The career of the Catalan pianist Josep-Maria Balanyà, born in Barcelona, with more than 40 years on stage, 27 albums recorded and more than 140 works, has taken him from classical music and jazz to his specialisation into the field of improvisation and new contemporary music, experimental music and performance. Internationally recognised, Balanyà is also composer, conductor of improvising orchestras, sound artist, painter and photographer.

Josep-Maria Balanyà explores the limits of music in his compositions and performances. He is particularly interested in the combination of different arts and the transfer of art into music. In order to expand and deepen his preoccupation with the fine arts and also with the craft material, he attended courses in painting and etching at the European Academy of Fine Arts in Trier (Europäische Kunstakademie Trier) / Germany.

Under the auspices and organization of the head of the Academy, Dr. Gabriele Lohberg, Balanyà performed for many years a series of interactive concert-performances in the Kunsthalle of the Academy, where fine arts were combined with music and performance. Here he experimented with the interaction between the sounds that arise when working on copper etching plates and the artistic result. He worked with the metal workshop that made or provided sculptures for musical performances. The works are now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Tarragona. In a teaching assignment for the students of the European Art Academy, he devoted himself to the music images of contemporary compositions and suggested using them as a basis for further musically interpretable drawings. In performative concerts, he not only made musical instruments sound, but - with electronic amplification and alienation - sculptures (Pierre Wéber), paintings (class Joe Allen), bodies (models from the art academy) and objets trouvés as well.

As part of these projects, Balanyà even gave a concert of bells in the cathedral of Trier.

Mainly, his own art production focuses on abstract paintings in which he uses mixed media, but especially acrylic on canvas. His work can be seen in his private gallery in Brussels and in buyers' homes. In addition, he has studied photography and practiced this art since adolescence. His work has followed a process ranging from pictorialism, to direct photography, street photography, macro technique and the study of the human body. He is currently preparing several exhibitions in which he presents a series of impressionist-style photos with movement; this technique gives an abstract pictorial result.

As for his main field, music, Balanyà studied in Barcelona and Switzerland (Swiss Jazz School and Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Bern), he attended composition workshops, led by Helmut Lachenmann, Walter Zimmermann and Ivan Fedele, and improvisation workshops by Borah Bergman in New York. He carried out intensive research into the sounds of nature in Mexico, working with oceanographers and biologists, including mammalogist Bernardo Villa.

Most of his works have a significant amount of improvisation. His work as a solo pianist combines the pure sound of the instrument with prepared or manipulated piano techniques. He has presented various multimedia projects for piano, voice, live electronics, video, Butoh dance, as well as percussion pieces on sculptures, sound objects and fine arts tools. He has created sculptures and sound installations that can be played by the public. He has developed his most imaginative actions at the boundary between music and performance, such as a recital in complete darkness at the Sendesaal of Bremen (Germany).

He has played with first-rate musicians including Claudio Pontiggia, Hans Koch, Joachim Kühn, Franz Hautzinger, Carlos Zingaro, Michiel Borstlap, Walter Quintus, Ksenija Lukic, Hannah Marshall, Das Neue Ensemble Hannover, Americo Rodrigues, Ramón López, Paul Rogers, Mark Sanders, Hannah Ma (dance), Mimi Barthélemy, among others.

Balanyà has played in festivals and radio programs in many countries in Europe and America. He has received several grants in Germany (Worpswede, Eckernförde, Düsseldorf) and Switzerland (Fondazione Arp). He is currently based in Brussels and in Barcelona.

The concerts by Balanyà are powerful ​rituals –​ it could be said that he plays the piano with his whole body – during which ​we can perceive the presence of music change into matter.

Born in Kragujevac, Yugoslavia. She studied singing at the Belgrade School of Music and obtained a degree in Italian language and literature at the University of Belgrade. Later, her studies took her to Siena and Berlin. In 1982 she won second prize in the national singing competition of the Federal Republic of Germany. Subsequent awards include the Special Prize of the Academy of Arts in Belgrade.

As a lyric soprano she has sung in more than sixty roles. She has been a soloist at the Berliner Festwochen, the Edinburgh Festival, the Berlin Biennale, the World Music Days in Seül, the MDR Musiksommer, the Weimarer Kunstfest, the Salzburg Festival, etc.

As a guest at the Huddersfield Festival she sang the title role in the opera "Sardakei" by E. Krenek. She has performed at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Gewandhaus Leipzig, the Philharmonie Cologne, the Konzerthaus Vienna, etc., with the Berlin and Saarland Radio Orchestras, the WDR Symphonieorchester, the Rundfunk Symphonieorchester Berlin, the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Belgrade Radio Orchestra, etc.

In the field of contemporary music, Ksenija Lukic is one of the most sought-after singers in Germany. She has collaborated on different occasions with the Klangforum in Vienna, with the Ensemble Modern, with Musikfabrik, with the Ensemble Recherche and the Ensemble Avantgarde. With Das Neue Ensemble he sang the premiere of the work "Qasid 7" by J.M. Sánchez Verdú at the Biennale für Neue Musik in Hannover.

She has participated in the premiere of the complete version of "Shir Hasrim" by H. Zender. She has recently performed the role of Eva in K. H. Stockhausen's opera "Donnerstag aus Licht". Moreover, the CD recording of P. Boulez's "Improvisation sur Mallarmé", in which she has participated, has received a great resonance.

Ana Maria Rodríguez was born in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and graduated in History from the Faculty of Philosophy of the "Universidad de Buenos Aires". At the same time, she studied piano and composition at the "Universidad Católica" de Buenos Aires" and began to work with electronic music. In 1991 she was invited by Gabriel Brncic, the director of the Phonos Studio Barcelona (Spain), to work in this studio. Until 1993, before moving to Cologne, she studied algorithmic composition there with Gabriel Brncic and Xavier Serra (Stanford University).

In 1994, A. Rodríguez accepted an invitation from the GMD St. Augustin (former Society for Mathematics and Data Processing) to develop several audio projects in the "Artificial Intelligence" department. Since then, she has created numerous works for various instruments with live electronics and computer as well as sound installations. In 1995 she became a member of GIMIK (Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln), in which Ana Maria Rodríguez has been working on the board with Klarenz Barlow since 1996. Recently, she has been particularly concerned with the relationship between composer and performer integrated into the technological environment. In this context, she works, for example, on network connections between musicians and machines, which involves new forms of interaction and notation of music.