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Frith, Mori and Parkins Pair up for First Time in Los Angeles on September 15

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Event Title: sound. at REDCAT

Performers: IKUE MORI, ZEENA PARKINS and FRED FRITH

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2007
Time: 8:30 pm

Place:
Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT)
In the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex
631 West 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Show info: 323-960-5723

Admission:
Advance tickets: $25; $14 for SASSAS members
students with valid I.D. and CalArts alumni with an Affinity Card
Purchase tickets by phone: 213.237.2800


Produced by: SASSAS (The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound

SOUND. 2007 CONCLUDES WITH RARE PAIRING OF IMPROV ICONS FRITH, MORI AND PARKINS AT REDCAT

(Los Angeles) On Saturday, September 15, fans of improvised music are in for a special treat as SASSAS concludes the 2007 sound. concert season at REDCAT with the duo of New York avant-garde stalwarts Ikue Mori (laptop) and Zeena Parkins (electric harp) paired with legendary guitarist Fred Frith. The longtime collaborators are international icons of contemporary improvisation, regularly performing with artists from John Zorn to Ensemble Modern. Their sound. at REDCAT appearance features a solo set by Frith followed by the duo of Mori and Parkins. The evening concludes the three performing as a trio, for the first time ever in Los Angeles.

Ikue Mori moved from her native city of Tokyo to New York in 1977 where she started playing drums and formed DNA with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. In the mid 80's Mori started to employ drum machines in the unlikely context of improvised music. In 2000 she started using the laptop computer to expand on her already signature sound. In addition to Frith and Parkins, current collaborators include Sylvie Courvoisier, Susie Ibarra, Kim Gordon, DJ Olive and Jim O'Rourke, Haco, Aki Onda, John Zorn and Mike Patton.

Zeena Parkins, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, and well-known pioneer of the electric harp, has also extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of digital and analog processing. Parkins has performed previously in Los Angeles with Bjork, but this is the first time she will be playing her own material.

Their duo CD, “Phantom Orchard," was described by The Wire as featuring “a clutch of otherworldly compositions - layered soundtracks for moody imaginary films projected on the minds eye."

For more than thirty years Fred Frith has situated himself in the area where rock music and new music meet. Co-founder of the British underground band Henry Cow (1968-78), his fourteen years in New York gave rise to groups like Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher), Skeleton Crew (with Tom Cora and Parkins), and Keep the Dog, a sextet performing an extensive repertoire of Fred's compositions. Recent years have found him composing for Rova Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Modern, Arditti Quartet, Asko Ensemble, and many other groups, including his own critically acclaimed Guitar Quartet.

Guitar Player describes Frith's work as exhibiting “...undying curiosity, bitter wit, child-like sense of play, and creeping melancholy that percolates through the guitarist's records. It might be... useful, perhaps, to think of him as a folk musician who makes miniatures of the world around him using scraps torn from corners of the map."

On Sunday, September 16, SASSAS teams with Fred Frith and Film at REDCAT curators Berenice Reynaud and Steve Anker to present a rare screening of Werner Penzel and Nicholas Humbert?s “Step Across the Border," an award-winning documentary on Frith's music for further information.

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