Lukas Hemleb http://www.hemleb.org
German director living in France since the 1990s. His work crosses both geographical and esthetic borders. He is known for rooting his work in the cultures of both his native and his adopted countries, as well as for his penchant for transgressing genres, his passion for music, his love of languages, his interest in Russian literature and, since a few years ago, Chinese culture. He has worked with contemporary texts (Daniil Harms, Marina Tsvetaeva, Dante and Copi) as well as classical ones (Shakespeare, Lessing and Feydeau), and has directed operas by Verdi and Mozart.
Ned Rothenberg http://www.nedrothenberg.com/
A composer and musician from New York with incredible improvisational talent, Ned Rothenberg has broken new ground in exploring wind instruments (alto saxophone, clarinet, base clarinet, and shakuhachi – a straight, Japanese flue made of bamboo). He earned degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory Berklee School of Music. Acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble work, he has been performing for the last 30 years in North and South America, Europe and Asia. He created the Sync trio, composed of Jerome Harris on guitar and Samir Chatterjee on tabla. His most recent recordings include Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, Ryu Nashi (new music for shakuhachi), Inner Diaspora, The Lumina Recordings and Ghost Stories, all on the Tzadik label, as well as Live at Roulette with Evan Parker, Are You Be, and The Fell Clutch on his own label, Animul. His discography includes more than twenty records. Ned Rothenberg also transmits his techniques and savoir faire through master classes and residences in North America, Europe and Australia.
Kazuhisa Uchihashi
This Japanese guitarist experiements with various sound devices to extend the expressive possibilities of the electric guitar. He also composes music for film, plays and dance performances. He gained renown in Japan playing concerts with expert improvisational musicians such as Hans Reichel, Fred Frith, Tom Cora, Ned Rothenberg, Barre Phillips, Kan Tae Fwan, Peter Brotzman, Derek Bailey, Samm Bennett, Steve Beresford, Zeena Parkins, Elliott Sharp, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, Chris Cutler, Charles Hayward, Han Bennink, Shelley Hirsch, Franz Hautzinger, Mani Neumeier, Christian Marclay, Mark Feldman, Joel Leandre and many others. He recently began a new project incorporating his own multiphonic surround-sound device.
Tadashi Kawamata http://www.tk-onthetable.com/
Born in 1953 on the island of Hokkaido, in Japan, he lives and works in Paris. In 1982, when he was 28 and had just graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music, he was invited to the Venice Biennial. Since then, he has worked all over the world on monumental projects, always in tune with the site. His work is infused with a reflection on the social context and human relations, and when he installs shelters made of recovered materials (wood, cardboard) on the edges of Montréal, New York or Tokyo, he’s making a reference to favelas and the homeless. On every project, Kawamata surrounds himself with students, local inhabitants and other groups who participate in assembling and setting up the work. His work is rooted in urban planning issues and time, as an indicator of size or of the decline of a monument or a site, is one of its key elements. His interventions recreate bridges between past and present, revealing the invisible, emotional part of things as well as their physical reality. Professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music from 1999 to 2005, he currently teaches at the National School for Fine Arts in Paris. In 2005, he was named artistic director of the second Yokohama Triennial in Japan. His recent projects brought him to France to participate in ESTUAIRE Nantes, an artistic race, Saint-Nazaire, and Evento2009, the first Bordeaux biennial, and took him to Japan for a personal retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.