Derek Bailey was an English avant-garde guitarist and an important figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey abandoned conventional performance techniques found in jazz, exploring atonality, noise, and whatever unusual sounds he could produce with the guitar. Much of his work was released on his own label Incus Records. In addition to solo work, Bailey collaborated frequently with other musicians and recorded with collectives such as Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Company.
George Lowen Coxhill known professionally as Lol Coxhill, was an English free improvising saxophonist. He played soprano and sopranino saxophone.
Steve Beresford is a British musician who graduated from the University of York He has played a variety of instruments, including piano, electronics, trumpet, euphonium, bass guitar and a wide variety of toy instruments, such as the toy piano. He has also played a wide range of music. He is probably best known for free improvisation, but has also written music for film and television and has been involved with a number of pop music groups.
Eugene Chadbourne is an American banjoist, guitarist and music critic.
Thomas Henry Corra, better known as Tom Cora, was an American cellist and composer, best known for his improvisational performances in the field of experimental jazz and rock. He recorded with John Zorn, Butch Morris, and the Ex, and was a member of Curlew, Third Person and Skeleton Crew.
Henry Kaiser is an American guitarist and composer, known as an idiosyncratic soloist, a sideman, an ethnomusicologist, and a film score composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. He is considered a member of the "second generation" of American free improvisers. He is married to Canadian artist Brandy Gale. He is the son of Henry J. Kaiser Jr. and the grandson of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser.
Paul Lovens is a German musician. He plays drums, percussion, singing saw, and cymbals. He has performed with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra and Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra.
Tim Perkis is an experimental musician and writer who works with live electronic and computer sound.
Company was a collection of free improvising musicians. The concept was devised by guitarist Derek Bailey, in order to create challenging and artistically stimulating combinations of players, who might not otherwise have had an opportunity to work together.
Polly Bradfield is an American violinist from the New York City free improvisation scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her closest musical associates were Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn. She also played on records by William Parker and Frank Lowe. Her music career ended when she moved to California sometime in the 1980s. Her last appearance on record was on Zorn's The Big Gundown in 1986.
Toshinori Kondo was a Japanese avant-garde jazz and jazz fusion trumpeter.
Lacrosse is a double album by John Zorn. It is made up of different takes of his early game piece, "Lacrosse". The first disc is from WKCR in June 1978 where Mark Abbott, Polly Bradfield, Eugene Chadbourne, and LaDonna Smith and Zorn recorded six different takes. Takes 3, 4 and 6 were originally released on the Parachute Records double LP School (1978). The second disc is the original recording of "Lacrosse" which was made by Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, Bruce Ackley, and Zorn in San Francisco, California in June 1977.
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.
Tim R. Reed, known by the stage name Reverend Fred Lane, is an American, Tuscaloosa, Alabama-born singer, songwriter, and visual artist, who released two relatively obscure yet critically appreciated albums in the 1970s on Say Day Bew Records, later re-released in the 1980s on the Shimmy Disc label. These albums explored various traditional genres of American music such as jazz, country, and big-band swing, but infused with improvisational experimentations and Dadaist free-associative lyrics.
Davey J. Williams was an American free improvisation and avant-garde music guitarist. In addition to his solo work, he was noted for his membership in Curlew and his collaborations with LaDonna Smith.
The Parachute Years: 1977–1981 is a compilation album 7-CD box set by John Zorn. It features recordings of Zorn's game pieces originally released as self-produced albums on the Parachute label as well as previously unreleased performances. All of the discs in this box set have been subsequently given their own releases on Zorn's Tzadik label.
Mary Oliver is an American performer on violin, viola, and Hardanger fiddle, in the areas of New Music, free improvisation, and avant-garde jazz.
Wally Shoup is an American jazz alto saxophonist and painter. Based in Seattle, Washington since 1985, Shoup is a mainstay of that city's improvised music scene. Seattle Metropolitan named him one of the 50 most influential musicians in that city's history.
Frank Pahl is a Michigan-based musician/composer, working in several styles including "toy pop", or music made with toys. He works primarily in Wyandotte and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and has exhibited his work in Canada, Europe and Japan, as well as the United States.
Jill Burton is an American improviser, extended vocalist, dancer, performance artist and energy worker. Noted as one of the great foundation improvisors of America, she is also known for incorporating spiritual healing with improvised performance. Active in the American improv scene since the early 1970s, she has lived and worked all over the country, including a ten-year stint in the 1980s as part of the downtown East Village experimental arts community, and six years in Sitka, Alaska, where she worked with Tlingit storytellers providing musical accompaniment for their healing stories. Burton is unusual for a musician in that her work is ephemeral, in-the-moment, and therefore recordings of her work are rare. She has collaborated with many notable experimental musicians and dancers, including LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, Jane Scarpantoni, Judy Dunaway, David First, Rain Worthington, Gino Robair, Jack Wright, and Scott Walton.
