artist portrait
Ali, Rashied
Rashied Ali (born Robert Patterson on 1 July 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a jazz drummer best known for playing with John Coltrane in the last years of Coltrane’s life. His brother, Muhammad Ali, is also a drummer, who played with Albert Ayler, among others. More recently, Ali has played with Sonny Fortune. Ali has also recorded or performed with Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, James Blood Ulmer and many others. more…
ArgĂĽelles, Julian
Julian ArgĂĽelles began his career as a musician at the age of fourteen touring throughout Europe with the European Community Big Band. Quickly he gained recognition as an original musician and joined the much acclaimed 21 piece UK big band “Loose Tubes”. more…
Bächli, Tomas
Born in Zurich (Switzerland) in 1958 and studied piano with Werner Bärtschi in Zurich. Bächli has been awarded numerous prizes for his commitment to new music. more…
Bennett, Samm
Samm Bennett was born in 1957 in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1995 he moved to Tokyo. Since then he has worked with improvisers such as drummer Yasuhiro Yoshigaki, guitarist Natsuki Kido, clarinetist Wataru Ohkuma, and vocalist Koichi Makigami. He has worked with Butoh dance figure Min Tanaka, and has appeared on 2 CDs by the highly regarded Tetsuhiro Daiku, a singer of Okinawan traditional music. more…
Bennink, Han
Han Bennink (born April 17, 1942) is a Dutch jazz drummer and percussionist. Bennink was born in Zaandam, the son of a classical percussionist. He played the drums and the clarinet during his teens.more…
Blum, John
John Blum, born 1968 in New York City, pianist/composer has performed as a group leader and soloist for the past ten years. While an undergraduate from 1987-1991 Blum studied with Bill Dixon and Milford Graves, and performed regularly in a quartet with Marco Eneidi and Jackson Krall.more…
Bök, Christian
Christian Bök (born Book, 1966) is a Canadian experimental poet. He lives in Calgary. Eunoia is probably the work for which he is most famous. Edited by Darren Wershler-Henry at Coach House Books, Eunoia is a lipogram that uses only one vowel in each of its five chapters, and this work has gone on to become a bestseller in Canada, winning the lucrative Griffin Poetry Prize in 2002.more…
CĂ©line, Louis-Ferdinand
Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (May 27, 1894 – July 1, 1961) was a French writer and physician who wrote under the nom de plume Louis-Ferdinand CĂ©line. He was born Louis-Ferdinand Destouches at Courbevoie in the Seine dĂ©partement (now Hauts-de-Seine). CĂ©line received only a basic education before he joined the French cavalry. He fought in World War I and was decorated for his actions in a battle where he was wounded in the right arm.more…
Christi, Ellen
Ellen Christi has steadily gained ground as an important contributor to American improvised music and contemporary jazz. As a composer/vocalist, Ms. Christi has worked in varying performance venues ranging from multi-media theatrical productions to solo vocal concerts. more…
Dalachinsky, Steve
Steve Dalachinsky is a legendary New York downtown poet, very active in the free jazz/creative music scene. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. He has been writing poetry for many years and has worked with such musicians as William Parker, Susie Ibarra, Matthew Shipp, Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Mat Maneri, Federico Ughi, Rob Brown, Tim Barnes and Jim O’Rourke.more…
Derendinger, Ueli
Ueli Derendiger was born in Olten,Switzerland. He learned flute with Felix Manz at the Basel Music Academy. Following this he studied the japanese bamboo flute Shakuhachi, first with Andreas Fuyu Gutzwiller (Basel), then with Satoshi Shimura in Osaka, Japan. He has played in numerous concerts and performances with a variety of groups in Europe and Japan. more…
Doneda, Michel
Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone, born in 1954, comes from the French South-West. He is a self-taught musician. In 1980 he founded in Toulouse / France a reed trio: Hic et Nunc, a group that playing mostly improvised music. At the same time he founded with musicians, dancers and actors the IREA ( Institute for research and exchange between arts of improvisation).more…
Gibbs, Mike
Mike Gibbs is a composer, arranger and trombonist. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, he has worked with many of the leading lights of the music world including Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, John Scofield, Michael Mantler, Mike Stern, Joni Mitchell, Whitney Houston and Peter Gabriel. more…
Glassmeyer, Matt
Matt Glassmeyer was born to a nice family. They let him make a lot of noise and never complained. He went to school and college where he made a lot of noise and laughed at stuff. He went to New York to make noise and that is where he is today. In the meantime he paid bills, fed himself, found places to live, made some friends, kept the tax man away and laughed at some stuff. People were very nice to him for the most part. more…
Glennie, Evelyn
Evelyn Glennie (born July 19, 1965 in Aberdeen) is a Scottish virtuoso percussionist. She was the first full-time solo professional percussionist in 20th century western society. She is deaf. more…
Hano, Shoji
Shoji Hano was born March 1, 1955 in Kokura, Fukuoka prefecture, Japan. His first drumming experience was at the age of four, when he played a traditional Japanese drum at the Kokura Festival. He began playing the western drum set at 15. It was around this time that he also started listening to jazz and studying the drumming of jazz masters such as Max Roach, Art Blakey and “Philly” Joe Jones. more…
Hanson, Nathan
Nathan Hanson is a composer/performer who specializes in improvised music. His primary instruments are the tenor and soprano saxophones. He has performed with Cecil Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Mark Dresser, Carei Thomas, Elliot Humberto Kavee, Federico Ughi, among others. more…
Hanson, Sten
Sten Hanson (1936- ) made his appearance in the early sixties as an experimental poet and composer. From an early stage he was aware of the importance of tape-recording techniques in the renewal and development of poetry’s resources. more…
Jamal, Kahn
Kahn Jamal was born July, 23, 1946. A very talented vibraphonist, Khan Jamal took up the vibes in 1964 and worked early on with the Cosmic Forces and with Byard Lancaster. After further study, Jamal played with Sunny Murray in the late ’70s and in the 1980s with Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society, the bands of Joe Bonner and Billy Bang and his own groups. more…
Koch, Hans
Hans Koch born 1948, lives in Biel, Switzerland. Hans Koch has quit his carreer as a recognised classical clarinetist to become one of the most innovative improvising reed-players in Europe. more…
Lavelle, Matt
Matt Lavelle was born in 1970 in New York. After hearing Louis Armstrong’s “Back O-Town Blues”, and touring Russia with his high school big band, led by Bert Hughes, he was hooked on Jazz. more…
Luescher, Fredi
Fredi Luescher, Swiss pianist played jazz and improvised music, collaborated with musicians, singers and poets, constantly looking for a personal idiom in the field of improvised music. Therefore worked on compositions of Edward Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Carla Bley. Played in a trio with Nathanael Su (as) and CĂ©cile Olshausen (vcl) and in a trio with Daniel Studer (b) and Marco Kaeppeli (dr) more…
Maciunas, George
George Maciunas (November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was an American artist who was a founding member of the Fluxus movement. He is generally credited with having invented the name “Fluxus.” more…
Mateen, Sabir
SabĂr Mateen is one of the most important and well-respected musicians working within today’s avant-garde and experimental music scene. He is a mainstay in the downtown New York musicians’ community and has had a shaping influence on its evolving character. more…
Minton, Phil
The town of Torquay, in England’s Devon County, sometime around 1957. A kid a couple of years out of school and as many years into unwelcome labor at a printing plant, is introduced to the work of painter Jackson Pollock, courtesy of an art-student friend’s book of reproductions. more…
Monk, Meredith
Meredith Monk (born November 20, 1942, in Lima, Peru) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, film-maker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Meredith Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which dwell in the spaces between music, theatre, and dance. more…
Moran, Sean
Sean Moran, guitarist and composer is based in NYC and has worked with artists such as Steve Wilson, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Teo Macero, Ron McLure, and John D’earth. more…
Mukai, Chie
Chie Mukai started studying improvised music under Takehisa Kosugi in the late 70s, and was a member of the renowned Japanese freeform group East Bionic Symphonia at this time. more…
Namtchylak, Sainkho
Sainkho Namtchylak was born in a small gold mining village in the former Soviet Republic of Tuva in Southern Siberia near the Mongolian border. Her grandparents were nomads and her parents were both school teachers. She studied music at the local college but was denied professional credentials by the Philharmonic Comittee and went on her own to Moscow to finish music college there. She was trained as a vocalist at the Gnesinsky Institute there. more…
Nopper, Sylvia
Sylvia Nopper, who lives in the Basel region, began her musical training with Eurhythmics at the Musikhochschule Trossingen, and completed her singing education at the Musikakademie Basel. more…
Nordheim, Arne
Arne Nordheim (born 20 June 1931) is a Norwegian composer, since 1982 living in the Norwegian State’s honorary residence, Grotten, next to the Royal Palace in Oslo. Nordheim has received numerous prizes for his compositions, and was elected honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music in 1997. more…
Oppenheim,MĂ©ret
MĂ©ret Oppenheim (October 6, 1913, Berlin—November 15, 1985, Switzerland) was a German-born Swiss Dada and Surrealist artist, and photographer. After growing up in Switzerland, Meret Oppenheim traveled in Paris and enrolled at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. After meeting Giacometti, Arp, and Man Ray, she became absorbed in Surrealism, first contributing her sculptures to their exhibitions in 1933. more…
Ostrowski, Matthew
Matthew Ostrowski, a New York City native, Matthew Ostrowski spent much of the ’80s in the then-flourishing downtown improvisation scene, playing antique synthesizers, amplified plates of glass, and broken tape recorders in a long string of low-ceilinged venues whose names are now lost to memory, honing his skills onstage with the usual Downtown suspects: Zeena Parkins, Nicolas Collins, John Zorn, Anthony Coleman, and that bunch. more…
Parker, Evan
Evan Parker ,born 5 April 1944 in Bristol, UK is a British free-improvising saxophone player. His original inspiration was Paul Desmond, and in recent years the influence of cool jazz saxophone players has again become apparent in his music — there are tributes to Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz on Time Will Tell (ECM, 1993) and Chicago Solo (Okkadisk, 1997). more…
Parker, William
William Parker is a master musician, improviser, and composer. He plays the bass, shakuhachi, double reeds, tuba, donso ngoni and gembri. He was born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York. more…
Partch, Harry
Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for instruments he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation. more…
Pliakas, Marino
Marino Pliakas plays Guitars and Basses. Greek and Swiss citizen, lives in Zurich/Switzerland. Studies in classical guitar at the Zurich Conservatory and history at the University of Zurich.Concert tours throughout Europe (Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Norway, Spain, Portugal, UK, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia/Montenegro, Croatia, Makedonia, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Turkey) Egypt, China, South Africa, Mozambique and Northern America (USA, CAN) as guitar and bass (upright and electr.) player in the fields of New Music, Freejazz/ Improvisation, Avant-Rock.more…
Sheppard, Andy
Andy Sheppard, born Warminster UK, January 20. 1957, is a British jazz saxophonist and composer. Andy Sheppard, the man who has emerged as one of Britain’s foremost tenor and soprano saxophonists was introduced to the music of John Coltrane at the age of 19 and immediately went out and bought his own saxophone.more…
Scott, Rhoda
The number of jazz musicians having adopted the organ are rather few in number, compared to other instruments used in jazz:: Fats Waller, Jimmy Smith, Bill Doggett, “Wild” Bill Davis, Lou Bennet, Jimmy McGriff, and naturally Rhoda Scott. more…
Stein, Gertrude
[adapted from an entry in the (c)Encyclopedia Britannica] (b. Feb. 3, 1874, Allegheny, Pa., U.S.–d. July 27, 1946, Paris), avant-garde American writer, eccentric, and self-styled genius, whose Paris home was a salon for the leading artists and writers of the period between World Wars I and II. more…
Su, Nathanael
Nathanael Su, alto saxophone, composition, born June 16th, 1963 in BĂĽlach, Canton of ZĂĽrich, resident in ZĂĽrich, Switzerland. Studied at the College of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria, as well as at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA (Professional Music Diploma). more…
Swell, Steve
Steve Swell is a landmark figure in the world of improvised music.
Born in Newark, New Jersey, he has been living, working and performing in New York City for most of his adult life. In an effort to find his own voice on his instrument and to learn to write and arrange in a style of his own, he has sought out, performed and recorded with many of the world’s finest composers and improvisors. more…
Taylor, John
John Taylor was born in Manchester (25th September 1942) and first came to the attention of the jazz audience in 1969 when he partnered saxophonists Alan Skidmore and John Surman. He was later reunited with John Surman in the short-lived group Morning Glory and in the 1980’s with Miroslav Vitous’s quartet. more…
Towner, Ralph
Ralph Towner is an American acoustic guitarist. He also plays piano, synthesizer, and trumpet.Towner lives in Rome, Italy. Born 1940 in Chehalis, Washington, Ralph Towner is one of the most diversely talented musicians of the past half-century, and has made notable recordings of jazz, classical music, folk music, and world music. He began his career as a conservatory-trained classical guitarist, then joined world music pioneer Paul Winter’s “Consort” ensemble in the late 1960s.more…
Troxler, Yvonne
Yvonne Troxler has performed throughout the United States and Europe. She is artistic director of the Glass Farm Ensemble, a new music group in New York City, which she founded in 2000. Yvonne Troxler has premiered numerous works by established and emerging composers including Toshio Hosokawa, Rebecca Saunders, and Balz TrĂĽmpy. Her most recent recording appears on the MGB label. more…
Weber, Katharina
Katharina Weber, 1958 born in Bern, Switzerland. Piano studies in Basel and Bern with JĂĽrg Wyttenbach, Urs Peter Schneider, Erika Radermacher and Jörg Ewald Dähler. Master courses with György Kurtág and others. more…
Williams, Emmett
Emmett Williams was born April 4th, 1925, in Greenville, South Carolina, grew up in Virginia, and lived in Europe from 1949 to 1966.He studied poetry with John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College, took courses in anthropology at the University of Paris, and was an assistant to the ethnologist Paul Radin in Lugano, Switzerland. more…
Wolfarth, Christian
1960 born in Zurich/Switzerland.1976-79 diploma as a cook. more…
