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.
WLucian Ban is a Romanian-American jazz pianist.
WTim Berne is an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist and record label owner.
WCarlos Bica is a Portuguese jazz bassist.
WSamuel Blaser is a Swiss trombonist and composer.
WAnthony Braxton is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who is known in the genre of free jazz.
WMagnus Broo is a Swedish jazz musician (trumpet) known from own recordings and collaboration with Norwegian jazz musicians like in the band Atomic.
WRob Brown is an American free jazz saxophonist and composer.
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.
WWhit Dickey is a free jazz drummer. He has recorded albums with David S. Ware and Matthew Shipp.
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.
WEllery Eskelin is an American tenor saxophonist, born in Wichita, Kansas, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, from the age of two. His parents, Rodd Keith and Bobbie Lee, were both professional musicians. Rodd Keith died in 1974 in Los Angeles, California, and became a cult figure after his death in the little-known field of "song-poem" music. Organist Bobbie Lee performed in local nightclubs in Baltimore in the early 1960s and provided Eskelin an introduction to standards from the Great American Songbook as well as inspiring an early interest in jazz music.
WPeter Evans is a jazz trumpeter who specializes in improvisation and avant-garde music.
WScott Fields is a guitarist, composer, and bandleader. He is best known for blending music that is composed with music that is written and for his modular pieces. He works primarily in avant-garde jazz, experimental music, and contemporary classical music.
WKen Filiano is an American jazz and orchestral bassist based in Brooklyn, New York.
WJoe Fonda is an American jazz bassist.
WPhilipp Gropper is a German composer and saxophonist of jazz and of the modern creative style.
WAlfred Harth, now known as Alfred 23 Harth or A23H, is a German multimedia artist, band leader, multi-instrumentalist musician, and composer who creatively mixes genres.
WGerry Hemingway is an American jazz drummer and composer.
WJulius Arthur Hemphill was a jazz composer and saxophone player. He performed mainly on alto saxophone, less often on soprano and tenor saxophones and flute.
WIngrid Laubrock is a German jazz saxophonist, who primarily plays tenor saxophone but also performs and records on soprano, alto, and baritone saxophones.
WJoëlle Léandre is a double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation.
WSteve Lehman is a composer and saxophonist in the genres of jazz and experimental music. His compositions have been performed by a number of international performers and orchestras. As a performer, Lehman leads a number of his own ensembles and performs frequently as a sideman with artists like Anthony Braxton, Vijay Iyer, and Jason Moran. His recording Travail, Transformation & Flow was chosen as the #1 Jazz Album of the year by The New York Times. Lehman’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, Down Beat magazine, The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Wire, National Public Radio, and the BBC. Lehman was a Fulbright scholar from 2002-2003. He has a B.A. (2000) and M.A. (2002) in composition from Wesleyan University and received his D.M.A. (2012) with distinction in composition from Columbia University. He is currently a professor of Music at the California Institute of the Arts, near Los Angeles.
WChristian Lillinger is a German drummer, composer and percussionist. He was born in Lübben, grew up in the German village of Kuschkow, and has been living in Berlin since 2003 working as a musician and composer. Christian has performed in concerts and at festivals in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and the US. He has played with Joachim Kühn, Beat Furrer, Miroslav Vitous, David Liebmann, Wadada Leo Smith, William Parker, Evan Parker, Louis Sclavis, Joe Lovano, and Tony Malaby.
WHåkan Fredrik Ljungkvist, is a Swedish jazz musician, the son of saxophonist Håkan Ljungkvist and married to the jazz singer Lina Nyberg.
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.
WMat Maneri is an American composer, violin, and viola player. He is the son of the saxophonist Joe Maneri and Sonja Maneri.
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.
WPaal Nilssen-Love is a Norwegian drummer and composer in the jazz and free jazz genres.
WOtomo Yoshihide is a Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist. He plays guitar, turntables, and electronics.
WCaterina Palazzi is an Italian double bass player. She's known as the leader of the Italian band Sudoku Killer, which plays jazz, psychedelic rock, and noise music. In 2010 she won the Jazzit Award as best italian jazz composer.
WEvan Shaw Parker is a British saxophone player who plays free jazz.
WIvo Perelman is a Brazilian free jazz saxophonist born in São Paulo.
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.
WRoswell Hopkins Rudd Jr. was an American jazz trombonist and composer.
WLouis Sclavis is a French jazz musician. He performs on clarinet, bass clarinet, and soprano saxophone in a variety of contexts, including jazz and free jazz.
WElliott Sharp is an American contemporary classical composer, multi-instrumentalist, and performer.
WWally Shoup is an American jazz alto saxophonist and painter. Based in Seattle, Washington since 1985, Shoup is a mainstay of that city's improvised music scene. Seattle Metropolitan named him one of the 50 most influential musicians in that city's history.
WØyvind Skarbø is a Norwegian drummer and composer, raised in Stranda, and now residing in Bergen.
WCraig Marvin Taborn is an American pianist, organist, keyboardist and composer. He works solo and in bands, mostly playing various forms of jazz. He started playing piano and Moog synthesizer as an adolescent and was influenced at an early stage by a wide range of music, including by the freedom expressed in recordings of free jazz and contemporary classical music.
WTelectu is a Portuguese experimental, avant-garde music duo formed in 1982 by Vítor Rua and Jorge Lima Barreto, a jazz musician and musical essayist. Their music incorporates a variety of elements from free jazz, rock, electronica, minimalism and concrete music. They are arguably the most important project of its genre in Portugal. Their career spanning 30 years, includes a voluminous discography, many national and international performances and collaborations, both live and recorded, with important experimental and improvisation musicians such as Elliott Sharp, Carlos Zíngaro, Jac Berrocal, Sunny Murray, Chris Cutler amongst others. They have also composed music for theater, video art and multimedia performance. The project ceased activity with the death of Jorge Lima Barreto in 2011.
WOle Morten Vågan is a Norwegian jazz musician and composer, and the older brother of guitarist Petter Vågan. He is known from several recordings and is currently acting as artistic director for the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. Vagan is also known from cooperating with some of the most influential musicians and composers internationally and has released eight albums as a leader, recently with the TJO, as well as six albums with his group Motif and one with the group The Deciders.
WKen Vandermark is an American jazz composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist.
WJack Arthur Walrath is an American post-bop jazz trumpeter and musical arranger known for his work with Ray Charles, Gary Peacock, Charles Mingus, and Glenn Ferris, among others.
WHåvard Skarpnes Wiik is a Norwegian jazz pianist and composer, known from a number of recordings with bands like Atomic, and performances with musicians like Petter Wettre, Ola Kvernberg and Stian Carstensen.