Saturday 19 October 2024, 7.30pm
One of the most inventive and eclectic figures in contemporary music, guitarist and composer FRED FRITH celebrates his 75th year with another three day residency at OTO featuring some of his longest standing colleagues alongside much more recent collaborators. As the matinee concert with Susana Santos Silva in January 2024 demonstrated, Fred has lost none of his curiosity and fire.
“Few contemporary musicians have explored as many different – and frequently overlapping – genres as Fred Frith: traditional folk, indie rock, free improv, chamber composition, po-mo retro, graphic scores, and several…that may not have a name yet.” – Art Lange, Point of Departure
Frith's work has ranged from ground-breaking avant-garde rock with Henry Cow and Art Bears to extended compositions for choirs, orchestras and saxophone quartets and collaborations with figures such as Mike Patton, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Ikue Mori and Derek Bailey. His highly individual approach to the guitar and use of extended and unorthodox techniques give his music a unique and at times disorienting sense of texture and space.
Frith's musicial journey started when he formed Henry Cow with Tim Hodgkinson in 1968, a legendary group that expanded the parameters of rock music to include complex compositional forms as well as improvised elements.
After moving to New York in 1979, Frith was a key figure in the downtown experimental music scene, his collaborations with Zorn, Laswell, Mori and others helping form an important new musical vernacular in which elements of rock, contempary composition, noise and improvisation overlapped and intertwined.
Since 1999 Frith has been Professor of Composition at Mills University, California. Recent projects have included duos with Anthony Braxton and Evelyn Glennie, collaborations with the Arte Quartett and choreographer Donna Uchizono, and numerous festival appearances in Europe and America.
“A masterful sound colorist, Frith is in no way subject to analyses of has artistic legitimacy - (he) redefines the possible uses of the guitar and makes traditional discourse irrelevant” – L.A. Herald Examiner (USA)
Situated at the intersections of experimental music, free improvisation and performance art, the work of PAULA SANCHEZ is centered on the composition/decomposition and destruction/re-construction of a mutable sound space. With a markedly interdisciplinary profile she first found her voice as a performer, interpreter and composer in the fields of theatre and performance, highlighted by her participation in the experimental stage collective Ob-caenum—an important presence in the province of San Juan in Argentina where she completed her musical studies at the National University. Later she earned two Master’s Degrees—in Improvisation at the Musik Akademie in Basel and in Contemporary Art Practice/Sound Art at Bern University of Art, Switzerland. Paula stands out for her use of extended techniques, working with materials like plastic, glass and elements from nature combined with voice and electronics. Hers is the pure presence of an embodied sound which invents its relationships as it makes its way into nothingness.
The Germany-based Brazilian drummer, singer, composer and producer MARIÁ PORTUGAL has been active in the São Paulo music scene for more than 20 years. She recorded, performed and toured throughout South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania with artists such as Elza Soares, Metá Metá, Arrigo Barnabé, Quartabê, Maggie Nicols, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Nick Dunston and Tomeka Reid. As a composer, she has been performing and composing original music for dance, theatre and cinema. Since 2021 she has been one of the curators of the Soundtrips-NRW free improvisation program.
gabby fluke-mogul is a New York-based violinist, improviser, composer, educator, organizer and doula. Weaving within the threads of avant and free jazz, with deep roots in improvised and experimental music, their music has been described as “embodied, visceral and virtuosic” and “the most striking sound in improvised music in years”. gabby is humbled to have collaborated with Nava Dunkelman, Joanna Mattrey, Ava Mendoza, Charles Burnham, Fred Frith, Luke Stewart, Zeena Parkins, Tcheser Holmes, Lester St. Louis, William Parker, and Pauline Oliveros among many other musicians, poets, dancers and visual artists. gfm facilitates improvisation workshops & curates programming for the Creative Music Studio, is adjunct faculty at the New School, and is a current Jerome Artist in Residence at Roulette.
