I have been off this forum for some time, but after my friend Sid Smith mentioned that IB had been mentioned a while ago, I decided to have a look. Following that, I decided to make a comeback and very briefly let you know what IB are up to and also put some things right that have been posted in this thread. I must warn you, this post will go on for a bit. Make tea and read on.
First of all, let me just mention who I am. My name is Thomas Olsson and I am a musicologist by profession (working at Lund University), but in my spare time I do work as a projects manager for IB and curator for IB Expo.
Since 2005, IB is a project based band. That is, depending on what we do, the line up can vary in size from a small unit to an extended band. The same year, we also started IB Expo, a week long musical meeting between musicians from different background who meet on Monday morning, rehearse and do clinics/workshops for five days and wrap the week up with a one time only concert on Saturday evening where everybody brings material and play together. We just wrapped up our 11th IB Expo last Saturday.
Over the years, we have had the pleasure of welcoming Jerry Marotta, Mick Karn, Tom Griesgraber, Markus Reuter, Pat Mastelotto, Pamelia Stickney, Mike Keneally, Björn J:son Lindh, Janne Schaffer, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Tony Levin, Michael Bernier, Julie Slick, Adrian Belew, Marco Minnemann, Michala Østergaard-Nielsen, Lisa Nordström, Lisen Rylander Löwe, Phil Manzanera, Guy Pratt, Lindha Kallerdahl, Jakko Jakszyk, Trey Gunn, Liesbeth Lambrecht, Jana Arns, Joris Vanvinckenroye, Morgan Ågren, Luca Calabrese, Christian Saggese, Richard Barbieri, Steve Hogarth, David Torn, Qarin Wikström, Percy Jones, Mel Collins, Magnus Öström and David Rhodes.
We have also actively worked with young musicians, presenting clinics/workshops with some of the names mentioned above, but also Bill Buford, Henry Kaiser, The Thing (Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love & Ingebrigt Haaker-Flaten), Mattias "Ia" Eklundh, Terry Bozzio and others.
IB currently do three things:
1) band activities (recordings, live gigs)
2) clinics/workshops
3) IB Expo
In 2016, IB will celebrate 40 years of unbroken musical activity. Therefore, we plan on releasing a new album, plus a compilation album and possibly a book. All of these will appear - fingers crossed - towards the end of 2016. IB Expo 16 will celebrate 40 years of IB music and present new music featuring well-known international guests.
The current line up (since 2012) is: Katrine Amsler (keyboards, electronics), Klas Assarsson (percussion), Axel Croné (bass/woodwinds), Samuel Hällkvist (guitar), Mats Johansson (keyboards) and Kjell Severinsson (drums).
Regarding instruments at NEARfest: drums, perucssion and amps were kindly supplied by the festival. Guitar, bass and the keyboards traveled with us from Sweden. Unfortunately, the Kurzweil K2000 broke during the transport and worked erratically for a while during the festival before it gave in completely.
The Voyage and MIND Vol. 1 are out of print, but we hope to print new editions next year.
As our website is under reconstruction, and will be for some time, I recommend keeping in touch with IB via Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ibexpo
Thanks for your interest in IB, we appreciate it greatly!
All the best!
Thomas
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