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Otomo Yoshihide is a Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist. He mainly plays guitar, turntables, and electronics.
poire_z was an electronic free improvisation music group formed in 1998. Its members all have long careers in improvised music; critic Fred Grand of Avant calls poire_z a "post-AMM supergroup."
Sachiko Matsubara, better known by her stage name Sachiko M, is a Japanese musician. Her first solo album, Sine Wave Solo, was released in 1999. Working in collaboration with Ami Yoshida under the name Cosmos in 2002, Sachiko released the two disc album Astro Twin/Cosmos (2) which was awarded the Golden Nica prize in Ars Electronica, 2003. She released Good Morning Good Night, a collaborative album with Otomo Yoshihide and Toshimaru Nakamura, in 2004.
Erstwhile Records is an independent record label devoted to free improvisation, particularly the electroacoustic variety, contemporary, experimental composed music, and combinations of both. Erstwhile was founded by Jon Abbey in 1999, whose personality and tastes are closely identified with the label.
Ground Zero was a Japanese noise/improvisation band during the 1990s led by the guitarist and "turntablist" Otomo Yoshihide that had a large and rotating group of performers with two other regular performers.
Kato Hideki is a Japanese musician and composer. He was a seminal member of the Tokyo Noise music scene of the late 80s and early 90s, collaborating with Japanese experimental musicians such as Otomo Yoshihide, Tatsuya Yoshida, Makigami Koichi, and Yamatsuka Eye. He led his own bands, Player Piano and Bass Army. He was a member of the original Ground Zero with Otomo and Uemura Masahiro. In 1992 Kato moved to New York City where he still resides.
Michiyo Yagi, a Japanese musician who studied koto under Tadao Sawai, Kazue Sawai and Satomi Kurauchi, and graduated from the NHK Professional Training School for Traditional Musicians. Between 1989 and 1990, during her tenure as visiting professor of music at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, U.S.A., she premiered numerous modern compositions for koto and came under the influence of maverick American composers such as John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, and John Zorn. Her solo koto CD Shizuku was produced by Zorn and released on the Tzadik label in 1999. In 2001 she recorded "Yural" with her koto ensemble Paulownia Crush for the East Works label. Under the auspices of the Japan Foundation, Yagi toured Russia with this ensemble in the fall of 2004.
Carlos Zíngaro is a Portuguese violinist and electronic musician active in free improvisation.
Robert "Bob" Ostertag is an American musician, writer, and political activist based in San Francisco. He has published seven books, one feature film, a DVD, twenty-six albums, and collaborated with numerous musicians.
Alfred Harth, now known as Alfred 23 Harth or A23H, is a German multimedia artist, band leader, multi-instrumentalist musician, and composer who creatively mixes genres.
Sunfall Festival was an indie rock band based in Provo, Utah and fronted by Amy Gileadi who, with drummer Chris Peterson and guitarist Scott Wiley, formed the core of the band. The bass position has been less stable; first filled by George Brunt, who later moved to New York for law school. After their second bass player moved to California, Brunt put law school on hold and returned to Provo to play with the band. A keyboarder named Scott Johnson was later added, but is often referred to as Dig Dug because "his name is scott, but we had a scott."
Kazuo Imai is a Tokyo-based guitarist who plays in a rigorous and original free improvisation idiom. His music joins the rigour and texture of contemporary classical with the passion of free jazz. He has played with many Western and Japanese improvisers, including Lee Konitz, Barre Phillips, Arthur Doyle, Han Bennink, Irene Schweizer, Shuichi Chino, Tetsu Saitoh and Kazue Sawai. In addition to playing solo and in collaborations, Imai is also a member of the important collective improvisation group Marginal Consort. As well as guitar, Imai also plays viola da gamba.
Gino Robair is an American composer, improvisor, drummer, percussionist, and magazine editor. In his own music work, he plays prepared/modified percussion, analog synthesizer, ebow and prepared piano, theremin, and bowed objects. Robair resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
Cassiber were a German avant-rock group founded in 1982 by German composer and saxophonist Alfred Harth, German composer, music-theatre director and keyboardist Heiner Goebbels, English drummer Chris Cutler from Henry Cow and German guitarist Christoph Anders. They recorded five albums, toured extensively across Europe, Asia and North America, and disbanded in 1992.
The Duo Goebbels/Harth (1975–1988), combining German composer, music-theatre director and keyboardist Heiner Goebbels and German composer, multi-media artist and saxophonist Alfred 23 Harth became famous for its adaptation of and departure from European composers, especially Hanns Eisler, implemented in a provocatively fresh manner into structured free improvisations and deploying content from areas beyond music. The duo was nicknamed the “Eisler brothers” by music critic W.Liefland. They later also experimented with different genres and sound collages, including electronic devices. The duo played in many international festivals and concerts in cities as diverse as Tel Aviv, Zagreb, West and East Berlin and South America.
Phew is a Japanese singer and analogue electronics improviser working in the areas of experimental and avant-garde music.
Roger Turner is an English jazz percussionist. He plays the drumset, drums, and various percussion, and was brought up into the jazz and visual art cultures inhabited by his older brothers, playing drums from childhood in informal jazz contexts.
p53 was an experimental music group commissioned by English percussionist Chris Cutler to play at the 25th Frankfurt Jazz Festival in Germany in September 1994. Their performance was recorded and released by Recommended Records in 1996 on a live album entitled p53. The group reassembled in May 1997 to play at the Angelica International Festival of contemporary music in Bologna, Italy. In November 2006 an orchestral version with three soloists, Jon Rose, Zeena Parkins and Chris Cutler performed with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow, Scotland, which was recorded and broadcast by the BBC in March 2007. This version was performed again at the Opera House in Milan in 2014 with the Orchestra de Teatro Communale, with soloists Daan Vandewalle and Thomas Dimuzio.
Yoshisaburo "Sabu" Toyozumi is one of the small group of musical pioneers who comprised the first generation playing free improvisation music in Japan. As an improvising drummer he played and recorded with many of the key figures in Japanese free music including the two principal figures in the first generation, Masayuki Takayanagi and Kaoru Abe from the late 1960s onwards. He is one of a very few of this circle who are still alive and engaged in playing this music today.
Jim Denley is one of Australia's foremost improvisers of new music known for his improvisations on wind instruments and electronics. His radio work Collaborations, produced by ABC Radio National radio won the 1989 Prix Italia for radio production. He was a member of the group Machine for Making Sense with Rik Rue, Amanda Stewart, Chris Mann and Stevie Wishart and the medieval music group Sinfonye, led by Stevie Wishart, in which he played frame drums, including the square medieval pandeiro.
