Rahsaan Roland Kirk, known earlier in his career simply as Roland Kirk, was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played tenor saxophone, flute, and many other instruments. He was renowned for his onstage vitality, during which virtuoso improvisation was accompanied by comic banter, political ranting, and the ability to play several instruments simultaneously.
Laurie Spiegel is an American composer. She has worked at Bell Laboratories, in computer graphics, and is known primarily for her electronic-music compositions and her algorithmic composition software Music Mouse. She also plays the guitar and lute.
Elliott Sharp is an American contemporary classical composer, multi-instrumentalist, and performer.
Gert-Jan Prins is a Dutch musician active in free improvisation.
Steve J. Morse is an American guitarist, best known as the founder of the Dixie Dregs and as the lead guitarist of Deep Purple from 1994 to 2022. Morse has also enjoyed a successful solo career and was briefly a member of the group Kansas in the mid-1980s. Most recently, Morse became a member of the supergroup Flying Colors.
Andreas Paolo Perger is a contemporary Austrian guitarist, improviser, and composer of German-Polish and Austrian-Italian descent. His music, autobiographical in nature, draws from variety of traditional and contemporary influences, such as contemporary jazz, new music, improvised music, and electronic music. Perger uses a variable and open concept of guitar playing, improvising, and composing. He plays the 5.1 Surround Guitar and the classical concert guitar.
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.
Tim Perkis is an experimental musician and writer who works with live electronic and computer sound.
The Nihilist Spasm Band (NSB) is a Canadian noise band formed in 1965 in London, Ontario. The band was founded by Hugh McIntyre, John Clement, John Boyle, Bill Exley, Murray Favro, Archie Leitch, Art Pratten, and Greg Curnoe. Leitch has since retired, Curnoe was killed in a bicycle accident in 1992, and McIntyre died of heart failure in 2004. The band members are mostly local artists. They were one of the artists named on the Nurse with Wound list
The Honeydogs is a band from Saint Paul, Minnesota that opened at First Avenue in 1994.
Polara is an American alternative rock band formed in 1994 by Ed Ackerson, a musician and producer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. The band was considered one of the most prominent and creative groups to emerge from Minneapolis in the 1990s. Billboard writer Deborah Russell called Ackerson and Polara the front of "the emergence of a new local scene" more interested in pop music and postpunk than the punk rock of bands like Hüsker Dü and The Replacements.
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.
Nmperign is an experimental improvisational jazz group formed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1998.
Metal Machine Trio was a group founded in 2008 by Lou Reed, Ulrich Krieger and Sarth Calhoun. The group played free improvised music, touching on various genres from free rock, free jazz, minimal music, noise music, electronica, to ambient music. The group rehearsed to test ideas, but all performances were improvised.
Carol Edith Barnett is an American composer. She was born in Dubuque, Iowa, and studied at the University of Minnesota with Dominick Argento and Paul Fetler (composition), Bernard Weiser (piano) and Emil J. Niosi (flute). She graduated with a bachelor's degree in music theory and composition in 1972 and a masters in theory and composition in 1976.
Richard Festinger is an American composer of contemporary classical music, pianist and educator.
Chris Strouth is an American, Minneapolis-based musician, producer, writer and filmmaker who has been active since 1986, most notably as the founder and organizer of 1990s/2000s electronica collective Future Perfect Sound System, and most recently as the bandleader and composer for experimental/electronic band Paris 1919. His behind-the-scenes production work includes Indianapolis multimedia artist Stuart Hyatt's Grammy-nominated album The Clouds. Strouth also gained national attention in 2009 when he received a life-saving kidney transplant from a donor who connected with him on Twitter, which is believed to be the first such transplant arranged entirely through social networking.
Ed Ackerson was an American musician and producer from Minneapolis. He produced or engineered dozens of records including works by prominent artists such as The Jayhawks, The Replacements, Motion City Soundtrack, Soul Asylum, Golden Smog, Dave Davies of The Kinks, Wesley Stace, Mason Jennings, Mark Mallman, John Strohm, Brian Setzer, Lizzo, Pete Yorn, The Wallflowers, Rhett Miller of The Old 97s, Jeremy Messersmith, and Juliana Hatfield. He owned a recording studio in Minneapolis, Flowers, and co-founded the Susstones record label. Ackerson led several notable Twin Cities pop/rock bands including Polara and The 27 Various, and released several solo records under his own name. He was also a prolific producer of albums by Twin Cities bands, and was regarded as one of the linchpins of the Minnesota music scene.
haloblack are an American industrial rock group formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The original incarnation consisted solely of Bryan Barton until Bill Morrisette and Damien Ray joined. Their style of industrial rock combined elements of electro, glitch, trip hop and metal music. They have been on tour with other industrial outfits including 16volt, Bile, Chemlab and Cop Shoot Cop and in addition supported Marilyn Manson. The band released three albums: Tension Filter and funkyhell for Fifth Colvmn Records and Throb for Armalyte Industries/The Sick City.