Entries associated with the tag "Fred Lonberg-Holm":

Among the extended techniques that occupy such an exalted role in the vocabulary of free improvisation, rubbing and scraping may seem humble, but they're vital all the same. Obviously many instruments are played by rubbing their strings with a bow (what those in the biz call arco), but an infinite number of objects can be rubbed or scraped to produce a surprisingly wide variety of sounds--it's common, for example, for a drummer to bow his cymbals or rub a moistened finger across a drum head to create evocative whines and moans. The Chicago trio called the Friction Brothers push this idea to an extreme: on the group’s self-titled debut, released by the Pittsburgh label Abstract on Black, all the sounds are generated by some kind of friction.

Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm long ago moved beyond the bow, just as percussionist Michael Zerang has gone beyond drums. Michael Colligan (pictured) barely uses musical instruments at all, creating most of his sounds with dry ice and metal. The list of instruments they're credited with sounds like the contents of a kitchen cabinet, junk drawer, or utility closet: knitting needles, cheese slicer, coins, pachinko balls, frying pan, clothespins, marbles, popsicle sticks, and on and on.

Since so many of the sounds are hard to identify by ear, watching the group play live has a special appeal. Many a Chicagoan has thrilled to the sight of Zerang rubbing one of his drums with a vibrator, but no improviser in Chicago (or maybe anywhere) is as fun to watch as Colligan. Over the years he's elaborated on his basic setup: a couple of teakettles, heated on an electric hot plate and then placed on, pushed into, and dragged across the dry ice to produce wonderfully excruciating shrieks and ominous rumbles. These days he also uses the aforementioned frying pan, trombone and trumpet mouthpieces, tin cans, spoons, keys, and more, all of which produce slightly different timbres and resonances when heated and touched to the dry ice. The last time I saw him perform, he lodged a variety of small metal objects in the ice and left them there, which not only made a steady drone but altered the notes he got when he placed other objects on the ice or against those lodged pieces.

It reads almost like an absurdist joke, and if it were only about making weird noises in unusual ways, it'd sound like one too. But the Friction Brothers' ensemble sound is diverse and extremely tactile, blending resonant long tones with abrasive blats, and the three players coax all of these noises out of their hardware in the context of a deeply intuitive spontaneous musical conversation.

The Friction Brothers celebrate the release of their CD with a performance Wednesday night at the Hideout. The Green Pasture Happiness, an electronic trio with Aaron Zarzutzki, Daniel Fandiño, and Brian Labycz, plays first.

Today's playlist:

Skygreen Leopards, Jehovah Surrender (Jagjaguwar)
Oscar Brown Jr., Sin & Soul (Columbia)
Randy Newman, Good Old Boys (Warner Bros.)
Various Artists, Avanto 2006 (Avanto)
Kelley Stoltz, Circular Sounds (Sub Pop)

Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm originally formed what is sometimes called the Valentine Trio back in 2000, when the group paid homage to pioneering jazz cellist Fred Katz for a gig at the Empty Bottle jazz festival. The trio has taken on a life of its own over the years, and its just-released third album (billed to the Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio), Terminal Valentine (Atavistic), is the first to feature all original material. Still, Lonberg-Holm uses this particular vehicle to indulge his interest in dark pop music—the second album included songs by Syd Barrett, Jeff Tweedy, and Cat Power, among others—but that doesn’t stop the group, rounded out by bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Frank Rosaly, from pushing and pulling in any direction they want.

The cellist has created simple yet elegant melodies, which the trio wastes little time tearing to pieces. Yet even while the improvisations seem to dispense entirely with the chord patterns and rhythmic feel, some element of the original structure—a bass line, groove, or melodic shadow—remains, giving the listener something surprisingly accessible to grab on to. In particular, Lonberg-Holm delivers a gorgeous mix of lyric extrapolation and coloristic depth, unleashing elaborate constellations of bowed notes thick with the feel of string on string.

The Valentine Trio celebrates the release of Terminal Valentine with a gig on Thursday, May 10, at the Velvet Lounge. The same three musicians will play in strict free improv mode a night earlier, performing with the Italian reedist Gianni Gebbia at the Hideout.

Veteran minimalist Phill Niblock has been making up for lost time over the last seven years, releasing more music than in his first six decades on the planet. He uses a computer rather than a tape machine these days, but his basic style hasn't changed: capturing original sounds (from open-minded musicians like George Lewis, Jim O’Rourke, and Ulrich Krieger) and superimposing them to create long-form drones rich in harmonic overtones. For “Parker’s Altered Mood, aka, Owed to Bird,” from last year’s 3-CD set Touch Three (Touch), Niblock recorded Krieger playing each of the 13 notes that comprise the theme from Charlie Parker’s “Parker's Mood” for 15 seconds each, then repeated the sequence six times. The layering produces fascinating acoustic phenomena like beating, where sonic interference results in hypnotic, undulating waves of sound. It's simple on the surface, but if you concentrate, microscopic movements reveal a gorgeous level of detail.

At 8 PM on Friday, April 20, Niblock will give a free concert at the Gahlberg Gallery at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm providing the source material. The performance is in conjunction with a gallery show of Niblock's video and film work, which runs through May 26. (There’s an opening reception on Thursday, April 19, from 6 to 8 PM.)

Here’s a six-minute excerpt from the piece “Harm,” which features the cellist Arne Deforce. It’s taken from the above-mentioned Touch Three. You can listen below or click here to download.

The latest incarnation of the Vandermark 5, with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm replacing longtime trombonist Jeb Bishop, has just released its first recording, A Discontinuous Line (Atavistic). The sonic differences aren't huge, and Ken Vandermark still borrows from a wide array of sources for his episodic tunes, but the new lineup has sanded away some of the postbop shimmer that was on the group’s last few albums. Lonberg-Holm thickens the stew, laying down pizzicato vamps and commentaries as other members take solos, and his bowed parts in the contrapuntal arrangements give the music more heft and a less burnished sound.             

What surprises me about the disc is that Vandermark hasn’t returned to the more raucous sound of the group's early days. Since Lonberg-Holm can kick up noise and chaos as well as anyone, I assumed (mistakenly, it turns out) that his involvement was designed to help the band pack a bigger wallop. While there are some intense passages, like the cellist’s heavy but groovy sawing on “Some Not All,” Vandermark explores a wide range of sonic possibilities on the new disc, which includes some the group’s most tender recordings.

The Vandermark 5, along with a trio of reedist Peter Brötzmann, V5 bassist Kent Kessler, and Lonberg-Holm, plays a record-release show on Wednesday, November 8, at the Hideout.

The music lineup for November’s Sun Ra symposium, Traveling the Spaceways, has been announced. It will take place at the Hyde Park Art Center, which is also hosting Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago's Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68, a major exhibition of art and ephemera from Sun Ra’s Chicago days. (My piece for the Reader on the exhibition is here.) At the symposium, short performances will be sandwiched in between various discussion panels. On Saturday, November 11, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and his trio will play Sun Ra tunes; later in the day saxophonist David Boykin and his group Expanse will perform his “The Solar Suite,” which is dedicated to Sun Ra. The following day reedist Ken Vandermark will debut his Sun Ra Composer Quartet (with him and Dave Rempis on baritone saxophones, and Frank Rosaly and Mike Reed on drums), and flutist Nicole Mitchell leads her group.

On Friday, November 10, before the symposium starts, Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore will play in a quartet with pianist Jim Baker, Sun Ra alum and bassist Rollo Radford, and drummer Avreeyal Ra at the Hideout. My Barbarian, a troupe of artists and musicans from LA that includes art curator Malik Gaines (who is speaking at the symposium), opens.