Michael Renkel is a German concert guitarist who extends his instrument via live electronics and computer.
Michael Renkel was born in Celle / north Germany. He studied classical guitar in Hamburg. The main emphasis of his work is an interest in open methods of composition and he developed his style since the mid-eighties using preparations and advanced playing techniques. He is engaged in aleatoric composition, variable forms and structures as well as notation. Influences include John Cage, Morton Feldman, Hans Werner Henze, Helmut Lachenmann, Violeta Dinescu, Derek Bailey, Keith Rowe and old lute music. He was the first musician to transform the concert guitar by means of computer patches and live processing.
His guitar playing straddles tradition and the development of a personal language that includes extended playing techniques, the preparation of the acoustic guitar and quasi-theatrical performance. In a logical continuation he also extends the instrument via computer technology and live electronics. The acoustic guitar is modified in a way that blurs the delineation between acoustic preparation and electronic variance. In his works the instrumental material is altered in realtime using preparations, laptops, MAX/MSP, percussion instruments, a 16 channel sampler-sequencer, synthesizers and a vibraphone. Renkel also works with field recordings and composes works that experiment with genetic processes that expand the musical parameters to include concepts such as generation, mutation, hybridization and coding („Genetic Annotation“). He also writes video animated compositions in which the performers interpret a permanently changing score in a live situation („Nomos Alto“). His Compositions are published at Verlag Neue Musik / Berlin. He is intensively involved with jazz guitar and its implementation in his own concepts and projects. He also works as video artist and designs sound installations. Since 2015 he has been increasingly involved with sampler and sequencer technology, synthesizers, as well as the inclusion of more rhythmic structures and "beats" in his music. International concert activity and cooperations among others with: Phil Minton, Sven-Åke Johansson, Burkhard Beins, Axel Dörner, Ignaz Schick, Robin Hayward, Andrea Neumann, Neumann, Magda Mayas, Sabine Vogel, Tobias Vethake.
Renkel lives and works in Berlin / Neukoelln since 1996.
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.
John Butcher is an English tenor and soprano saxophone player.
Hans Reichel was a German improvisational guitarist, experimental luthier, inventor, and type designer.
Cornelis William Hendrik Fuhler was a Dutch/Romani 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.
Burkhard Beins is a German composer/performer who works with percussion, selected objects and electronics.
Rüdiger Oppermann is a German harpist and experimental musician. He specializes in the Celtic harp, which he began playing in 1973. His instrument, a custom-made clàrsach, has 38 gold-plated bronze strings and a special mechanism that allows him to bend notes in a manner akin to blues musicians; a style that he often adopts in his improvisations. He has also developed electro-acoustic instruments.
Åke Parmerud is a Swedish composer, musician, and multimedia artist noted for his acoustic and electronic works, which have been performed mostly in Europe, Mexico, and Canada. He is also noted for the design of stage and acoustics as well as interactive media and software. He has received recognition for his work from a number of festivals in Europe and has won two Swedish Grammis awards. He has been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music since 1998.
Aleksander Kolkowski is a British musician and composer whose work combines instruments and machines from the pioneering era of sound recording and reproduction to make live mechanical-acoustic music. He lives and works in London, England.
E.M.T. (1972–1975) were an international experimental and free improvising music group with German multi-instrumentalist Alfred Harth, Swedish drummer and composer Sven-Åke Johansson, Belgian keyboarder and artist Nicole Van den Plas and guests.
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.
Iris ter Schiphorst is a German composer and musician.
Rhodri Davies is a harp player working within the field of free improvisation. He was one of the most prominent members of the London reductionist school of improvised music that was active in the late 1990s and early 2000s and which has been described as being "extremely influential over the last decade".
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 pioneer 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, exploring the intersection between electronic and acoustic fields. The label released two seminal compilation recordings for the Austrian group of artists known as klingt.org, who work in the fields of electroacoustic, experimental music, as well as the free improvisation scene in Berlin's Echtzeitmusik. In 2023, the label underwent a rebranding to concentrate solely on Techno music.
Jonas Kocher is a musician and composer born in Nyon (Switzerland) in 1977. He has been based in Biel/Bienne since the late 1990s.
Axel Dörner is a German trumpeter, pianist, and composer.
Karl Ottomar Treibmann was a German composer and music educator. From 1981 until his retirement in 2001, he was professor of music theory and Tonsatz at the Leipzig University. He was one of the representatives of modernity in the German Democratic Republic, whose great major works can be found in the areas of opera, symphony and chamber music.
Friedrich Schenker was a German avant-garde composer and trombone player.
Andrea Neumann is a German performing musician and composer. Andrea Neumann plays the "indoor piano", a modified piano of her own design.
Mark Wastell is an English free improvisation musician who plays cello, double bass, electronics, tam tam and percussion. He performs solo and in various group and collaborative situations, notably IST and The Sealed Knot.