Who: Fred Frith
When: October 3, 15:00
Where: Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of music (Krišjāņa Barona street 1), jazz class (room nr. 328.)
Topic: Improvisation, a masterclass
Attendance: Free of charge, but a limited amount of spots are available by writing to aliseziemule@gmail.com
ATTENTION: The number of intended participants for this workshop is limited, so we kindly ask you to confirm your participation in advance by writing to aliseziemule@gmail.com
Fred Frith is a pioneer of the extended electric guitar. He learned to compose in Henry Cow, developed his song-writing skills in Art Bears, explored his multi-instrumentalism in Skeleton Crew, rocked the house with Massacre and is still doing all of those things, having been in one band or another continuously since 1964.
Meanwhile his work has been performed by ensembles, string quartets, chamber orchestras, and a whole range of groups and artists in the ever-expanding field of semi-popular music. Fred composes extensively for film and dance, and taught improvisation for years at Mills College in Oakland, California and the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland.
A few words regarding the upcoming masterclass from Fred Frith himself:
“This moment is not the same: listening, hearing, and letting go”.
“The Dalai Lama’s advice for the New Millenium contains many useful thoughts for the improvising musician.
- Take into account that love and great achievements involve great risk
- Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck
- Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer
There isn’t a “right” way or a “wrong” way to improvise.
Sound impulses come from each individual, based on their own personal, musical, social and cultural history, and everyone has to negotiate the resulting listening space with self-respect, respect for others, and a sense of responsibility. What works today for me may not work for you tomorrow, and vice-versa, so we are constantly re-configuring, re-negotiating, re-learning and unlearning, and generally re-inventing ourselves and our instruments according to the context, the situation in which we find ourselves.
- How do we listen?
- What are we listening to, or listening for?
- What is the relationship between listening and musical action?
- What just happened?
- What will happen next?
- Did you intend for it to happen?
- Is that important?
- Are there strategies that will always work?
- Would we want that?
- These are a few of the ideas we will explore during this workshop.”
Fred Frith will perform at the Skaņu Mežs festival for experimental music on October 4 at concert hall “Hanzas Perons”.
Supported by: Supported by: The State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, SHAPE+ platform,which is co-funded by the European Union and Pro Helvetia, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, and Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of music.
