Esther Venrooy (°1974, Rosmalen, The Netherlands) is a composer and sound artist working in the field of electronic music. After completing studies in classical saxophone, Venrooy attended the European Dance Development Center (Arnhem) as a composer in residence, where she began employing electronic and digital techniques in pieces aimed at choreography and stage performance. Gradually her music evolved into an independent means of expression and she continued her work with electronica at the IPEM (Institute for Psycho-acoustics and Electronic Music) in Ghent, Belgium where she still resides. At this time she started utilizing film editing paradigms as a foundation for her personal composition methods. Her works range from purely electronic composed music to improvised combinations of electronica with traditional instrumentation such as piano, flute and satsuma-biwa. She has created site-specific works as well as multimedia performances and installations. Much of her music has been released on CD or vinyl and has received good critical acclaim. Esther Venrooy has performed her music extensively for audiences in cities such as Antwerp, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Madrid, Hamburg, Cologne Washington DC and The Hague. Upcoming concert destinations include New York, Dusseldorf, Berlin and Rotterdam. Apart from her artistic activities, Venrooy is a lecturer on 20th century music and experimental arts at the Ghent school of fine arts, where she also runs the audio workshop. She also presides the board of (k-raa-k)3 organization. “

Born 1968 in Freiburg, grew up in Hamburg. Piano lessons since 1974. Studied classical piano at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin and Jazz Piano with Aki Takase. Has been active primarily as musician and composer in the fields of new music and experimental music since 1994. Has co-organized “Labor Sonor,” a series for experimental music, film and performance in Berlin since 2000.Her exploration of the piano for new sound possibilities has led her to reduce the instrument to its strings, its resonance board and the cast-iron frame. Playing this unmounted ‘leftover’ of a piano, with the help of electronics to amplify and manipulate the sound, she has developed several of her own playing techniques, sounds, and ways for preparing the instrument. For reasons of weight, a lighter special instrument was crafted in 2000 according to the measurements of the original heavier inside piano (piano builder, Bernd Bittmann, Berlin).She has engaged in intensive cooperations in the mixed border areas between komposition and improvisation, between electronic and hand-made music, with Berliner musicians, such as Annette Krebs, Axel Dörner, Ignaz Schick, Robin Hayward, Ana M. Rodriguez, Burkhard Beins and Sabine Ercklentz. Since 2002, her concentration has been focused on compositions which, through various means, exit the frame of performance as a thing based purely on the acoustic event. The following pieces accomplish this exit in various ways. “4 Rooms” (spatially): live-performed concert-installation; “Larry Peacock” (content-wise): the negotiation of gender identity, among other things; “4 Akteure” / 4 Actors (visually): focus on body language and gesture; “Klingende Körper” / Sounding Bodies (visually): miked bodies as musical material.Concert and festival performances in Europe (Austria, Switzerland, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Greece), in the USA, Canada, Argentina, Russia, Australia, and Japan.In 2008 she was a fellow at Villa Aurora in Los AngelesIn 2008 honorary mention by Prix Ars Electronica for “Videobrücke Berlin -Stockholm, a collaboration with Sabine ErcklentzDiscographyRotophormen Duet with Annette Krebs (Charhizma, Vienna)Barcelona series Trio with Axel Dörner and Sven Ake Johansson (Hat Hut records, Basel)ATON Duet with Toshimaru Nakamura (rossbien production, Italy)petit pale Duet with Ignaz Schick (Zarek, Berlin)Innenklavier Solo, 20 min. (A bruit secret, France)Phosphor Berlin Octet (Potlach, France)Lidingö Duet with Burkhard Beins (erstwhile records, New York)In case of fire take the stairs Trio with Sachiko M. und Kaffe Mathews (Improvised Music from Japan, Tokio)Berlin Strings Solo, 20 min. (absinthRecrods, Berlin)Oberflächenspannung / Surface Tension Duet with Sabine Ercklentz (Charhizma)Xing-Wu Solo in a compilation (Xing-Wu records, Malasyia )

Born in 1967 in Mönchengladbach, Sabine Ercklentz studied law at the FU in Berlin, then earned a degree in instrumental pedagogy from the Hochschule für Musik Hans Eisler, Berlin in 1999. Since 1998 she has been working as a musician and composer focusing on jazz and experimental music. Since 1997 Sabine Ercklentz has been developing sounds on the trumpet which border between normal trumpet tone and noise (extended sounds). Furthering the possibilities of extended sound techniques comes from the use of live-electronics and analog electronics remixed from an independent sound source. Since 2003 she has been developing further possibilities with the use of digital sound processing, and intensive work with Andrea Neumann bordering on composition and improvisation. Participation in concerts and festivals throughout Europe.

Julia Eckhardt is a viola player in the field of composed and improvised contemporary music. After her studies she worked in different, mostly contemporary, chamber music groups, and after this a couple of years in the National Orchestra of Belgium.

Since 1995 she is a founding member of and artistically responsible for Q-O2 workspace in Brussels, which was first an ensemble for contemporary experimental and inprovised music, and became in 2006 a workspace for experimental music and sound art. For q-o2 she initiated projects such as

‘muziekxtaalx4’, ‘de tijd is rond (for Brussels 2000)’, ‘doundo/recycling G’(together with Ludo Engels), ‘abstract adventures’(icw. Les Bains::Connective), ‘//2009//-what do you make of what I say’. Interdisciplinair collaboration has been self-evident in these projects.

She has been collaborating with composers such as Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Stevie Wishart, Jennifer Walshe, Wandelweiser-composers, Christian Wolff, Antony Coleman and many of the young generation.

She has played solo work by among others György Kurtag, John Cage, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Anne Wellmer, Radu Malfatti.

After having started to play free improvisation in 2001 she has collaborated with musicians such as Andrea Neumann, Burkhard Beins, Rhodri Davies, Keith Rowe, Arnaud Jacobs, Lucio Capece, Taku Sugimoto, Robin Hayward.

She is part of the group Incidental Music which is specialised in conceptual music and operates near to the Wandelweiser composers group, together with Manfred Werder, Normisa Pereira da Silva, Angharad Davies and Stefan Thut.

She grew up in Berlin and lives and works in Brussels.

Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.  Studied photo- and cinematography, and worked as a photographer, editor and producer for various photo-, film-, video- and theaterproductions.

Her films, video’s and installations explore the impact of detailed changes in moment, movement, matter, light and perception.

“With links to the tradition of structural film making, the work by the Brussels based film-and videomaker, Els van Riel, explores the basic elements for cinema -time and light- and develops a form for new esthetical pleasure, bypassing any symbolism and narratism. For van Riel the projector is a central figure in the cinematographical act of giving form to a screening, performance or installation. The mechanical image source becomes actively present as if it were a living object.”
(L’ART MÊME, April 2009)

‘The sounds I am interested in include those that we hear all the time but are normally considered flawed or redundant: twigs snapping in a burning fire, paper tearing, breathing, instrumental sounds that aren’t considered ‘beautiful’ in standard terms. I think these sounds have their own beauty in the way that pebbles on a beach or graffiti can have.’Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1974. She studied composition with John Maxwell Geddes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Kevin Volans in Dublin and graduated from Northwestern University, Chicago, with a doctoral degree in composition in June 2002. Her chief teachers at Northwestern were Amnon Wolman and Michael Pisaro. In 2003 Jennifer is a fellow of Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart and in 2004 she took up residence in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD artist-in-residence programme. Jennifer’s work has been performed throughout Europe, the U.S. and Canada by ensembles such as ensemble récherche, Ensemble Resonanz, Apartment House, ensemble Integrales, CrashEnsemble, Champ d’Action, Vamos ! and Q-02 among others. In addition to her activities as a composer, Jennifer frequently performs as a vocalist, specialising in extended techniques. Many of her recent compositions were commissioned for her voice in conjunction with other instruments (XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, here we are now, ná déan NÍL CEAD, NOW WASH YOUR HANDS and dirty white fields, for example).Jennifer is also active as an improviser, performing regularly with musicians in Chicago and Europe.

Stevie Wishart is a composer and performer who specialised in medieval as well as contemporary and electronic music, after studies composition and violin and a Ph.D. in musical iconography in medieval art. Her experience with contemporary and medieval music led to compositionsystems for acoustic as well as electronic media. In her projects improvisation- and multimedia-processes are often seen as links between medieval and contemporary artforms. She lives and works since 2000 in Brussels.

Chiyoko Szlavnics is a composer and saxophonist working both in Europe and Canada. After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1989, she was a member of Hemispheres Music Projects (1992-1997) and 40 fingers saxophone quartet (1994-1998), contributing several compositions to both ensembles.During that period, she studied composition with James Tenney in Toronto. Szlavnics’ works have been performed at numerous festivals and concerts by ensembles which include Arraymusic, Surplus (Éclat Festival, Stuttgart), Quartett Avance (Darmstadt), and New Music Concerts. Since receiving a year-long Fellowship Grant from the Akademie Schloß Solitude in 1997 (Juror: Christian Wolff), Szlavnics has been based in Berlin, where she continues to work with contemporary ensembles and musicians, with a particular focus on microtonality and just intonation.