Mike has been a part of my collaborative modern jazz band, the Keijzer-McGuiness Quintet since it’s inception in 2006. Mike has taken himself to Europe a few times to explore the improvising scene there, and on one occasion last year our trips there coincided and we spent a couple of weeks in close orbit.
Mike Majkowski, born 1983, is a double bassist from Sydney, Australia. He began his musical activities as a jazz bassist and has performed with the likes of Mike Nock, Bob Mintzer, Kristin Berardi, Vince Jones, Dale Barlow, to name a few. Since then, he has developed an active interest in music of an exploratory and experimental nature. Mike is a long time devotee of the improvised music community in Sydney, where he frequently collaborates with improvisers Jim Denley, Jon Rose, Chris Abrahams, Robbie Avenaim, among others. He is a founding member of the Splinter Orchestra (large-scale electro-acoustic improvisational ensemble, which began in 2002). Other current projects include piano/bass/drums trio ROIL (with Chris Abrahams & James Waples – who just completed their first national tour funded by Sound Travellers), and his own work as a soloist – exploring how the use of refined extended techniques develops the sound and style of the work. His debut solo album ‘Ink On Paper’ was release by Portugese label Creative Sources in late 2009.
“[This CD is] about breaking sound down into its most fundamental constituents and then rethinking it” – Chris Field
Lucian McGuiness – is a Canberra-born trombonist who divides his time between Sydney and Amsterdam. He has toured Australia as a member of the Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra alongside composer/instrumentalists such as Bert Joris, Florian Ross and Charles Tolliver, and with the Keijzer-McGuiness Quintet, a project shared with dutchman Remco Keijzer. When the Keijzer-McGuiness Quintet released The Seed Habit on Rufus Records in 2009, eminent jazz critic John Clare called it, “quite a special band… and this is an unusual and impressive disc.”
Other projects have included an improvisation-based duo with Mike Majkowski, and a collaborative composing workshop with Miroslav Bukovsky known as The Techno Prisoners. he has performed with Steve Hunter, Jim McNeely & Gai Bryant’s Spare Parts Orchestra, and the Amsterdam Jazz Philharmonic among others. Lucian has written two smaller research articles for Music Forum. In 2010 he has been cultivating Studio Impermanent in Sydney’s inner west
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