FRED FRITH, TIM HODGKINSON & LIZ ALBEE (US/UK/DE) + LUKRAAK (Marcus Wärnheim & Thomas Jaspers)
A night of Total Music #2:: FRED FRITH, TIM HODGKINSON & LIZ ALBEE (US/UK/DE) + LUKRAAK (Marcus Wärnheim & Thomas Jaspers)
– a dazzling celebration of the unexpected – contemplative and ecstatic, unruly and gloriously alive –
FRED FRITH + TIM HODGKINSON + LIZ ALBEE (US/UK/DE)
A meeting of three outstanding improvisational musicians who understand sound as an open territory. Guitar legend Fred Frith – co-founder of Henry Cow and a defining figure in experimental music since the 1970s – encounters Tim Hodgkinson, a comrade from those radical early days and an tireless explorer of improvisation, composition, and sound anthropology. Joining them is Liz Allbee, a Berlin-based trumpeter and sound artist who transforms her instrument into a vibrating resonant body of breath, electronics, and material experimentation. A fully improvised trialogue – raw, poetic, and unpredictable.
The combination of Frith‘s prepared guitar/string work, Hodgkinson‘s intense reed work/composition, and Albee‘s trumpet/electronics represents a high-level intersection of veteran avant-garde and experimental improvisation.
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser Fred Frith has been making noise of one kind or another for more than 50 years, starting with the rock collective Henry Cow, which he co-founded with Tim Hodgkinson in 1968.
Fred is best known as a pioneering electric guitarist and improviser, song-writer, and composer for film, dance and theater. Through bands like Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, Cosa Brava, and now Fremakajo he has stayed close to his roots in rock and folk music while branching out in many other directions.
Fred has performed works by and sometimes alongside composers Alvin Curran, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and Christian Wolff; improvised with Lotte Anker, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Peter Brötzmann, Lol Coxhill, Janet Feder, gabby fluke-mogul, Tim Hodgkinson, Joëlle Léandre, Phil Minton, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Bob Ostertag, Evan Parker, Zeena Parkins, Paula Sanchez, Susana Santos Silva and Camel Zekri, to name a few; and—as session musician—recorded on albums by, for example, Brian Eno, The Residents, Robert Wyatt, The Swans, Violent Femmes, Material, Negativland, John Zorn, Matthew and the Unfortunates, and Half Japanese.
https://www.fredfrith.com/live/
Tim Hodgkinson (b. 1949) studied social anthropology at Cambridge, and co-founded the politically and musically radical group HENRY COW with Fred Frith in 1968. In addition to composing, he has a long involvement in improvisation, and came back to anthropology in the 1990’s with research into music and shamanism in Siberia.
As an improvising musician on reeds and lap steel guitar Tim Hodgkinson has performed all over the world with many of the most acclaimed artists in the field, and continues to be fully engaged in the celebrated Konk Pack trio with Roger Turner and Thomas Lehn. In 2009 he released KLARNT – a CD of solo clarinet improvisations.
http://www.timhodgkinson.co.uk/
Liz Allbee is a trumpet player who doesn’t play the trumpet all that often. Or at least, not the regular one. Instead, she frequently opts for a quadrophonic trumpet of her own design, as well as her voice and a myriad of self-made objects. The case in point is her recent album Breath Vessels, made using various glasses, pots and dismantled second-hand instruments which produce a surprisingly melodious drone.
Often radical, Allbee is also an economic composer and improviser: prudent layering of loops provides a smooth passage towards trance. An uneasy one – since Allbee’s inspiration comes from recent events like the sinking of the ship Adriana with hundreds of migrants on board in 2023, or from a withering observation the problems of our planet started when humans evolved opposable thumbs. A consoling one – since her work is conceived as new folk music, driven not by nostalgia but by a sense of community.
https://lizallbee.net/
LUKRAAK
Lukraak plays post-silly music of crooked beauty. Using alto saxophone, drums, flutes, found objects as well as their own centered bodies and flying limbs, they produce something of their own with a haphazard attitude. Intricate sonic mosaics and vivid tapestries of complex sound masses are created along the edges of experimental jazz and neo-neo-dada-dada.
Lukraak has previously performed at Porta-Jazz Festival and Valkhof Festival, as well as at venues in the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, France, Poland and the Baltics. They are individually and collectively active members of the vibrant experimental music scene of Amsterdam, and together with Jaap Blonk they perform as Luk&BlonkRaak. On 26th of September 2025 their debut album ‘Zaalig’ was released on LukRecords.
Marcus Wärnheim – alto saxophone, recorders and other stuff
Thomas Jaspers – drums, cymbals, recorders and other stuff
