Janus Rasmussen turned to music as a creative outlet early on. Growing up in the remote Faroe Islands, he would listen to every single record he could get his hands on to study and determine his preferred genre. Soon enough, he was learning how to play the guitar and crafting his own sound and style through electronic music.

Today, Rasmussen works alongside acclaimed pianist and producer Ólafur Arnalds as one-half of the duo KIASMOS, with whom he has toured extensively performing at some of the most esteemed festivals around the world. He is also one of the masterminds behind the electro-pop outfit Bloodgroup.

Currently residing and working in Reykjavik, Janus Rasmussen released his his debut solo album Vín in 2019, which explores new sound-worlds within the realm of experimental minimal techno. He is currently working on a new album for Spring 21.

Kai Schumacher delights in pushing the boundaries between classical and popular music while avoiding the wellworn clichés “Crossover.” Boasting an impressive pedigree, he has been constantly experimenting and combining seemingly incompatible elements with surprising results. His solo performances are acts of pure musical – and stylistic – alchemy, serving up heady mixes of Dadaism and Dancefloor, Avantgarde and Pop culture – sometimes all at once! When not engaged in genre-defying pursuits, Kai Schumacher‘s repertoire focuses on American piano music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

His current album „Rausch” (Neue Meister) is the first album exclusively to feature his own compositions. Schumacher abstains from using overdubs; in fact, no electronics are used at all. Instead, he employs his own form of “prepared piano”, manipulating the instrument’s mechanism and strings to produce an unusual array of sounds.

Kai Schumacher regularly invites big names of the German music business to the Mercatorhalle concert hall in his hometown of Duisburg in order to interpret old and new works with him. His latest collaboration sees him translating the well-tempered pathos of Franz Schubert into the 21st century with the singer-songwriter Gisbert zu Knyphausen from Hamburg. From “Winterreise”, completed in 1827, to the collection of songs “Schwanengesang”, the two delve into the extensive oeuvre of “the 19th century’s first singer-songwriter” and engage the spirit of his weltschmerz, which has lost none of its stirring power, in an introspective dialog. Schumacher’s instrumental Schubert arrangements for piano and string quartet make their way into the program, as do Gisbert zu Knyphausen’s original songs – a journey through 200 years of German songwriting tradition.

Carlos Cipa is a Munich-based composer and pianist. He has been classically trained on the piano and studied contemporary classical composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich. During his teenage years, he started playing drums and gained experience as a member of various bands. Experimenting with different styles of music, he turned back to the piano as his main instrument, facilitating him to find his way throughout composition and improvisation, before releasing his debut »The Monarch and the Viceroy« and sophomore record »All your life you walk« on Denovali Records in 2012 and 2014. In 2019, Cipa released »Retronyms«, his third studio album that expanded his artistic approach as well as his colour palette, bringing together his background as a classically trained pianist and composer with his interest for pop, jazz and electronic music in all its diverse facets. His new album »Correlations (on 11 Pianos)« is yet again a return to the piano.

Ed Carlsen has always been a wanderer. A dreamer, even. Of faraway places and people, of a world to be explored. Perhaps it was growing up on an island, Sardinia; perhaps it was his grandfather, teaching him about the stars on warm summer nights.

Playing both guitar and piano, his early influences were diverse and eclectic. Prog rock and metal were first loves, but also The Beatles and records by the likes of Steven Wilson. An interest in production led him to a degree in Music Technology at the London College of Music, where sound design, and composition for film and visual media, further piqued his creativity. Combined with his unconventional approach to playing instruments, it gave his new work an intriguing edge; innovative, exciting, daring.

The music he started creating was imbued with aspects from both of his two, disparate professions – the pilot and the musician. It was technical yet meditative, precise yet poignant. “Feet on the ground, head in the sky,” is how he sums up this duality, and his music carries a wonderful, creative dichotomy. Listening is like floating in a daydream, Carlsen’s curious textures – crisp beats, hazy synth washes, delicate electronica – contrasting neatly with a reflective sense of intimacy and the blissful serenity he’s become so adept at.