Fleurine Verloop is a jazz & Brazilian music composer & vocalist & lyricist who has recorded 5 albums and toured all over the world. After 27 years of residing in New York she has been living in Amsterdam since the Covid hit and has become President of the Board of Dutch Improvised and Jazz Music (BiMpro). She also spearheaded Voice for Jazz Musicians in Europe together with other European jazz bonds. It is her mission to widen possibilities for jazz and world music in Europe, to improve the infrastructure between European countries and to give musicians a strong voice.

She is also passionate about gender equality, which is still lagging behind on the international jazz scene. As an artist and composer she has played with her Brazilian Dream Band and other bands all over the world; Montreux jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Umbria Jazz, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland NYC, Jazzstandard NYC, Mezzrow, Smoke NYC, Montreal Jazz Festival, and many others.

Fleurine has also supported a school in Rio de Janeiro in the Favela of Mangeira through album sales and festivals she has produced.

Dr Pedro Cravinho is a researcher and educator with a background as a professional musician, a BMus in Musicology and a PhD in Ethnomusicology. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) and the Keeper of the Archives at the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, Birmingham City University, UK. He co-leads the RBC Jazz Studies Research Cluster and also teaches jazz at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He is also a researcher at CITCEM – Transdisciplinary Centre ‘Culture, Space and Memory’ at the Faculty of Arts, University of Porto (Portugal).

Dr Cravinho co-founded the Documenting Jazz international conferences and is a member of the editorial board of jazz-hitz (Musikene, Spain). His research interests broadly include the jazz diaspora’s social, political, and cultural history and distinct media representation in the public sphere. His publications include key research about the history of jazz in Portugal, including Encounters with Jazz on Television in Cold War Era Portugal, 1954–1974 (Routledge, 2022).

He is a co-founder and vice-president of the Portuguese Jazz Network (PT) and its research coordinator.

Erwan Vernay is the Chief Delegate of Grands Formats, the French network for jazz and improvised music large ensembles and collectives. With a background in music and musicology, cultural policy and economy of Culture, his commitment to the independent artistical teams model is expressed through his political role in Grands Formats

Aware of the European issues for jazz musicians and ensembles, and interested in developing the mobility opportunities and international visibility of the European jazz sector Erwan Vernay conducts a strategy of European development which has led him to be a co-founder of Voice for Jazz Musicians in Europe.

His belief in the necessity to extend a solid independent jazz model throughout Europe, to strengthen its representation at this scale, and the economic and political foundations which allow its vivacity has made him a strong advocate for the development of international organisations of artists.