free improvisation

James "Blood" Ulmer (born February 2, 1942 in St. Matthews, South Carolina) is an American avant-garde jazz and blues guitarist and singer. Ulmer's distinctive guitar sound has been described as "jagged" and "stinging." His singing has been called "raggedly soulful." Ulmer began his career playing with various soul jazz ensembles, and first recorded with organist John Patton in 1969. After moving to New York in 1971, Ulmer played with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Joe Henderson, Paul Bley, Rashied Ali and Larry Young.

Mazen Kerbaj was born in 1975 in Beirut and lived there since. His main activities are comics, painting and music. After a lot of works for different publishers and magazines, it is in March 2000 that he releases some of his more personal works in his Journal 1999 (a dairy in comics' format). He self-published eight other books and many short stories since. It is also in 2000 that he plays for the first time in concert, in the Strike's pub in Beirut. This concert, a duo with Lebanese sax player Christine Sehnaoui, is probably the first improvised music concert in the Middle East.

There are four different bands named Altered States, listed in order of popularity: a Japanese free/noise jazz / avant-prog group from the 90s, an 80s gothic rock band, a Bass music production trio from Manchester and a psychedelic rock band from Dallas. 1. If pure musicianship is the guiding criterion, Altered States are arguably one of the greatest guitar/bass/drums trios in the history of rock, which may strike some as an overstatement but the evidence is there for anyone willing to seek out the band's Japanese label releases.

There are two artists who share this name: 1) Mary Oliver (born in La Jolla, California) is a player of viola, violin, and Hardanger fiddle. She received her Master of Fine Arts from San Francisco State University before going on to get her doctorate in Theory and Practice of Improvisation from the University of California, San Diego. 2) Mary Oliver (born September 10, 1935) is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet".

Read more about Mary Oliver on Last.fm.