Recorded January 1995 at Rainbow Studios, Oslo.

Robyn Schulkowsky was born in Eureka, South Dakota, and completed her studies at the University of Iowa. In the mid-1970s, she was percussionist with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and the Santa Fe Orchestra and directed a class in percussion at the University of New Mexico. The percussionist has been sought out as an interpreter by major composers including Iannis Xenakis, Heinz Holliger, John Cage, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, Mauricio Kagel and Karlheinz Stockhausen, all of whom have valued her personal and imaginative approach to the score. In addition to her work in new music she also plays free improvised music and has collaborated frequently with the idiom*s grey eminence, Derek Bailey. She recorded a (mostly) solo album “Hastening Westward” for ECM in 1995. In the same year she also received the Christoph and Stephan Kaske Award for her innovations in drumming.

Avant-garde jazz trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær was born on the small Norwegian island of Sula in 1960, and though he learned a lot playing in local bands, in 1979 he chose to leave his hometown to study at the conservatory in Trondheim. As a member of the nu jazz group Masqualero, Molvær became associated with the ECM label, which later released his first solo material. In 1998, Khmer, which incorporated ambient, house, and electronic sounds along with his trumpet, came out, followed two years later by Solid Ether, an album that also saw a remix version in 2001's Recoloured. In 2002 NP3 was released, and three years later ER, in which he allowed more space for programmers like DJ Strangefruit and Reidar Skår, was issued. In 2006 Thirsty Ear took the honors for Molvær's An American Compilation, a record that was meant to introduce a United States audience to the experimental and genre-bending musician.