Chris Cutler | Fred Frith | Tim Hodgkinson | Heike Liss | Susana Santos Silva
THURSDAY, May 5
10,30pm – Chris Cutler & Fred Frith & Heike Liss & Susana Santos Silva @ Theatre &TD big hall (70′)
FRIDAY, May 6
6pm – Tim Hodgkinson: Music and the Myth of Wholeness – talk led by Robert Barry @ Theatre &TD caffe bar (50′)
11,30pm – Fred Frith & Tim Hodgkinson @ French Pavilion (50′)
Fred Frith
As soon as I set foot in the French Pavilion in 2015 I knew I wanted to do something in that space and my choice of Tim Hodgkinson to join me in the endeavor was probably inevitable. Almost 50 years ago, after a chance encounter in a blues club, we found ourselves improvising together with a dancer on the theme of Hiroshima. I often felt afterwards as if in that moment we had invented improvisation! Of course that’s nonsense, but the feeling of INVENTING something every time we play has remained very strong, and inspiring. Fred Frith
Fred Frith has been living and breathing music since taking violin lessons at the age of 5, singing in the church choir, and parking himself under the piano to listen to his father play Debussy. Since then he has maintained an uninterrupted passion for song-writing, composing, performing, and improvising in many contexts and in many countries.
Music for me is never about showing, it’s about being. I identify most with musicians not because of what they are able to do, but by what they choose to do. Fred Frith
Tim Hodgkinson
Tim Hodgkinson is a composer, and also an improviser specializing in clarinets and lap steel guitar. After studying anthropology, he taught himself music by being in bands. His latest book, Music and the Myth of Wholeness, has just been published by MIT Press, and he will present it during the Showroom in the conversation with Robert Barry.
When I compose I write for sounds and then for instruments. I try to make something that is adequately eventful for our crazy time. I think I am writing for our time and the listeners who must authentically inhabit it. Real music happens when ideas are outrun by events. Tim Hodgkinson
Chris Cutler
Apart from Tim Hodgkinson, my longest running improvisation duo has been with another Henry Cow colleague, Chris Cutler, with whom I’ve been performing regularly since 1976. I’m always struck by how little resemblance each of our encounters has to any of the others, and how delightful that is. This time we are joined by the extraordinary trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, whose playing has touched me deeply since the first time I heard her, and Heike Liss, who has invented a completely personal, spontaneous visual world quite unlike anything else I know. Fred Frith
Since co-founding the 22–piece Ottawa Music Company in 1971, Chris Cutler has been at the beating heart of some of rock music’s most compelling and radical recording and touring bands. He works with all the usual suspects in all the usual improvising contexts and has performed just about everywhere as a soloist with his extended electrified kit. He also writes and presents the monthly radio/lecture series Probes for the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona.
Heike Liss
Heike Liss works in a variety of traditional and new media, including video, photography, drawing, sculpture, site-specific installation and public intervention. An anthropologist by training, her biggest inspiration is everyday life — the world and the people around her. She collaborates with creative artists of all persuasions, and since 2014 has performed live visuals with her long time co-conspirator and travelling companion Fred Frith.
Susana Santos Silva by Christer Männikus
Susana Santos Silva is a trumpeter, improviser and composer from Porto (Portugal) and one of the strongest emerging voices in contemporary jazz and improvisation. She has been traveling, recording and performing with many amazing musicians for the last several years and is very happy with her life!
I hardly distinguish my professional life from my personal life. Everything is mixed up. I feel a great desire to keep doing new things, trying new things. We are always looking at the edge of an abyss. It can always go wrong, but that also gives us some adrenaline. Susana Santos Silva