A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings. Its invention is usually traced to John Cage's dance music for Bacchanale (1940), created for a performance in a Seattle venue that lacked sufficient space for a percussion ensemble. Cage has cited Henry Cowell as an inspiration for developing piano extended techniques, involving strings within a piano being manipulated instead of the keyboard. Typical of Cage's practice as summed up in the Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48) is that each key of the piano has its own characteristic timbre, and that the original pitch of the string will not necessarily be recognizable. Further variety is available with use of the una corda pedal.
Han Bennink is a Dutch drummer and percussionist. On occasion his recordings have featured him playing soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, trombone, violin, banjo and piano.
Misha Mengelberg was a Dutch jazz pianist and composer. A prominent figure in post-WWII European Jazz, Mengelberg is known for his forays into free improvisation, for bringing humor into his music, and as a leading interpreter of songs by fellow pianists Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols.
M.I.M.E.O. is an experimental electroacoustic free improvisation group formed in 1997 on the initiative of several independent concert promoters in Europe. The abbreviation stands for "Music In Movement Electronic Orchestra". They have issued recordings on Erstwhile Records, Cathnor, Perdition Plastics, Grob, and other labels.
Kevin Drumm is an experimental musician based in Chicago, United States.
Timothy "Tim" George Hodgkinson is an English experimental music composer and performer, principally on reeds, lap steel guitar, and keyboards. He first became known as one of the core members of the British avant-rock group Henry Cow, which he formed with Fred Frith in 1968. After the demise of Henry Cow, he participated in numerous bands and projects, eventually concentrating on composing contemporary music and performing as an improviser.
John Tilbury is a British pianist. He is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's music, and since 1980 has been a member of the free improvisation group AMM.
Tim Perkis is an experimental musician and writer who works with live electronic and computer sound.
STEIM was a center for research and development of new musical instruments in the electronic performing arts, located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Beginning in the 1970's, STEIM became known as a pioneering center for electronic music, where the specific context of electronic music was always strongly related to the physical and direct actions of a musician. In this tradition, STEIM supported artists in residence such as composers and performers, but also multimedia and video artists, helping them to develop setups which allowed for bespoke improvisation and performance with individually designed technology.
Mats Olof Gustafsson is a Swedish free jazz saxophone player.
Fantastique was a pop music duo from the Netherlands in 1981-1983, consisting of Dick Van Dam and Astrid Leuwener. Their singles at the time, "Mama Told Me", "Costa Blanca", "Maria No Mas", "Your Hand In My Hand" and "Everybody Loves The Sunshine", sold successfully worldwide. They released one album, Fantastique in 1982. All of their songs were produced and written by Catapult musicians Aart Mol, Cees Bergman, Elmer Veerhoff, Erwin van Prehn and Geertjan Hessing, and recorded at Cat Music.
Cornelis William Hendrik Fuhler was a Dutch/Australian improvisor, composer, and instrument builder associated with free jazz, experimental music and acoustic ecology. He played piano by manipulating sound with electromagnetic string stimulators like Ebows and motorized actuators. Fuhler also performed on guitar, turntables and synthesizer. He invented the keyolin, a combination of keyboard and violin.
Marcus Schmickler is a German composer, musician, and producer. He is also known under the pseudonym Pluramon.
Farmers Manual is an electronic music and visual art group, founded in Vienna in the beginning of the 1990s. The core members of the collective are Mathias Gmachl, Stefan Possert, Oswald Berthold, Gert Brantner, and Nik Gaffney. Part of the very lively Viennese electronic music scene of the 1990s, Farmers Manual were successfully crossing the boundaries between electronic music, live visuals, experimental graphics, and web design for Zeta Industries.
Anne La Berge is a flutist, composer and improviser, currently residing in Amsterdam. Her performances bring together a virtuosic command of her instrument, use of microtonal textures and melodies, and an array of percussive flute effects, all combined with electronic processing. These have distinguished her as “a pioneer in a wide array of new techniques”. Many of her compositions involve her own participation, though she has produced works intended solely for other performers, usually involving guided improvisation and electronics. She is known for her use of texts that form part of her compositions and improvisations. In addition to creating her own work, she regularly performs in other artists’ projects in a range of settings from modern chamber music to improvised electronic music.
Instant Composers Pool (ICP) is an independent Dutch jazz and improvised music label and orchestra. Founded in 1967, the label takes its name from the concept that improvisation is "instant composition". The ICP label has published more than 50 releases to date, with most of its releases featuring the ICP Orchestra and its members.
Mikroton Recordings is an independent record label for experimental electronic music, founded by Kurt Liedwart and based in Biel, Switzerland. Mikroton works with a wide range of musicians working in the field of electronic music like sound artist Günter Müller, laptop improviser Christof Kurzmann, electronic musician Jason Kahn and pioneer of tabletop guitar Keith Rowe, turntablists Dieb13 and eRikm, sound artists Stephen Vitiello, Thomas Lehn, Marcus Schmickler, homemade electronics performer Norbert Möslang, guitarist Burkhard Stangl, composers of electroacoustic music Jérôme Noetinger, Angélica Castelló and others. It usually publishes drone, ambient, electronic, experimental music and works with mixed electronic and acoustic instrumentation, trying to research a land between electronic and acoustic fields. The label released two seminal compilation recordings for Austrian group of artists known as klingt.org, who work in the fields of electroacoustic, experimental music and free improvisation, and Echtzeitmusik scene from Berlin. In 2023 the label was rebranded as a label only for Techno music.
Bas van Koolwijk is a Dutch video and audio artist who lives and works in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He has studied painting and received the degree from the Hogeschool door de Kunsten Utrecht. Since 1998, he started using video for installation, then he found out that he was interested more in the characteristics of the images and sounds. He thought these interference and noises seem to have their own visual language. With this thought, he connected back to his painting's formalistic approach that he could experiment and composite with these abstract elements of image and sound, also abandoned the narrative stories.
