John Edwards

John Edwards grew up in London and started experimenting with the bass guitar before he switched in his twenties to play double bass. He is deeply rooted in the creative free jazz and improvisation genre. Since the 80ties he is as soloist and in many groups and ensembles in Europe active and became one of the most renowned bass players. He played/plays regular for example with Peter Brötzmann, Joe Mc Phee, Phil Minton, Maggie Nichols, Evan Parker, Roscoe Michtell, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Mark Sanders, Caroline Kraabel, John Butcher, Pat Thomas, Irène Schweizer, Hans Koch, Florian Stoffner, Gabriele Mitelli,  John Dikeman.

"I think John Edwards is absolutely remarkable: there’s never been anything like him before, anywhere in jazz." - Richard Williams, The Blue Moment

Caroline Kraabel

Caroline Kraabel is a London-based improviser.

In 2022 Kraabel brought together a large improvising group made up of all sorts of women, non-binary, and transgender improvisers: ONe_Orchestra New.
https://oneorchestranew.com/

Other active groups include:
Transitions Trio (with Charlotte Hug and Maggie Nicols); Fit To Burst, a song-based trio with Sarah Washington and John Edwards (https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/album/fit-to-burst); a duo with Pat Thomas (on piano); the Poetry Quintet with Rowland Sutherland, John Edwards and Sofia Vaisman-Maturana, which incorporates live poetry from guest poets, including Moor Mother.

Kraabel has performed and recorded with many other excellent improvisers, including Robert Wyatt, Louis Moholo, Cleveland Watkiss, Hyelim Kim, Susan Alcorn, Veryan Weston, Mariá Portugal, Neil Metcalfe, Mark Sanders, Shima Kobayashi, and Chris Corsano.

Kraabel’s solo saxophone improvisations while walking in London and elsewhere with her infant child/ren in their pushcair were broadcast weekly 2002-2006 on Resonance 104.4 FM as Taking a Life for a Walk and more recently (without children) as Going Outside. Other radio work includes a series of interviews with improvisers in many media (music, dance, visual art, politics, activism), Why is Improvising Important.
Improvisers and Improvisation, made with John Edwards, is a 22-hour radio piece including music, noise, electronics, live performance and new interviews with improvisers; broadcast as part of 2022’s Radio Art Zone: https://radioart.zone/saturday-10-september

Some Kraabel compositions:
Performances for Large Saxophone Ensemble 1, 2, 3 and 4, for 21-piece spatial saxophone/voice ensemble; Get Used To Balancing, a suite of pieces for alto sax, percussion and two flutes; Now We Are One Two, a 45-minute solo performance; Recording The Other, for soprano, cello, flute, piano and four recording devices; LAST 1, 2 and 3 for pre-recorded voice (Robert Wyatt) and large ensemble; many songs; numerous pieces for large improvising ensembles in London and around the world, including Une note n’écoutant qu’elle-même and Missing.

Kraabel’s 40-minute soundfilm about lockdown London (London 26 and 28 March 2020: imitation: inversion, https://vimeo.com/505430655) received its avant-première at Café Oto in 2021, is available on the Jazzed app, and won the 2021 Ivor Novello Award for Sound Art Composer.

Kraabel conducted, devised pieces for, and played with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO) from 1998-2022, and organised their 20th anniversary celebrations, which featured celebrated LIO members from throughout the group’s history.

http://www.masskraabel.com/
https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/
https://oneorchestranew.com/
https://oneorchestranew.bandcamp.com/releases
https://lonelyimpulsecollective.bandcamp.com/
https://jazzed.com/

Photo by Korrigan

Zhuyang Liu

Guzheng musician, trans-media artist, producer who plays nylon- and steel-strung Guzheng, multi-tone Guzheng, and other plucked string instruments, including Xuan Qin, Duxian Qin, Koto, and more. Their multidisciplinary work spans sound, writing, spoken word, and cross-media performances. They were awarded prizes for both solo and ensemble performances at the China-Japan-Korea International Guzheng Conference in 2013.

With a background rooted in diverse cultural and artistic fields, Zhuyang explores and fuses ethnic and contemporary soundscapes. They utilize found materials to create unconventional instruments and electronics, improvising with complex, fictional rhythms that evoke a broad, immersive sonic landscape. As a researcher, Zhuyang mainly focus on sound politics, forensics in sound ecology, musicology and Instruments. Writing includes ‘The Sonic Arsenal of Alternative Instruments: An ‘Unconventional Warfare’ in Sound, Noise, and Conflict.’

Zhuyang has collaborated across diverse fields and disciplines. They have composed scores and designed sound for numerous acclaimed independent films and stage works, sound direction for fashion collections, audio engineering and recording for Triple-A video games, designing acoustic systems and sound environments. They are the film producer of the album ‘Music in the realm of Fireflies’（World Music Awards）.  In queer film ‘Run! Dorothy Run!’ and ‘Fox and Women’ by Jinghao Shen, Zhuyang’s compositions integrate Chinese Xiqu, Peking Opera, folk songs, Asian instruments, and local field recordings with contemporary scopes held in the collection of CAFA art museum 

Zhuyang’s UK and China-based projects include the experimental collective Lao San Yang 老三样  explores the expressive potential of experimental art, global music, theatre opera, free improvisation, cross-media narratives, electronic music, noise, installations, and ethnic instruments in a contemporary context. Water Dragon Temple is a fully improvised album, Duo with Paul Chenour on flutes released in 2023. EP ‘Slip animals’ (2023) is an electronic-acoustic fusion solo album produced and composed by Zhuyang. ‘’Other projects include the duo Epic Life Doggerel Verse and the hybrid electronic project system ZHUYANGER 撞.

Recent performances have taken place such as British Museum, Hundred Years Gallery / Frappant e.V. Gallery Hamburg/ Pushkin House/ Copeland Gallery /JZ Jazz Club, Hangzhou/ SYSTEM , Shanghai 

www.zhuyanger.com  
https://zhuyanger.bandcamp.com
https://www.redgoldmusic.com/copy-of-a-priori

PHOTO CREDIT: Zhuyang Liu

Phil Minton

For a long time now Phil Minton has been working as a improvising singer, solo and in groups and situations at various locations all over the place, deserts, quarries, concert halls, pubs, holes, dodgy clubs, containers, up trees, in prisons, on mountains, in churches, under bridges and cafe oto etc.

Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s - Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980′s.

For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as an improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians, including tours with American singer Audrey Chen - with whom he has sang far and wide in the last ten years.

Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.