Matthieu Saglio has been living in the Spanish metropolis Valencia for almost 20 years. The third largest city in Spain has been a hub for thousands of years. Greek, Roman, Visigothic and Arabic influences have shaped the city, and today cultures from all over the world meet there. The ideal place for someone like Saglio, who always thinks and lives together several cultures in his cello playing and compositional designs. After he had said goodbye to a purely classical career, he established exciting new relationships in his diverse projects flamenco and jazz, early music, baroque and West African colours. With the Trio NES, he created an internationally acclaimed mixture of Arabic flair and jazz improvisation ("Ahlam", ACT 2018) alongside the singer Nesrine Belmokh and the percussionist David Gadea.

"Nobody plays guitar like him," wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper about Nguyên Lê; the very first exclusive ACT artist ever. Born of Vietnamese parents in Paris in 1959, Nguyên Lê is one of the most versatile and independent guitarists in the world – going far beyond the bounds of jazz music and shaped by the most varied of influences such as Asian music, modern jazz, fusion or classic rock.
Gitarist Ngyuên Lê is a very particular jazz musician for a number of reasons: Even though he lives in Paris where he was born in 1959, he feels very connected to the cultural background of his Vietnamese family. He furthermore is self taught and just started to play the drums by the age of 15, but soon switched to the guitar.
He entered the music business in 1983 playing with the Afro-Caribbean band “Ultramarin“. His impressive career really kicked off after joining the French “Orchestre National du Jazz” in 1987. Already his first solo albums – released at the beginning of the 90es – attracted a large and still growing audience.
Lê had his German debut in collaboration with the Jazzpãna-Ensemble in 1993. It was exceedingly well received by critics and fans. Newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“ was even raving about his playing: „There is no other human playing the guitar like Lê!“. ACT-boss Siggi Loch just felt the same and Nguyên Lê became his label’s first exclusive artist.
To this day, Lê released no less than 12 albums on ACT. He has played with almost every important and famous European or American jazz artist. He is a regular guest to WDR Big Band and has founded several bands and ensembles, whereof trio E_L_B (with Peter Erskine und Michel Benita) and Lê’s “Jimi Hendrix Project” are the most successful and well-known.

"What this Nice-born Parisian coaxes out of the piano accordion is something the likes of which has never been heard before. You can tell it is a future legend who is playing here!" – Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The French accordion player, singer and composer Vincent Peirani was born on 24.4.1980 in Nice. At the age of 11 he began playing the accordion, initially classical music. As a teenager he already won numerous international awards. At 16 he discovered jazz and soon took up the study of jazz in Paris. At the beginning he faced scepticism with his accordion and his classical training, but he quickly convinced the critics with an entirely new way of looking at the instrument, made a name for himself in France's jazz scene and was soon playing with the creme de la creme of French jazz, the likes of Michel Portal, Daniel Humair, Renaud Garcia Fons, Louis Sclavis and Vincent Courtois. Parallel to that he pursued many of his own projects, drawing from the widest range of genres – from jazz, chanson and world music through to classic and even heavy rock. Since 2011, Peirani has been playing regularly in the quartet of the Korean singer Youn Sun Nah, the most successful female jazz artist in France in recent years. Through this engagement he also made the acquaintance of Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius and ultimately the boss of the ACT label Siggi Loch. Peirani played on the Wakenius album "Vagabond" recorded in February 2012, also astonishing and enthralling live audiences everywhere. "Thrill Box" came out in May 2013 and was Vincent Peirani's first album as a leader – star-studded with pianist Michael Wollny, bassist Michel Benita and saxophonists Michel Portal and Émile Parisien. The album showcases the entire wealth of facets of Peirani's musical influences, and reveals more impressively than ever before what an intelligent and artful composer he is, and what a masterful and profoundly musical instrumentalist and storyteller.

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.