IST formed in 1995 at the suggestion of Simon H. Fell, who had previously met and played with Rhodri Davies and Mark Wastell independently of one another. Activities and performances have included numerous UK club dates, a UK Arts Council Tour in 1998, S4C Television, London's Barbican, New York's Tonic, the Total Music Meeting in Berlin, Contemporaneamente 2002 (Italy), London's Freedom of the City Festival and Confront Recordings 20th Anniversary Festival. They have release seven albums to date. "Truly a seminal improvising group. This trio was the perfect setting for the three to develop their strategies to micro-gestured improvisation. It is their intensified approach to collective listening and interaction that elevates this beyond the astonishing display of extended techniques.” (Michael Rosenstein SIGNAL TO NOISE)

Will Gaines was an American “hoofer”, born in Baltimore in 1928, who began his professional career as a dancer in 1948. In the 1950’s he moved to New York and worked with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk and Eric Dolphy . A booking at the London Palladium in 1963 brought him to the UK, where he stayed and never returned to the States. He met Derek Bailey in the middle sixties and worked on and off with him for the next four decades. In the later years Derek would often remark that Will was the only person left that he played with that was older than him!