David Cristol

Photo (c) Petra Cvelbar

David has been actively writing about jazz and improvised music for several French publications since 2010. When not attending festivals or keeping abreast of latest releases, he can be found watching B movies in arthouse theaters or enjoying fine wine, cheese and the occasional truffle delicacy at local vineyards.

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Gregg Daniel Miller

Gregg Daniel Miller is the author of Mimesis and Reason: Habermas's Political Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2011), and has taught political theory at various universities for many years. He began his one-way trip down creative/free music alley in around 1997 after hearing Matthew Shipp's Prism and Roscoe Mitchell's Sound Songs. Recently he has begun laying down his own saxophone impressions on Bandcamp.com under the name Miller-Hailey. He plays around Seattle, most often at the weekly improvisational feast called The Racer Sessions, Sunday nights at Cafe Racer in the U-District.

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Sarah “FLAKE” Grosser

Sarah “FLAKE” Grosser is an Australian born, German-based author, lyricist and vocal artist. Exploding onto the scene with her self-published DIY John Zorn fanzine “Days of Zorn”, Flake quickly established a name for herself as an enthusiastic up-and-comer in the world of avant-garde. Shortly thereafter she penned follow up zines: “Zappa Every Day”, “The Jazz Hater’s Manifesto” and “Jazz is for Wankers”.

Flake’s fetish for drummers with fantastic hair is public knowledge and she encourages any potential candidates to form an orderly queue.

Her unmistakable writing style challenges pretentiousness, and if you don’t like it you can suck a lemon.

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Don Phipps

I am a jazz advocate and lover but still feel, after decades of listening to the music, there is so much more to uncover and explore. I've been convering jazz since 1978 when I was the Arts Editor for the Boston University Daily Free Press. I was first exposed to jazz in high school where I studied clarinet and saxophone. My love of music grew into dabbling with the piano and guitar as well. My listening strategy is to spin new music often, explore areas of the back catalog as time permits, respect and learn about past masters to inform my appreciation of new and current masters, and keep an open mind. Jazz is very much a "flow" music- -cerebral, emotional—but clearly a music of the moment. And the best jazz is in the moments where creative, improvisation, innovative and classical influences all come together to produce art at the highest level.

Those wishing to reach me can do so at jazzmanneobop [at] yahoo [dot] com.

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Nick Ostrum

Nick is a historian of modern Europe. More appropriate to this forum, he has been an avid fan of avant-garde music since his teenage years. Early exposure to Anthony Braxton through semiannual performances at Wesleyan University gave him the bug. He has not been able to shake it since.

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Sammy Stein

Sammy Stein is an author, columnist, reviewer and broadcaster. She has hosted radio shows and covered for BBC Radio as well as internet stations. Sammy is a sought after writer and a well known free jazz advocate. She ran the London jazz Platform in June 2017 and her passion for the music is clear.

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Hrayr Attarian

Hrayr Attarian has been writing about music, particularly improvised music, since 2004.  He writes for Jazziz, All About Jazz, and has written in the past for the Chicago Jazz Magazine.  He also serves as the chair of the Jazz Journalist Association's annual photo contest committee and runs a live webinar on jazz photography called Seeing Jazz. He is working on a book profiling 101 undeservedly obscure jazz musicians.  He lives in Chicago with his wife and a menagerie of animal companions.

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Irena Stevanovska

Irena is the founder of the Macedonian review website mono-ton.com and a freelance audio editor. Shaping her whole life to evolve around music and finding beauty in all kinds of free sounds, she decided the best way to express herself was through writing about how music makes her feel.

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Gary Chapin

Gary Chapin wrote a lot about this music back in the early '90s, when he was a frequent denizen at the original Knitting Factory, and then he stopped. Now he's doing it again. He lives currently in the Maine woods, while writing and advocating for ethical practices in education. He also plays traditional French music on accordion and has a blog about that (accordeonaire.com). He understands that in the Free Jazz Collective context that might seem weird (and he wondered if he should even mention it) but hey, it's a funny old world with all kinds of people in it.

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Nick Metzger

Aside from his family Nick’s passion in life is listening to, playing, and talking about music. He’s always leaned towards the avant-garde in his artistic tastes and plunged down the rabbit hole that is jazz upon listening to Bitches Brew in his early teens. Through his research into the genre he encountered an album called Spiritual Unity which opened the floodgates to what he felt he had been searching for all his life, free music, and he has been drinking heavily from the well ever since. He also enjoys reading, writing, cinema, and good food. He lives and works in central Indiana.

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William Rossi

Guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and composer William Rossi was born and raised in Italy. He developed a passion for music thanks to his father who has always been an avid listener.

A punk and extreme metal lover at heart throughout his teens, the discovery of industrial music kickstarted a deeper appreciation for experimental and improvised music which he holds to this day.

He's a member of a few collaborative projects with various members of the European noise and free improv scene and makes singer-songwriter-meets-noise music under the moniker Misdirection.

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Matty Bannond

Matty Bannond is a 40-year-old fiction writer and music journalist. He was born and raised near Manchester, UK. He now lives in Germany. His debut novel, Cutting Contest, hit the shelves in 2025. Instagram: bannond_m

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Stef Gijssels

Stef : started this blog in December 2006 and wrote over 1,000 CD reviews in the meantime - amateur of life - loves far too many things and does far too many things to do anything qualitatively, but somehow things do move forward - listening, watching, reading, sporting, playing, working, enjoying, socialising, loving. Would like to leave this world a better place than before he came into being, but chances are slim. Born in Belgium by chance, married, with three children by choice.

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Lee Rice Epstein

Lee Rice Epstein lives in California with his wife, kids, and their massive libraries of music and books. He started playing the drums and listening to big band music in the 5th grade, then graduated to jazz combo and Coltrane by high school. When he discovered his wife also liked Albert Ayler and John Zorn, he knew it was true love. Cribbing from Anthony Braxton, he approaches all things in life (from listening and reading to cooking, running, and gardening) as both a friendly experiencer and enthusiastic amateur.

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Paul Acquaro

Paul is fairly certain that it was a combination of Elton Dean's El Skid, John Surman's The Trio, and Marc Ribot's Spiritual Unity group that are mostly responsible for opening up his ears. He also played the bass clarinet in high school and was enthralled with how well it could squawk. His musical interests are wide, which is well evidenced in his ever growing music collection. He is an educator, occasional web developer, likes to play the guitar, and spends far too much time making sure the Free Jazz Blog is humming along.

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Keith Prosk

Keith was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas and currently lives and works in Austin, Texas. He has been a voracious listener of various musics since he can remember but attributes his relationship with improvised music taking off after moving to Austin in 2013 and seeing it performed live, with the first such show being Fred Frith solo. When not filling his ears with music, he most enjoys the relative silence of hiking the deserts, canyons, mountains, and valleys of central and west Texas, with an especial love for the rivers, streams, and creeks there. He looks forward to starting a family of little improvisers with his wife, who fills the house with piano, marimba, mbira, percussion, and guitar playing when a record isn't on.

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Guido Montegrandi

I was born in north west Italy and, growing up in the 70’s, free music was kind of a natural landscape to me. Anyway, it was a Don Cherry Organic Music concert that marked the moment of the insight and the starting point of a search for sounds that is still going on. After irregular music studies I dedicated myself to linguistics and to teaching. I still occasionally play but more often listen to almost all kind of creative music from baroque to free improvisation. I love cooking, animals and travelling and I believe that free music, free art, free thinking , free everything is our only possibility to survive as humans.

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Troy Dostert

Troy Dostert grew up in Southern California, but he now lives in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, where he teaches high school history.  His love of jazz began in his late teens, and since then he has sought out ever more-adventurous forms of musical expression.  He can vividly recall his first time listening to Charles Gayle’s Consecration, as he’s still recovering from it almost twenty years later.  When not busy trying to find opportunities to read good books or discover good music, Troy is probably spending time with his wife and son, both of whom have learned (more or less) to tolerate his musical obsessions.

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Jury Kobayashi

Jury Tosh Kobayashi-Mackay is a musician and scholar. Jury plays double bass in a variety of styles including but not limited to noise music, free music, and experimental music. He is a fourth year PhD student at the University Ottawa working on a creative dissertation focused on free music.

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Martin Schray

Was born in Southern Germany and has lived there ever since. The initial event that won him for improvised music was Peter Brötzmann’s 50th birthday concert with the Maerz Combo in 1992 (later issued on FMP) where he felt as if he was seized by a gigantic power that would never let him go – especially when Nicky Skopelitis played a solo after which there was only one string left on the guitar. Martin is interested in all kinds of music. He loves cooking, reading, watching movies and going to concerts. He lives and works as a teacher in Karlsruhe, Germany.

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