Results for "Free improvisation"

Nathan Koci

Nathan Koci is a composer, performer, and music director working across a variety of stylers and disciplines, from theater to dance to improvised and experimental musics. As an accordionist, he has performed and recorded with Sam Sadigursky, Guy Klucevsek, South African artist William Kentridge, Maira Kalman, the Micheal Leonhart Orchestra, and the improvising chamber quartet The Hands Free (Caroline Shaw, Eleonore Oppenheimer, James Moore). 

As a seasoned music director, he has conducted Tony-award winning shows on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and internationally. Credits include Sufjan Stevens and Justin Peck’s Illinoise, Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown (1st National Tour), Daniel Fish’s reimagined Oklahoma! and Most Happy In Concert, and Ted Hearne’s The Source. 

Quinn Sternberg

Born: April 4, 1994

Bassist Quinn Sternberg is a new resident of Asheville, NC after spending seven years working as a full time musician in New Orleans. Quinn is originally from Bloomington, Indiana, where he began playing professionally as a teenager and quickly became a staple of the region’s music scene before graduating from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music with a degree in Jazz Studies. He plays both electric and acoustic bass in a wide variety of ensembles and styles. This versatility has made him an asset in collaborations with countless artists as a studio, touring, and free-lance bassist. Quinn’s musical approach relies upon providing functional and supportive bass lines, while still generating intense live energy and creative interaction. This individualistic style has made him a much sought after voice in the South, his native Midwest and beyond.

Zishi Liu

Born: October 11, 1991

Zishi Liu is a Boston-based saxophonist and music curator. He made history as the first Chinese artist to play at Boston’s famed Regattabar in collaboration with Blue Note Jazz Club in 2025. His work has been featured by WGBH, contributing to the broader narrative of Asian representation in jazz.

As a performer and composer, Zishi’s music seeks to create and resolve new tensions between familiar and foreign themes. The melancholic aspects of Coltrane's later work—which incorporates Eastern concepts of meditation and emptiness—serve as a departure point for his music.

Graeme Wilson

Graeme Wilson is a saxophonist whose playing features on over 30 albums including releases by his own Quartet, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, ACV, Ushaw Ensemble and Bill Wells. His writing for ensembles large and small, including six jazz works for John Warren’s Voice of the North Jazz Orchestra, has been performed at venues such as Sage, Gateshead and Festspielhaus Hellerau, Dresden. Recent work includes duo releases A Cast of Thousands with Raymond MacDonald and Shoes for Losers with Andy Champion; an album of songs based on Italo Calvino stories for new group Monsterosa featuring vocalist Rebecca Hollweg; and  a score commissioned by Hexham Jazz Festival for the silent film Die Bergkatze

Fie Schouten

Fie Schouten is a renowned Dutch clarinettist, known for her expertise in contemporary and improvised music, with a particular focus on the low clarinets. Based in Amsterdam, she is an active soloist and performs with various ensembles and collaborators. She has been a guest musician with the prestigious German Ensemble Musikfabrik for 15 years. Over the course of her career, more than 100 works have been composed specifically for her, which she has premiered in various formations.

Schouten is the Artistic Director of the "Basklarinet Festijn," a festival dedicated to the bass clarinet, which had it's first edition in 2014. She has released albums on labels such as Attacca, Trytone, Karnatic Lab Records, Kairos, and Relative Pitch Records.

Michiyo Yagi

Born: November 21

Michiyo Yagi studied koto under the late Tadao Sawai, Kazue SawaiandSatomi Kurauchi, andgraduated from the NHK Professional Training School for TraditionalMusicians. Between 1989 and1990 she was Visiting Professor of Music at Wesleyan University inConnecticut, U.S.A. During hertenure she premiered numerous modern compositions for koto andcameunder the influence ofmaverick American composers such as John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow,andJohn Zorn.

Her solo koto CD "Shizuku" was produced by Zorn and released on theTzadik label in 1999. In 2001she recorded "Yural" with her koto ensemble Paulownia Crush for theEastWorks label. Under theauspices of the Japan Foundation, Michiyo toured Russia withPaulowniaCrush in the fall of 2004.Subsequent CD releases include "Seventeen" (Zipangu, 2005), entirelyrecorded on the giant 17-stringbass koto, and "Live! at SuperDeluxe" (Idiolect/Bomba, 2006), a trioperformance with bassistIngebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. A studiorecordingwith Dresser andRothenberg, a duo album with Sharp, a “Nordic” session with EivindAarsetand Raymond Pellicer, andlive recordings of the touring trio Brötzmann/Yagi/Nilssen-Love areforthcoming. An eclecticperformer who continually challenges conventions, Michiyo has madefrequent appearances onJapanese TV and has performed at the Kongsberg Jazz, Moers Jazz,Punkt,Musique ActuelVictoriaville, Archipel, Bang on a Can, Tokyo Summer, and VisionFestivals.

Christian Moser

Born: March 28, 1980

Christian Moser is an oudplayer and improviser. His particular interests concern the cultivating of musical mindsets that go beyond the dualism of tradition/presence, being/becoming, immancence/transcendence. In his youth he studied violin. At the age of 18 he started playing the oud and from 2005-2010 he studied Turkish Music at the I.T.Ü. conservatory in Istanbul with Abdi Coskun, Mutlu Torun and Mehmet Bitmez. In 2020 he graduated with a Master of Art in specialized performance / free improvisation. His mentors were Alfred Zimmerlin and Fred Frith. Christian Moser lives and works in Basel, plays in various ensembles throughout Europe, composes music for film and dance.

Stefan Strasser

Born: November, 1965

Born 1965, musician, improviser, composer and sound artist.
Largely self-taught, his music moves between the worlds of free improvisation, ambient, jazz and noise.
In addition to solo projects, he enjoys working with other musicians from Germany and abroad, both in the form of internet sessions and live performances. These collaborations have broadened his artistic horizons and given him the opportunity to explore and create new musical paths.

His versatility is documented in various recordings on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
Numerous live performances including Loft/Cologne, Kölner Musiknacht, Kulturtag Oberscheid, Oooh!Fest/Amsterdam, ImprovFreedom Nonet & Dance/Salzburg, ImproHazard Festival/Peritz, 35blumen/Krefeld, 24h Improv Marathon Werkplaats Walter/Brussels.

Anais Drago

Anaïs Drago is an Italian violinist and performer, born in Biella in 1993.

Winner of Top jazz 2022 (referendum organized by Musica Jazz magazine) in the new proposals section, she moves between the sounds of free improvisation, electroacoustic music, jazz, pop.

Awarded with first prize in Seifert Competition 2024, international contest dedicated to jazz string players, her name was included in 2023 and 2024 annual poll by New York-based magazine Downbeat as rising star in violin section.

She has performed as a leader on some of thee most important jazz festivals’ stages in Italy, including Umbria Jazz, Time in Jazz, Turin Jazz Festival, Bergamo Jazz Festival, Casa del Jazz, JazzMI, Fano Jazz by the sea, Novara Jazz, and abroad, as for Münster Jazz Festival (DE) and Canal Street Festival (NO).

Nicole Brancato

Nicole Brancato makes music to unlock wonder. Fascinated with contemporary expressions of our shared human experience, the NYC-based pianist merges curation, composition and performance in collaborations across the arts. Described as “brilliant” and an “immense talent” (New York Magazine and Connect Savannah), Nicole is “redefining the very notion of classical music” (Atención San Miguel). Her credits range from the Guggenheim Museum (NYC), Rai Italia, and the Banff Centre (Canada) to Lincoln Center, Bellas Artes (Mexico), HBO, and the “underground” performances in Brooklyn factories and warehouses.