Christof May (born 6 April 1970 in Radolfzell, Baden-Württemberg) is a German jazz musician who performs on the clarinet and saxophone.
May studied jazz saxophone with John Ruocco at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague from 1992-1998 and classical clarinet with Ab Vos from 1998-2002. He earned a Master’s Degree in Music there.
From 1995 on, he worked as a sideman with Susanne Abbuehl, Michel Portal, David Liebman, Claudio Puntin, Samuel Rohrer, Florian Zenker, Amina Figarova, Erik Ineke and Trygve Seim. With Abbuehl, May can be heard on the ECM-records productions April and Compass. He toured through Europe, Africa und North America, playing a.o. in Cape Town, Maputo, Montreal, Portland, Oregon, Oslo, Paris, Rome and other European cities. With the Dutch radio orchestra Metropole Orkest, he worked a.o. with Kenny Werner and Bob Malach and recorded CDs with drummer Terry Bozzio, amongst others. In the classical field, he worked with the symphony orchestras of Krefeld-Mönchengladbach, Aachen and Duisburg in Germany.
His debut Maygus was inspired by the music of Miles Davis from the 1970s. The name of the project refers to the 1974 released record Dark Magus.[1] The band’s first CD was released in November 2007 as Vol. 20 of the series “Jazzthing Next Generation”, in a cooperation of German magazine Jazzthing and the jazz label, Double Moon.

Swiss/Dutch singer and composer Susanne Abbuehl was born in Berne, Switzerland, on July 30, 1970. Drawn to music and language early on, composing songs and writing words in her own language, she started studying the harpsichord as a child. At age seventeen, she moved to Los Angeles where she graduated from high school and started taking lessons in classical singing. She was a member of a high school jazz group that toured the U.S. and Canada. Back in Europe, she took up professional education in jazz and classical voice at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where she studied with Rachel Gould and the late Jeanne Lee. She earned a Masters of Arts degree in Performance and Music Pedagogy, graduating cum laude. Abbuehl also studied North Indian classical vocal music with Dr. Indurama Srivastava in Amsterdam and later became a student of famed master singer Dr. Prabha Atre in Bombay, to whom she regularly returns.
She studied composition and analysis with Dutch composer Diderik Wagenaar.
Her recordings for ECM, „April“ (2001), and “Compass” (2006) received wide critical acclaim internationally. „April“ won an EDISON Music Award (Dutch Grammy) in 2002.
2013 brought the release of „The Gift“, her third recording for ECM. It features compositions by Susanne Abbuehl for poems by Sara Teasdale, Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson. Produced by Manfred Eicher, the line-up includes Dutch pianist Wolfert Brederode, Swiss flugelhornist Matthieu Michel and Finnish drummer Olavi Louhivuori. With her own group, Susanne Abbuehl has toured extensively and was invited to perform at major festivals in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.
She performed and recorded with musicians from various musical backgrounds, including the Jeanne Lee Music & Dance Ensemble, Christof May, Stephan Oliva, Michel Portal, Mats Eilertsen and Paolo Pandolfo. Susanne Abbuehl has been commissioned to compose for various settings, including work for radio, theatre, and sound environments.
Her composition “Der Gaukler Tag”, a radio play produced for Swiss National Radio SRF with Claude Salmony, performed by her students in Lucerne, and featuring her colleague Lauren Newton as well as actress Marie Jung as speakers, was nominated for the 2013 Prix Marulić. As the only non-American singer, she was chosen by the Downbeat Critics Poll 2002 in the category “Best Female Vocalist/Talent Deserving Wider Recognition”. In the same poll, one year later, she held the 6th position in the category “Rising Star Female Vocalist”, and her album “April” was featured among the best in the category “Beyond Album”.
Susanne Abbuehl is Professor at the music universities inLucerne and Lausanne, Switzerland. She has also lectured in France, Italy, England and Holland.

The first time I saw Nils Petter Molvaer playing live I thought the world was coming to an end. It was at the Voss Jazz Festival in Norway, my first visit there in 2003. The members of his band were stretched across a huge stage in a sports hall, at the back of which ran black and white images which seared into my mind. The music was urgent, pulsing, unsettling. Cutting through it was the breath of an angel – not the gentle angels of Romantic paintings – but a powerful archangel brandishing a fiery sword – the sound of the trumpet.
Years later I find myself on a snow-covered beach on the island of Giske near Ålesund on the west coast of Norway. I’m walking with Nils Petter through the snow, teeth chattering in the freezing temperatures, talking about the light, the extraordinary light which swoops and changes over the mountains, the islands and ocean. "That’s my island over there” he tells me. We stop and look across the water. Sula. Where Nils Petter was born in 1960. Out of this playground of forests and mountains comes his first musical memory, Billie Holliday singing "Summertime” on a crackly 78, a present from his parents. This was the soundtrack for the 4 year old who learned to sing it – without understanding a word of course! Behind us is Ocean Sound, one of the world’s most beautifully located recording studios, and it’s here Nils Petter is recording his latest album, Baboon Moon (Sony 2011), taking inspiration from the nature he’s so familiar with, and working with his two most recent collaborator’s guitarist Stian Westerhus and drummer Erland Dahlen, musicians who are uncompromising, challenging, who force each other into musical corners snarling, biting, teasing out this raw beauty.
I tiptoe away. There’s a book lying open in the studio, the spine broken, the pages well thumbed. It’s the poetry of Olav Hauge, a Norwegian poet who died in 1994 whose words strike at the heart of Norwegian nature yet his inspirations came from many parts of the globe. I can understand why Nils Petter is drawn to him, he too is on constant look out for new ideas, new sounds, seeking musical playmates from different countries, different genres, as trumpet player, composer, or producer. Hip hop, rock, house, jazz, classical, electronica, he takes so many elements from these and they are reborn in his music. His list of collaborators is a stellar line-up indeed including Bill Laswell, Herbie Hancock, David Sylvian, Biosphere, the EVA Quartett, Hector Zazou, Gigi, Food, Spin Marvel, Batagraf, Django Bates, Manu Katché, Paolo Fresu… I could go on.
For many people Khmer (ECM 1997) was a defining moment in Nils Petter’s career. He’d cut his teeth and earned a reputation as a key figure in the Norwegian scene working with the band Masqualero, with Sidsel Endresen, Marilyn Mazur or Jon Balke, but Khmer put him firmly in the spotlight and won the awards. The paradoxically titled Solid Ether (ECM2000) followed, a hard-edged sword with a battalion of musicians on fire, tempered by the simple duo for voice and piano with singer Sidsel Endresen in Merciful. The fast –growing world of technology had its own impact on np3 (Universal 2002) but Nils Petter’s own musical journey remained the master, his ability to create music of symphonic textures with clarity and individuality. It was these qualities which earned him the prestigious Buddy award the following year which also recognised the strong international career he’d forged not just for himself but for his fellow musicians. His globally sought after live performances were celebrated in Streamer (Universal 2004) with recordings from London and Tampere showing fans how works conceived in the studio had grown and developed. ER (Universal 2005) took us into a new, darker land, from the shadows, fragile and lyrical. Three years later, in Revision (Universal 2008) , Nils Petter shared with us some of his global inspirations from the haunting sounds of the Armenian duduk, to muezzin calls, new textures and new thoughts which were already developing in his live performances. And then came Hamada (Universal 2009) with its innocent solo opening and the threatening Cruel Altitude. Throughout all this and the busy international touring diary, Nils Petter was writing music for the theatre (including Ibsen’s "Ghosts), and for film, another long list including Edy, Es schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen, Frozen Heart, Stratosphere Girl, The Invention of Love, Leaps and Bounds, Shameless, and the TV series Harry and Charles, and playing a key role in awakening the world to Norway’s key role in the development of jazz and contemporary music.
The music spilling out of the studio on Giske is still unequivocally Nils Petter Molvaer. It has the passion, the ethereal beauty, the darkness, but also the compassion and the heartfelt humanity which you feel is at the centre of his music making all channelled through in a remarkable small brass instrument handmade in Luton.

Florian Zenker studied jazz guitar in The Hague, Netherlands, where he graduated in 1999. After having lived in Holland for over 8 years he moved to Oslo, Norway, where he worked as a composer and guitar player before moving to Cologne, Germany, in 2005.
Florian Zenker has played with various international formations all over Europe, in Canada, Syria, Columbia and Zimbabwe, has performed on many festivals and can be heard on numerous CDs.
His group “Zenker/Kappe 4tet” won several international jazz competitions.
Besides compositions for his own groups and contributions to the repertoire of projects he participates in as a sideman, he also works as a composer for film, radio and TV. Florians main instrument is the electric jazzguitar, besides that he frequently uses other guitar-related instruments such as a custom-made 11-string cittern. For many years now he has specialized in the creative and innovative use of electronic effects to get unusual sounds out of his instruments, resulting in a highly personal trademark sound.

Bob Wijnen is a pianist of great sensitivity and depth. Much in demand as an accompanist, he is known for having some of the best ears around, as well as being an elegant and adventurous soloist who has absorbed a great deal of the history of jazz piano, Hammond organ and Fender Rhodes funk. Tasteful yet adventurous playing is what Wijnen strives for in his performance.
After touring Indonesia, the USA, Germany, the UK and Ireland and having recorded albums with many projects, like his current bands Triplicate and Equinox, Wijnen decided it was time to take a big step forward. This inner urge, or as Wijnen calls it, this Call of the Wild, led him to the making of his first album "NYC Unforeseen" together with Peter Bernstein, Dezron Douglas and Billy Drummond, recorded in the great capital of jazz: New York.
Dutch jazz journalist Bert Jansma said: "Watch out for this guy! He was always a tasteful pianist, but he's getting better every time I hear him." Wijnen continues to grow as a pianist. Besides that, his focus is more and more on composing and arranging.

Jens Loh began at the age of 6 years to play the violin and got through the detour of the guitar to bass. This was followed by eight years of stay and study in the Netherlands, among others Hein van de Geyn, which could mature his musical language. Sideline with great musicians such as Richie Beirach, Nils Peter Molvaer, Ingrid Jensen, Eric Gravatt, Ack van Rooyen, Herbert Joos, Mark Soskin, Joo Kraus, Torsten DeWinkel, Wolfert Brederode, Phillip Harper, Carsten Dahl, Flo Dauner, Cornelius Claudio Kreusch, Phil Maturano, Pete York or Jarmo Hoogendijk is heard Jens Loh in as the Thomas Siffling Trio, Gee Hye Lee projects Trio , Duende, Sandi Kuhn Kuhn fabric and Patrick Manzecchi Trio. Together with the Cologne guitarist Florian Zenker 2005 he founded the trio "tiny tribe", which is supplemented by the Iranian percussionist Afra Mussawisade and 2009 his second CD entitled "Strange Stories & Faraway Places "published. With Florian Zenker he wrote the soundtrack for both cinema documentaries" Cairo all inclusive "and" Mali and the art of sharing ". His current project" hippie "combines auf's new different musical poles, the this times between the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Eddie Harris. Urthermore Jens scholarship from the Art Foundation Baden-Württemberg. Numerous tours through the European continent, Africa, Canada, India, Russia, China and Southeast Asia and performed on renowned festivals as the North Sea Jazz Festival / NL, HIFA / Zimbabwe, Getxo / Spain , Kampen Oslo, the Jazz Festival Ibiza, the involvement in the house band of the Dutch Radio 1 program "NCRV Hier en Nu Nieuwspoort" and numerous radio, television and film productions have Jens established as profiled bassist.

Eric Hoeke studied drums at the Conservatory of Rotterdam. He is widely regarded as one of the most revolutionary drummers and soundarchitects of The Netherlands and therefore performed with many internationally succesfull bands. He played with the spectacular New Cool Collective and with French Kiss. He is the drummer of SFEQ 3000, VOER, DASH and Praful. With these bands and his own groups Vito Brothers and Ehook & Dragon he can be heard and seen on national and international radio and television on a regular base and at festivals in amongst others Vilnius, Danbi Arezzo, Mumbay and Istanbul. He teaches drums and ensembleplaying at the Conservatoire of Amsterdam.