition Award in two categories ('99), the Deutsche Phonoakademie award ('83), one of the first SWF Jazz Awards ('87) and the nomination best-jazz-CD-of-the-year by the German Schallplattenkritik for his CD Tá Lam in 1995.

His CDs Final Answer (2002) The Bigband Project (2004) New Basement Research (2008) News? No News! (2010) Mingus! (2011) Clarinet Trio 4 (2012) were all listed in Downbeat Magazine among the best CDs of those years. The CD Transatlantic received the prestigious Choc of the French Jazz Magazine in 2012. Since 2005 Gebhard Ullmann is listed in the Downbeat Critics Poll, 2015 for the first time in three categories.

Since 1993 Ullmann was a recording artist for Soul Note and has been living in New York City and Berlin. He has toured with his music throughout Europe as well as Africa, the Middle East, Canada, New Zealand, the USA, South East Asia, Mexico and China and performed on most of the world's most prestigious jazz festivals."

Berlin based saxophonist Paulina Owczarek is a member of Sambar and Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin.

"Nikolaus Neuser (* 1972 in Siegen ) is a German jazzmusician ( trumpet, wing horn ).

Neuser studied from 1994 to 1998 at the Folkwang-Hochschule in Essen with Uli Beckerhoff. In 1999, he moved to Berlin, where he performed with the Hannes Zerbe Jazz Orchestra ( Eisleriana and Erlkönig ), the Berlin Jazz Orchestra, Pinx, the Potsdama Lotsa formation (with Gerhard Gschlößl, Patrick Braun, Silke Eberhard ), the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin ( Ichigo Ichie, 2015) and works with The Alliteration. He also heads the Nikolaus Neuser, to whom Bernd Oezsevim, Gerhard Gschlößl, Johannes Fink and Silke Eberhard belong. In 2015 he presented the album Pink Elephant (Jazzwerkstatt). Since 2012 he belongs to the Fun Horns (with Volker Schlott, Falk Breitkreuz, Jörg Huke ). Cooperations with the German Foreign Office, the Goethe Institute and the DAAD enabled him to stay and tour in China, Thailand, Vietnam, North Africa, Lebanon, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Europe and Colombia 2007 at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá. [8th]

In the area of ​​pop music he is on albums of || Seeed, Peter Fox, Miss Platnum, 4hero, Pohlmann || Among others. He also worked with the Sonar Collective Orchestra and in the 2000s in the electronic jazz project Trondheym."

"Lina Allemano is a Canadian trumpeter, improviser, and composer based in Toronto ON since 1993, originally hailing from Edmonton AB. She has an active international career, performing and recording cutting-edge contemporary music primarily in free-jazz/improvised/experimental/avant-garde settings, but also working in a wide array of other genres. For the past several years, Lina has been splitting her time between Toronto and Berlin, with one foot in Berlin's flourishing and uncompromising art-music scene and the other foot in Toronto's vibrant but somewhat under-the-radar experimental-music scene. Lina was featured as one of the top innovative trumpeters for the future in DownBeat Magazine, and her trumpet playing, compositions, and artistic vision have gained her international recognition as being "adventurous, expressive, compelling, forward thinking, inventive, and sophisticated".

As well as leading her longtime acoustic free-jazz band, LINA ALLEMANO FOUR, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2015, she also fronts the electric improvising group, TITANIUM RIOT. She has been touring extensively with both bands all across Europe, USA, and Canada for many years. (See below for more info on these groups). Lina is also busy collaborating with a very long and ever-expanding list of exciting international improvisers, and is a member of many other active creative groups as a side-person. As a composer, she has been commissioned to compose works for such ensembles as Vancouver's NOW Orchestra. Lina has released 8 of her own internationally-acclaimed albums on her Lumo Records label - 6 with LINA ALLEMANO FOUR featuring her original compositions: Sometimes Y (2017), Live at the Tranzac (2012), Jargon (2010), Gridjam (2008), Pinkeye (2006), and Concentric (2003) - and 2 with TITANIUM RIOT: Squish It! (2017), Kiss the Brain (2014). Her trumpet playing can also be heard on over 40 other albums as well as countless film and television soundtracks.

Lina has received support from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council. Lina is a Yamaha Artist."

"Japanese trumpeter and composer Natsuki Tamura is internationally recognized for a unique musical vocabulary that blends extended techniques with jazz lyricism. This unpredictable virtuoso's seemingly limitless creativity led François Couture in All Music Guide to declare that "... we can officially say there are two Natsuki Tamuras: The one playing angular jazz-rock or ferocious free improv... and the one writing simple melodies of stunning beauty... How the two of them live in the same body and breathe through the same trumpet might remain a mystery."

Born on July 26, 1951, in Otsu, Shiga, Japan, Tamura first picked up the trumpet while performing in his junior high brass band. He began his professional music career after he graduated from high school, playing in numerous bands including the World Sharps Orchestra, Consolation, Skyliners Orchestra, New Herd Orchestra, Music Magic Orchestra, and the Satoko Fujii Ensemble, as well as in his own ensemble. He was the trumpeter for numerous national television shows in Japan from 1973-1982, including The Best Ten, Music Fair, Kirameku Rhythm and many others.

In 1986, he came to the United States to study at Berklee College of Music. He then returned to his native Japan to perform and teach at the Yamaha Popular Music School and at private trumpet studios in Tokyo and Saitama, before coming back to the US to study at New England Conservatory. He made his debut recording as a leader in 1992 on Tobifudo.

In 1997 he released the duo album How Many? with pianist Satoko Fujii, who is also his wife. It marked the beginning of an artistic collaboration that continues up to the present. The duo has made a total of five CDs over the years, including 2012's Muku. "Muku contains some truly stunning, spine-tingling music...its sheer beauty and elegance is what lingers most," wrote Dave Wayne in All About Jazz. "Fujii's orchestral technique, clear chromatic lines and "prepared piano" devices contrast effectively with Tamura's arsenal of extended techniques which he executes with a warm, vocalized tone throughout the trumpet's full range," Ted Panken said in his four-star DownBeat review. Tamura's collaborations with Fujii reveal an intense musical empathy, and have garnered wide popular and critical acclaim. Jim Santella in All About Jazz described their synergy well in his glowing review of the couple's 2006 Not Two disc, In Krakow, In November: "... the creative couple forcefully demonstrates what can happen when you let your musical ideas run free... Similarly, Tamura's mournful trumpet can fly high or low in search of his next surprise. Oftentimes, they both issue plaintive moans that sing like angels on high." Their sixth duet album is due out in 2017.

In 1998, Tamura began recording his unaccompanied solo performances. The stunning solo trumpet debut release, A Song for Jyaki earned a Writers Choice 1998 in Coda magazine, and Andy Bartlett wrote in Coda, "A fabulous set of hiccuping leaps, drones and post-bop trumpet hi-jinx. Tamura goes from growling lows to fluid, free solo runs and echoes not only Don Cherry's slurring anti-virtuosic chops but also Kenny Wheeler's piercing highwire fullness." He followed it up in 2003 with KoKoKoKe, which Jon Davis described in Exposé as "Buddhist chants from an alien planet." Grego Applegate Edwards explains that on Tamura's most recent solo album, 2013's Dragon Nat, "he pares down to focus on simple unwinding melodic material, the sound of his trumpet as a sensuous thing, a periodicity. Taken as a whole it is a kind of environmental tone poem for the moment Natsuki is in now."

2003 was a breakout year for Tamura as a bandleader, with the release of Hada Hada, featuring his free jazz-avant rock quartet with Fujii on synthesizer. Peter Marsh of the BBC had this to say about the high voltage CD: "Imagine Don Cherry woke up one morning, found he'd joined an avant goth-rock band and was booked to score an Italian horror movie. It might be an unlikely scenario, but it goes some way to describing this magnificent sprawl of a record." The quartet's 2004 Quartet release Exit was deemed "...a brilliantly executed set with a neon glow," by Dan McClenaghan in All About Jazz.

In 2005, Tamura made a 180-degree turn in his music with the debut of his all acoustic Gato Libre quartet. Focusing on the intersection of European folk music and sound abstraction, the quartet featured Fujii on accordion, Kazuhiko Tsumura on guitar, and Norikatsu Koreyasu on bass. The quartet's poetic, quietly surreal performances have been praised for their "surprisingly soft and lyrical beauty that at times borders on flat-out impressionism," by Rick Anderson in CD Hotlist. Dan McClenaghan in All About Jazz described their fourth CD, Shiro, as "intimate, something true to the simple beauty of the folk tradition...Tamura's career has largely been about dissolving musical boundaries. With Gato Libre and Shiro, the trumpeter extends his reach even deeper into the prettiest, most accessible of his endeavors." After the unexpected passing of Norikatsu in 2012, Tamura added trombonist Yasuko Kaneko to the group. The new configuration has toured Europe and Japan and released its debut recording, DuDu, in 2014. "DuDu follows the winning formula of its predecessors but, as with the other discs, eschews the formulaic. The result is another sublimely satisfying, elegant record that brims with raw excitement and a reflective nostalgia," writes Hrayr Attarian in All About Jazz. With the tragic death of guitarist Kazuhiko Tsumura, Gato Libre is now a trio. They will release a CD and LP in 2017.

In 2010, Tamura debuted a new electric quartet, First Meeting, featuring Fujii, drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and electric guitarist Kelly Churko. Their first release, Cut the Rope, is "is a noisy, free, impatient album, and ranks among Fujii and Tamura's most accomplished," according to Steve Greenlee in the Boston Globe.

While fronting groups and recording as a leader, Tamura has also played an integral role in nearly all of Satoko Fujii's many projects. He is featured on all of the CDs by Satoko Fujii's various orchestras (NY, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, and Berlin) and has contributed original compositions and arrangements to each of their 19 critically celebrated albums. In addition, he was a featured soloist in the Satoko Fujii Quartet, her avant-rock free jazz group that also included Tatsuya Yoshida of The Ruins. Of his work on the quartet's 2003 release Minerva, Mark Keresman wrote in JazzReview.com, "Natsuki Tamura's trumpet has some of the stark, melancholy lyricism of Miles, the bristling rage of late 60s Freddie Hubbard and a dollop of the extended techniques of Wadada Leo Smith and Lester Bowie."

Tamura is a vital member of Fujii's Min-Yo Ensemble as well. "Tamura tempers his avant-garde antics with an innate lyricism," wrote Steve Smith of Time Out New York in his review of Fujin Raijin, the intimate acoustic quartet's debut CD. He's also been singled out for his contributions to Fujii's ma do ensemble. "With Tamura's brash and glowing lines, the band incorporates mesmeric ostinatos and thrusting opuses into the grand schema," Glenn Astarita wrote in Ejazznews about their first CD, Desert Ship.

Collaborative groups also play an important role in Tamura's career. Most recently, Tamura joined Fujii and two French musicians, trumpeter Christian Pruvost and drummer Peter Orins, to form Kaze, which made their recording debut in 2011. In 2015, they released their third album, Uminari, which Jazz Magazine (France) called, "a compelling example of free jazz today. Compositions are perfectly scripted, with a well-oiled interaction and playing of beautiful power..." The collaborative trio Junk Box, which he co-founded in 2006 along with pianist Fujii and drummer John Hollenbeck, plays Fujii's "composed improvisations," graphic scores that take "ensemble dynamics to great creative heights," says Kevin Le Gendre in Jazzwise. Their music "is full of bluster and agitation that nonetheless retains moments of great melodic beauty, usually by way of concise, pertly pretty motifs that trumpeter Tamura plays in between bursts of withering roars that often dissolve into austere overtones." Their premiere CD, Fragment, appeared in 2006. As Daniel Spicer wrote of Fragment in JazzWise, "Tamura spits out gloriously rude Lester-Bowie-like snorts, lows like a herd of robotic cattle or makes like a wheezy howler monkey... Cool and clever." Glenn Astarita of All About Jazz declared it "Required listening."

Along the way, there have been one-off cooperative groups and sideman appearances for Tamura as well. In the Tank, an ad hoc quartet with Fujii and electric guitarists Takayuki Kato and Elliott Sharp, is a "triumphant electro-acoustic adventure" according to Daniel Spicer of Jazzwise. "Think AMM meets blues guitar meets 1970s Miles Davis and you get some idea of the disc's flavor: a slow-moving panorama for the ears, where sounds are systematically added, repeated, refined, and replaced in turn," wrote Nate Dorward in Cadence. Tamura and Fujii were one of two piano/trumpet duos featured on the Double Duo Crossword Puzzle CD, a live recording with Dutch trumpeter Angelo Verploegen and pianist Misha Mengelberg. Tamura has also toured and recorded with saxophonist Larry Ochs' Sax and Drumming Core, and appeared on albums by drummer Jimmy Weinstein, saxophonist Raymond McDonald, and CDs by Japanese free-jazz pioneers trumpeter Itaru Oki and pianist Masahiko Sato. In 2014 he released Nax, a duet album with bassist Alexander Frangenheim. Tamua has toured throughout Japan, North America, and Europe, appearing at major jazz festivals, concert halls, and clubs."

"Liz Kosack is a musician and designer from Maine, USA working in Berlin and New York. Her work is cross-platform, but focuses around synthesizer playing and masks.

She completed a Masters in music at Jazz Institut Berlin, where she studied composition with John Hollenbeck and Greg Cohen. She holds a BA in jazz piano from William Paterson University, USA. She was a finalist in music and sound for the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in 2013.

She currently co-leads and is involved in multiple active projects in both Germany and the USA, released two LPs with "VAX" (The Sooner we Jump the Better, and Count to VAX) Is on RJ Miller's "Ronalds Rhythm," released a debut tape cassette with The Hero of Warchester in 2015 on Prom Night Records, Sunrise Over a Dystopic Future City's debut Dystopia (DVD collaboration with NYC filmaker Zach Caldwell, 2016) and expects to shortly release the resultant album of her masters project which features text-encoded melodic compositions and the talent of Frank Gratkowski, Tilo Weber, Dan Peter Sundland, Christian Tschuggnall, and Otis Sandsjö (selections of which were exhibited in fall 2014 at NYFA's "Estuary" exhibit in DUMBO, brooklyn.) Noteably this year she played the Moers festival with her band "The Liz" as Anubis in their piece "Book of Birds," collaborated with the Ballet im Revier, and in september gave her German professional debut on grand piano in a special version of RRR at the 30 Jahr Stadtgarten festival.

Liz is a sideman on Tilo Weber's Animate Repose (Shoebill 2016), and special guest on Orter Eparg's "Orter Eparg" (Øra, 2016.) She also plays synth on Lea Frey's next album, due for release 2017.

She leads mask-making workshops, has been commisioned for mask works by various groups, and is accepting new requests."

"Jan Roder (* 1968 ) is a German jazz bassist.

Roder studied music in Hanover. He began his career as a rock musician and lived longer periods in Brazil. In 1995 he came to Berlin, where he played touring and concerts with musicians such as Ulrich Gumpert, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Manfred Schoof, Uschi Brüning, Joachim Kühn, Aki Takase, Gunter Hampel, Mircea Tiberian and Axel Dörner.

As a successor to Joachim Dette, he is the band Disappointment, together with Axel Dörner, Rudi Mahall and Uli Jenneßen, who, together with Alexander von Schlippenbach, has the complete work of Thelonious Monk in his repertoire. Together with Björn Lücker and Henrik Walsdorff, he is the group The Most. He is also a member of the Caciula Trio (with Maurice de Martin and Ben Abarbanel-Wolff ), JR 3, the Silke Eberhard Quartet and the Zoran Terzic Trio, and performs as a duo of Maria Răducanu."

"Michael Griener, born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1968, began playing drums in 1982, lives in Berlin since 1994.

Under the influence of the HOHE-UFER-concerts initiated by Günter Christmann he became involved early on in the various forms of Jazztradition, Free Improvisation and New Music, which led to a longer collaboration with Christmann in his Vario-projects (a.o. C.I.M.-Festival Den Haag 1990, Moers-Festival 1992, Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik1993).

He has worked frequently with dancers, actors and poets (most recently in a project on Paul Celan with German writer Oskar Ansull). His duo KIMMO ELOMAA with electronic wizard jayrope received a grant by the city of Berlin in 2002 Received the 1. price as "most creative soloist" at the "New German Jazz Award" in 2006 His current projects include a.o.:

Uli Gumpert Quartet, TGW (Thieke-Griener-Weber), a Duo with Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Lacy Pool, Squakk and Carl-Ludwig Hübsch' Primordial Soup Michael Griener teaches jazz drumming at the University for Music "Carl Maria v. Weber" in Dresden and jazz-history and rhythm at the Jazzschule Berlin."

"After classical music study, Peter Orins learns the drums, first in a rock and afro-cuban music school, then at the Conservatoire National de Région of Lille in the jazz section, where he studies with Guy Gilbert, Jean-François Canape, Gérard Marais... He graduates in 1997. In the meantime, he studies musicology at university, improvisation with Fred Van Hove, composition with Jean-Marc Chouvel and Ricardo Mandolini.

Playing jazz from the middle of the 90's, he plays in the bands that will create in 2000 the Circum collective : Impression (for which he composes, became Flu(o) in 2012), Quartet Base, Stefan Orins Trio. He coordinates the Circum collective till its fusion with the CRIME in 2010, and creates the Circum Grand Orchestra, band with the 10 musicians of Circum, for which he composes also occasionally. At the same time Peter Orins get in the CRIME projects, improvised and experimental music collective also based at la malterie in Lille. He plays especially in La Pieuvre, big improvisation orchestra conducted by Olivier Benoit (nowadays Artistic Director of L'Orchestre National de Jazz). It's with the Crime that he'll develop his solo work (drums and electronic with Pure Data application), and improvised and experimental projects with David Bausseron, Laurent Rigaut, Ivann Cruz, Christian Pruvost, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Benjamin Duboc, Yanik Miossec, Falter Bramnk, ... in bands like DBPO, De Nouvelles Erreurs, Signal Box, Electropus, Ternoy/Cruz/Orins (that will become Toc, free-rock progressive band)... In 2006, he leads a french-vietnamese project called Hué/Circum with the support of Region Nord Pas de Calais, which combines 4 musicians from Circum and 3 traditional vietnamese musicians from Hué (tour in Vietnam, Japan and France, from 2006 to 2009). In 2010, he creates a french-japanese quartet with pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpet players Natsuki Tamura and Christian Pruvost, band for which he composes with Satoko Fujii. Several international tours with this band (Japan, Israel, Germany, France, USA, Canada). In 2011, Ivann Cruz, guitar player from Muzzix, and Maciej Garbowski, polish double-bass player, invite him to play in their quartet with the finnish saxophone player Kari Heinila. He also collaborates with theatre, composes for cinema or animation movies, dance... Since the creation of Muzzix in 2010, Peter Orins coordinates the artistic direction of the collective.

He played with : Sophie Agnel, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Benjamin Duboc, Radu Malfati, Steve Dalachinsky, Andrew D'Angelo, Petr Cancura, Josh Sinton, Curtis Hasselbring, Joe Morris, Rene Hart, David Miller, Frank London, Nate Wooley, Renee Baker, Ernest Dawkins, Dave Rempis, Jeb Bishop, Michael Zerang, Jacques Di Donato, François Corneloup, Norbert Lucarain, Sylvain Kassap, Alain Vankenhove, Camel Zekri, ..."