Search - Fred Frith, Ensemble Modern :: Traffic Continues

It's axiomatic in many contemporary music circles that post-60s free improvisation and New Music composition share many facets, not the least of which are the parallel studies in how tones and overtones can interact and how musical space can be used to better highlight textural matters. With Traffic Continues, guitarist and composer Fred Frith has carried the study of the New Music and out-jazz crossroads to new heights. He's enlisted, for the first segment of the two-part piece, Europe's Ensemble Moderne, picking up their catalog-deep knowledge of contemporary composition and sending them headlong through improvised passages that chatter and squiggle and pulse with brassy energy all the while. For the second installment of Traffic, Frith has added harpist Zeena Parkins and drum machinist Ikue Mori to the ensemble. Together, they pay homage to the late cellist Tom Cora and make a scrabbling go of it. The music wafts and explodes, grinds and soothes, juxtaposing Parkins's shimmering harp and a host of dissonances. It's not by any means for the faint of heart. But if you've found yourself immersed in Evan Parker or Iannis Xenakis to the exclusion perhaps of the other, check out this Frith display. It'll strike you with awe. --Andrew Bartlett