Results for "Free improvisation"

Chris Iemulo

Born: August 29, 1978

Chris Iemulo is a musician and guitarist. Throughout his career, he has lived and worked in major cultural hubs including Bologna, Berlin, Turin, Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rome, participating in a wide array of musical projects united by a core focus on improvisation and musicological research. After graduating from the University of Bologna (DAMS), he earned a Master’s degree in Artistic Research from the Royal Conservatoire The Hague (Netherlands) in 2013. His experimental master's thesis explored the aesthetics of musical improvisation through the lens of post-structuralist philosophy

Boris Acosta-Jaramillo

Born: November 17, 1978

Boris Acosta-Jaramillo is a pianist, composer, producer, improviser, and educator whose work moves across jazz, contemporary composition, and improvised music. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, he holds a Ph.D. in Music from the University of California San Diego, where his work brought together performance, composition, and research into improvisation and musical interaction. Acosta-Jaramillo has performed internationally and collaborated with artists including Yang Haisong, Annie Cheng, Terell Stafford, Dick Oatts, Antony Burr, and Mark Dresser. His career also includes more than two decades as an educator, including serving as a jazz studies professor at Nanjing University of the Arts

Mitch Protheroe

Born: May 25, 1993

Mitch Protheroe is an independent musician, composer, and visual artist exploring the intersections of progressive jazz, experimental rock, modern composition, and computer music. His work embraces intricate rhythmic structures, unconventional arrangements, and a through-composed approach to songwriting, favoring continuous development and unexpected transitions over conventional repetition.

Working independently, Protheroe combines programmed and computer-generated musical elements with recorded performances to create compositions that blur the boundaries between jazz, progressive music, and experimental sound. His music is driven by an interest in rhythmic complexity, detailed percussion, and the possibilities of constructing cohesive musical narratives from densely layered ideas.

Mario Mattia

Mario Mattia is an improvisational pianist and graduate of the New England Conservatory whose work is rooted in spontaneity, deep listening and emotional presence. Drawing on a lifetime immersed in classical, jazz, progressive rock, non-tonal modernism and ambient traditions, his musical language reflects a wide constellation of influences - from Johann Sebastian Bach and Béla Bartók to Ella Fitzgerald and Keith Jarrett, and from King Crimson to Brian Eno. These diverse lineages converge in a practice that is entirely unplanned and shaped in real time.

For more than two decades, Mattia has devoted himself to refining a uniquely personal improvisational voice: intimate, exploratory and unconcerned with the bounds of genre. He begins each performance without predetermined themes, structures or titles. Each piece unfolds spontaneously, guided by intuition, emotional presence and attentive listening. Improvisation, for Mattia, is not simply performance. It is an active engagement with the present moment, an exercise in creating meaning, structure and expression in real time.

Lin Hsiao-Feng

Lin Hsiao-Feng is a Taiwanese improvising flutist, curator, and Music Director of Lin’s Culture in Taipei. His work bridges Taiwanese and multi-ethnic flute traditions, free improvisation, and experimental sound, exploring how traditional wind instruments can enter contemporary performance through cross-cultural collaboration. He performs on dizi, xiao, the Indigenous Paiwan nose flute, and other traditional wind instruments, often combining them with piano, electronics, and real-time improvisation. His artistic practice focuses on expanding the contemporary possibilities of flute traditions while remaining attentive to their cultural histories

Stefan Muenzer

Born: October 30

My path as a musician did not follow the conventional trajectory expected today. I do not come from a musical family, nor do I hold a prestigious degree in jazz or composition. Although I studied jazz, piano, contemporary piano music, and free improvisation at renowned conservatories in Hamburg (Germany), Vienna (Austria), and Leipzig (Germany), I ultimately discontinued those studies. Instead, I pursued an academic career in psychology; today I am a professor of psychology at the University of Mannheim. As fas as my piano music is concerned, I regard myself as a dropout from music conservatory and as an autodidact as a composer and improviser.

Emmanuel Cremer

Born: March 1, 1975

Emmanuel Cremer is a French cellist, composer, improviser and educator based in Brussels.

For more than two decades, he has developed a personal artistic language at the crossroads of jazz, free improvisation, contemporary music and interdisciplinary performance. His work explores the cello as a complete sound world, moving between melody, rhythm, texture and spontaneous composition.

Influenced by artists such as John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Jimi Hendrix, Bill Frisell, John Zorn and Barre Phillips, Cremer has shaped an approach rooted in deep listening, exploration and the dialogue between structure and improvisation.

Haruna Fukazawa

Born: April 14

Haruna Fukazawa is a New York-based flutist, improviser, composer and a voting member of the Recording Academy, originally from Tokyo, Japan, Haruna blends classical training with a bold, joyful improvisational style deeply inspired by her mentor, Frank Wess.
Haruna is a 2026 GRAMMY® Nominee in Best Contemporary Instrumental Album for “SHAYAN” by Charu Suri.

​Haruna studied classical music at Musashino Academia Musicae before setting her sights on New York City, where she began studying with Frank Wess

David Voelkl

Born: September 9, 1968

Started playing el. bass in 1987. Played in rock/metal bands. Toured the U.S. several times in various bands primarily on the west coast while living in Arizona. Currently living in upstate NY and performing in NPV.

NPV formed in Dec 2006.

Jazz/Noise.

spontaneous compositions and soundscapes.

Greg Newton: alto/tenor sax, clarinet, percussion.

Larry Patti: synth, electronics.

David Voelkl: el. bass [prepared], fx.

Irene Aranda

Born: September 2, 1980

IRENE ARANDA

Pianist, composer.

Born in Jaén ( Andalucía / Spain ) and Berlin-based, started to play piano at age seven. Classical trained and selftaught in jazz and free improvisation, Aranda is defined by the critics as original, astonishing and freed from stereotypes.

Irene Aranda has played with Don Malfon, Brandon López, Ami Yamasaki, Samuel Blasser, Chuck Roth, Elisabeth Coudoux, Maria Reich, Agustí Fernández, Joanna Mattrey, Ernesto Rodrigues, Johannes Nästestjö, and so on.