WRay Anderson is a jazz trombonist. Trained by the Chicago Symphony trombonists, he is regarded as someone who pushes the limits of the instrument. He is a colleague of trombonist George Lewis. Anderson also plays sousaphone and sings. He was frequently chosen in DownBeat magazine's Critics Poll as best trombonist throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s.
WRashid Bakr is an American free jazz drummer.
WLucian Ban is a Romanian-American jazz pianist.
WBilly Bang, born William Vincent Walker, was an American free jazz violinist and composer.
WCasey Benjamin is an American saxophonist, vocoderist, keyboardist, producer and songwriter. He is a member of the Robert Glasper Experiment which won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album for their album Black Radio. He is one half of the funk pop new wave duo HEAVy with vocalist Nicky Guiland, and currently plays with Q-Tip, Mos Def, Stefon Harris In 2011, he was the keyboard/saxophonist for Patrick Stump's live solo project tour.
WArthur Murray Blythe was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer. He was described by critic Chris Kelsey as displaying "one of the most easily recognizable alto sax sounds in jazz, big and round, with a fast, wide vibrato and an aggressive, precise manner of phrasing" and furthermore as straddling the avant garde and traditionalist jazz, often with bands featuring unusual instrumentation.
WPeter Brötzmann is a German free jazz saxophonist and clarinetist.
WTaylor Ho Bynum is a musician, composer, educator and writer. His main instrument is the cornet, but he also plays numerous similar instruments, including flugelhorn and trumpet.
WDaniel Carter is an American free jazz musician who plays saxophone, trumpet, and flute.
WAndrew Cheshire is an American jazz guitarist.
WAndrew Charles Cyrille is an American avant-garde jazz drummer. Throughout his career, he has performed both as a leader and a sideman in the bands of Walt Dickerson and Cecil Taylor, among others. AllMusic biographer Chris Kelsey wrote: "Few free-jazz drummers play with a tenth of Cyrille's grace and authority. His energy is unflagging, his power absolute, tempered only by an ever-present sense of propriety."
WJean Derome is a French Canadian avant-garde saxophonist, flautist, and composer. A prominent figure in the Montreal musique actuelle scene, Derome has been a member of experimental, jazz, and rock groups, and has appeared on over 30 albums, including seven solo albums. He has written scores for over 30 films and co-founded Ambiances Magnétiques, a Canadian musical collective and independent record label.
WPierre Dørge is a Danish avant-garde jazz guitarist. As leader of New Jungle Orchestra he combined traditional and modern jazz with West African Highlife guitar music. Among his collaborators have been his wife, pianist Irene Becker, saxophonist John Tchicai, bassist Johnny Dyani, and percussionist Marilyn Mazur.
WPaul Dunmall is a British jazz musician who plays tenor and soprano saxophone, as well as the baritone and the more exotic saxello and the Northumbrian smallpipes. He has played with Keith Tippett and Barry Guy.
WLisle Ellis, is a Canadian jazz bassist and composer who is known for his improvisational style and use of electronics.
WMark Feldman is an American jazz violinist.
WBobby Few is an American jazz pianist and vocalist.
WKen Filiano is an American jazz and orchestral bassist based in Brooklyn, New York.
WMark Helias is an American jazz double bass player and composer born in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
WJason Kao Hwang is a Chinese American violinist and composer. He is known for his unconventional and improvisational jazz violin technique as well as his chamber opera The Floating Box: A Story in Chinatown which premiered in 2001 and was released in 2005 on New World Records.
WChris Kelsey is an American-born jazz saxophonist, composer, music critic, and novelist. His music draws on bebop, free jazz, free improvisation, funk, and fusion, and is augmented by elements of non-tonal, contemporary classical music. His fiction is inspired by such crime writers as Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, and Dashiell Hammett. As a musician, Kelsey has worked almost exclusively as a leader of his own ensembles, usually trios and quartets. From the late 1980s his principal instrument has been soprano saxophone, though in recent years he has recorded and performed on tenor and alto, as well. Kelsey has recorded nearly twenty albums under his own name, many for the C.I.M.P. label. With rare exceptions, he has recorded and performed his own original compositions. His first novel, Where the Hurt Is, was published in 2018 by Black Rose Writing. As a critic, he has written for leading jazz publications and web sites, including Jazziz, JazzTimes, Cadence, AllMusic, and Jazz.com.
WPeter Kowald was a German free jazz double bassist and tubist.
WFred Lonberg-Holm is an American cellist based in Chicago. He moved from New York City to Chicago in 1995.
WPaul Lytton is an English free jazz percussionist.
WTony Malaby is a jazz tenor saxophonist. Malaby moved to New York City in 1995 and played with several notable jazz groups, including Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, Paul Motian's Electric Bebop Band, Mark Helias's Open Loose, Fred Hersch's Trio + 2 and Walt Whitman project. He also played with bands led by Mario Pavone, Chris Lightcap, Bobby Previte, Tom Varner, Marty Ehrlich, Angelica Sanchez, Mark Dresser, and Kenny Wheeler. Other collaborators included Tom Rainey, Christian Lillinger, Ben Monder, Eivind Opsvik, Nasheet Waits, Samo Salamon and Michael Formanek. His first album as a co-leader was Cosas with Joey Sellers.
WSabir Mateen is a musician and composer from Philadelphia. His musical style is primarily avant-garde jazz. He plays tenor and alto saxophone, B♭ and alto clarinet, and flute.
WJoe McPhee is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist born in Miami, Florida, a player of tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, the trumpet, flugelhorn and valve trombone. McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is most notable for his free jazz work done from the late 1960s to the present day.
WJames Roland "J. R." Mitchell was a jazz drummer and educator who sought to promote awareness of the African American music experience. In the early 1980s, jazz journalist and Washington Post music critic W. Royal Stokes wrote, "J. R. Mitchell is the renaissance man of jazz."
WJemeel Moondoc is a jazz saxophonist who plays alto saxophone. He is a proponent of a highly improvisational style.
WIvo Perelman is a Brazilian free jazz saxophonist born in São Paulo.
WOdean Pope is an American jazz tenor saxophonist.
WHugh Ragin is an American jazz trumpeter.
WClarence "Herb" Robertson is a jazz trumpeter and flugelhornist. He was born in New Jersey and attended the Berklee School of Music. He has recorded solo albums and has worked as a sideman for Tim Berne, Anthony Davis, Bill Frisell, George Gruntz, Paul Motian, Bobby Previte, and David Sanborn.
WGeorge Schuller is an American jazz drummer. He is the son of composer Gunther Schuller.
WLuther Thomas was an alto saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist from St. Louis.
WAssif Tsahar is an Israeli tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist. He has lived in New York City since 1990.
WTom Varner is an American jazz horn player and composer.
WPhilipp John Paul Wachsmann is an African avant-garde jazz/jazz fusion violinist born in Kampala, Uganda, probably better known for having founded his own group Chamberpot. He has worked with many musicians in the free jazz idiom, including Tony Oxley, Fred van Hove, Barry Guy, Derek Bailey and Paul Rutherford, among many others. Wachsmann is especially known for playing within the electronica idiom.
WAndrew White was an American jazz/R'n'B multi-instrumentalist, musicologist and publisher.
WMark Whitecage is an American jazz reedist.
WNils Wogram is a jazz trombonist, composer and bandleader. He counts as one of the most important jazz musicians in Europe. He began classical study at the age of fifteen. He was a member in the National German Youth Big Band, participated in classical competitions and formed his own bands at the age of 16. In 1992 he received a scholarship for the New School of New York City and stayed until 1994. During this time he released his debut album "New York Conversations" (1994) with his own Nils Wogram Quintett. Since then he has released more than 20 albums as a bandleader. In 1999 he graduated from Cologne University. In 2010 he started his own record label nwog-records. Nils Wogram's bands play exclusively his own music, and other ensembles commission pieces by him. He currently lives in Zürich and teaches at the conservatory in Lucerne in Switzerland.
WKahil El'Zabar is a jazz multi-instrumentalist and composer. He regularly records for Delmark Records. He attended Lake Forest College and joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the early 1970s, and became its chairman in 1975. During the 1970s, he formed the musical groups Ritual Trio and the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, both of which remain active. Musicians with whom Kahil EL'Zabar has collaborated include Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Simon, Pharoah Sanders, and Billy Bang. In 2017 the film "Be Known - The Mystery of Kahil El Zabar" by filmmaker Dwayne Johnson-Cochran was released. The documentary follows El' Zabar and band on their 2007 Black History Month tour. The film has been available on Amazon Prime.