sound. 2007 is co-curated is co-curated by Cindy Bernard, Jeremy Drake and Kathleen Johnson; produced by SASSAS.
Special thanks to Channa Horwitz for the use of her drawing on the 2007 poster and website.
Fred Frith, composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist, has situated himself for more than thirty years in the area where rock music and new music meet. Co-founder of the British underground band Henry Cow (1968-78), he moved to New York in the late 1970s and came into contact with many of the musicians with whom he’s since been associated, such as John Zorn, Ikue Mori, Tom Cora, Zeena Parkins, and Bob Ostertag. Fourteen years in New York gave rise to groups like Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher), Skeleton Crew (with Cora and Parkins), and Keep the Dog, a sextet performing an extensive repertoire of Fred’s compositions. In the 1980s Frith began to write for dance, film, and theatre, and this in turn has led to his composing for Rova Sax Quartet, Ensemble Modern, Arditti Quartet, Asko Ensemble, and many other groups, including his own critically acclaimed Guitar Quartet. Best known world-wide as an improvising guitarist, Frith has also performed in a variety of other contexts, playing bass in John Zorn’s Naked City, violin in Lars Hollmer’s Looping Home Orchestra, and guitar on recordings ranging from The Residents and René Lussier to Brian Eno and Amy Denio. Frith is currently Professor of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, California. See http://www.fredfrith.com for more information.
Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock. In 1977, she went to New York City, initially for a visit, but she became involved in the music scene, and has remained in New York since. Her first musical experience was as the drummer for seminal no wave band DNA, which also featured East Village musician Arto Lindsay. Though she had little prior musical experience (and had never played drums), Mori quickly developed a distinctive style: One critic describes her as “a tight, tireless master of shifting asymmetrical rhythm”, while Lester Bangs wrote that she “cuts Sunny Murray in my book” His comment is no small praise, as Murray is widely considered a major free jazz drummer. After DNA disbanded, Mori became active in the New York experimental music scene. She abandoned her drum set, and began playing drum machines, which she sometimes modified to play various samples. According to Mori, she was trying to make the drum machines “sound broken.” In recent years she has used a laptop as her primary instrument.
Zeena Parkins is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist active in experimental, free improvised, contemporary classical, and avant-jazz music; she is known for having “reinvented the harp”. Parkins performs on standard harps, several custom electric harps, piano, and accordion.
