Tony Bianco is an American jazz drummer and composer from New York City who moved to Europe in the early nineties. He has been described as a "true master of the drums ". He has played and recorded with many prominent jazz musicians including Elton Dean, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Dave Liebman, Paul Dunmall, and Evan Parker. In 2008 he brought Liebman and Parker together for a BBC recording which resulted in the album Relevance.
Bianco recorded a contemporary jazz album, In a Western Sense, featuring Zoe Rahman. He played with Elton Dean on his concept called "Freebeat", which resulted in two albums featuring Dean on Northern Lights and Liebman on Monkey Dance.
In 2009 he recorded Never Pet a Burning Dog with the band douBt with guitarist Michel Delville and pianist Alex Maguire. The album received four stars from Down Beat magazine. In the annual poll by Arnaldo DeSouteiro, Bianco was one of the top five drummers and douBt was the third best instrumental group.
In 2011, Bianco and Delville created the electro-jazz project Machine Mass, which was joined by Dave Liebman in 2012. Bianco is known for his "mercurial", "octopusian" drumming style, which combines the sounds of free jazz and straight jazz and reflects Bianco's "musical creed – to be "loose and tense, free and strict".(Wikipedia)
Faith Brackenbury trained classically before finding further musical paths through Irish folk, Hot Club jazz and rock bands, to violin making, and motherhood, to a post- grad in jazz at Birmingham Conservatoire 2012-14. She developed a contemporary folk duo with accordionist and pianist John Neilson, releasing their album 'Crossings' in 2018.
In 2015-16 she played, sang and recorded with alto saxophonist Martin Speake in various bands, including quartet Mafarowi, with guitarist Rob Luft and drummer Will Glaser, releasing their duo album 'Zephyr' in 2018, and her own 'KnifeAngel Suite', in response to the Knife Angel sculpture and the societal issue of knife crime in the UK, in 2019.
In August 2020 she started a collaboration of violin/ viola/ effects/ vocals with drummer Tony Bianco.Their first freely improvised album 'Rising Up' (Discus) being an expression of their strong stable creative connection within the instability of the current times. 'Wayward Mystic- Improvisations inspired by the Music of St.Hildegard von Bingen (Discus) 2022 and Sentient Beings (Off) 2023.
