Peter Kowald, bass
Fred Anderson, saxophone
Allen Blairman, drums

Peter Kowald is known as one of the early activists of free improvised jazz in Europe, he has played and recorded with numerous musicians between Wuppertal and New York, Tokyo and Thessaloniki, has toured and performed on Festivals from Siberia to West Africa, from Australia and Japan to Canada and the US, and all European countries. He was honored with the german "Albert Mangelsdorff Jazz Award" in 1996, and his Solo CD "Was da ist" was awarded with a crown by the Penguin Guide of Jazz on CD 1988. Peter Kowald lives in Wuppertal / Germany and Greece.

But those, who read the pages of Avantart carefully, know all this already ...

Fred Anderson, who will be 70 years old in 1999, founded (together with Muhal Richard Abrams) the AACM / Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in Chicago in the early sixties and since then has been dealing with creative and improvised jazz in his hometown. His legendary Club and Performing Space "Velvet Lounge" on the south side of Chicago, where he performs regularly, still is the focusing centre for Creative Music for the younger Chicago as well as an internation scene, for which he has been a father figure for nearly 40 years now.

Allen Blairman is mostly known for being Albert Ayler's last drummer, documentated on the Foundation Maeght records, made in St. Paul de Vence in the summer of 1970. Few people know that over the years he has played with a great number of wellknown jazzmusicians like John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus, Dexter Gordon, Jimmy Smith, Stanley Turrentine, Lennie Tristano, Ron Carter, George Coleman, Joe Henderson, Sonny Stitt, George Benson, Lou Rawls, Charlie Haden, Archie Shepp, King Pleasure, Mal Waldron, Kenny Dorham etc., just to name a few. Allen Blairman today lives in Heidelberg / Germany.