Stefan Van Eycken (1975) studied musicology at the K.U.Leuven and attended summer courses in English literature at the University of Edinburgh and composition in Avignong (with Marco Stroppa). In 1997, he moved back to Edinburgh to undertake a PhD on the work of Brian Ferneyhough at the Faculty of Music. He also taught analysis and aesthetics of contemporary music there. In October 2000, he moved to Tokyo on a one-year Japan Foundation Fellowship, affiliated to the Kunitachi College of Music, to work on a book dealing with the music of the most prominent Japanese contemporary composers. He continues to reside in Tokyo, where he also has close working relationships with exponents of the improvised music and traditional music (gagaku a.o.) scene, but also spends time in Belgium, where he holds a Fellowship with the Ictus ensemble.

Tom Pauwels (Bornem, Belgium, 1974) studied classical guitar in Bornem, Brussels, Köln and Münster with Dirk De Hertogh, Albert Sundermann, Hubert Käppel and Reinbert Evers respectively.In 1995, during his studies at the Brussels Conservatory, he was involved in the founding of Black Jackets Company, a Brussels collective of composers and performers. Ever since these early experiments he has been active in the field of contemporary music, both on classical and electric guitar.From 1999 until 2001 he was a regular member of Champ D’Action, the Antwerp-based ensemble for experimental music. Since 2002 he has worked as a performer and co-artistic advisor for the new music ensemble ICTUS (Brussels). Project-wise, he performs with Champ D’Action, the Anglo-Belgian octet Plus-Minus and ‘Elastic 3′, a trio with Eva Reiter and Paolo Pachini.

‘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.

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.