Keith Rowe is an English free improvisation guitarist. Rowe is a founding member of AMM in the mid-1960s (though in 2004 he quit that group for the second time) and a founding member of M.I.M.E.O. He is trained as a visual artist and Rowe’s paintings–often reminiscent of Pop Art–have been featured on most of his own albums.After years of obscurity, Rowe has achieved a level of relative notoriety, and since the late 1990s has kept up a busy recording and touring schedule. He is seen as a godfather of electro-acoustic improvisation, and many of his recent recordings have been released by Erstwhile Records.

Axel Dörner studied piano and trumpet at the Musik-hochschule, Cologne. He workes in the fields of Improvised Music, New Music and Jazz. He has developed a totally unique style of trumpet playing based in part on unusual, often self-invented techniques. He has toured in Europe, USA, Australia, Japan and appeared on numerous CD and record releases.

Burkhard Beins (Lower Saxony, d 1964) lives in Berlin since 1995. As a composer/performer working in the fields of experimental music and sound art he is known for his definitive use of percussion in combination with selected objects. Furthermore he works with electronics, electro-acoustic instruments and devices . Since the late 1980′s he performs at internationally renowned venues and festivals throughout Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. He works solo, in collaboration with Keith Rowe, Sven-Åke Johansson, Chris Abrahams, Orm Finnendahl, John Tilbury, Charlemagne Palestine and is also a member of groups like Perlonex, Activity Center, Polwechsel, The Sealed Knot, Phosphor, Mensch Mensch Mensch, and Splitter Orchester. Meanwhile he has released more than 40 CDs and LPs. Burkhard Beins gives lectures and workshops, has published several articles on music theory, and is a co-editor of the book „Echtzeitmusik Berlin – Self-Defining a Scene“.

Tenor saxophone and self made electronic set player. Improviser and player in different projects interacting free improvisation and contemporary music composition techniques. He plays in the Avion Negro quintet since 1993, Hipereter quartet (two drums, two reeds) and in a duo electronics-reeds with Lucio Capece.He is also a recognized performer of improvised tenor saxophone solo concerts in Buenos Aires.He works since 1998 as a music teacher in kindergardens and schools with children between 3 and 8 years old.In the last years Sergio Merce has been studying the tenor saxophone by himself. Concentrating his work in developing his own extended techniques in the instrument(multiphonics,variety of tongue attacks, cicular breathing, etc).His self made electronic set is based on a portastudio, that he plays without tape. Using different kinds of objects (as needles) on the heads of the portastudio he makes sounds that are processed with a very simple effects and equalization set.

Musician born in Argentina based in Berlin since 2004. He plays bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, and Sruti Box.He plays mainly self composed and improvised music, focusing in the time experience and the perception experience as main subjects.He works time in the research of constructing no narrative music (no start- no ending- no developments), and perception working sound in it’s most granular characteristics and it´s extremes.

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 )

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.