FRIM fall festival
The Association for Free Improvised Music
ABOUT
Back for its third edition, the annual FRIM FALL Festival features some of the most cutting-edge experimental and improvised music floating in and around the worlds of jazz, electronica, noise, new music, pop music, and folk music traditions. This year, FRIM will be partnering and presenting the festival at the socialist and progressive theatre, Tribunalen, located in the heart of Södermalm.
Our 2024 edition has artists from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Kenya, UK, Germany, France, USA and the Netherlands all presenting unique approaches to improvisation sitting squarely at the forefront of contemporary practice.
FRIM (The Association for Free Improvised Music) was founded in 1976 to create a platform for free improvised music in Sweden and to promote the ongoing discussion about improvised music as an artform. These days FRIM arranges concerts and festivals of improvised music in Stockholm. Since
2017, FRIM is running a monthly concert series at Fylkingen, and furthermore, since 2021, a record label: FRIM Records.
FRIM is generously supported by Stockholms Stad, Region Stockholm, Kulturrådet and Konstnärsnämnden. FRIM is also thankful for support from Fylkingen and Tribunalen.
Membership
Sign up to be a FRIM member on the FRIM website frim-stockholm.se
FRIM membership costs 100 SEK each calendar year. You receive membership prices for all of our concert series.
Mail frim@frim-stockholm.se
or Swish FRIM 123 63 014 77 to become a member.
Please include your name in the Swish payment. By being a member, you agree to FRIM having your email.
PROGRAMME
August 22
GÉSIR (France)
Julien Dessailly – pipes, gaïda
Jean-Luc Guionnet – organ
Camille Émaille – metallic percussion
Asger Thomsen (Denmark)
Solo bass
Magda Mayas (Germany)
Solo Prepared Electric Clavinet
August 23
VAKAMRU (England, Sweden, Germany, France, Kenya)
Elvin Brandhi – vocals, field recordings, tapes, vinyls, instruments
KMRU – Electronics
Joel Grip – bass
Antonin Gerbal – drums, percussion
Topias Tiheäsalo (Finland) – solo guitar
Johan Jutterström Quartet (US, Sweden, Norway, France)
Johan Jutterström- sax
Sakina Abdou – sax
Joel Ring – cello
Ryan Packard – drums
August 24
Holistic Trio (England, Norway, Holland)
Veslemøy Narvesen – drums, percussion
Ketija Ringa – flutes
Kit Downes – B3 organ
Emil Strandberg (Sweden) – solo trumpet
Niklas Persson Trio (Sweden)
Niklas Persson, saxophone
Patric Thorman, bass
Raymond Strid, drums
PARTICIPANTS
Gésir
”There are three of us. There’s percussion, organ and bagpipes. On the percussion side, there will probably be a lot of metal and some mask insistence. On the organ side, it will depend on the venue, the organ and their relationship, but there will probably be broken grooves on the feet side, almost electrically timed incisions on the hands side, and when they both have them under their fingers, reed dialogues between the feet and hands. As for the bagpipes, they will probably be upright, standing at the centre of the debates, dialogues and insistence; illuminating and separating, anarchic, the phases around them, and drawing, which may be melodic, their line in spite of everything.
From below, a tradition probably operates, but we don’t know it. So we much prefer the floors to the stands, the organs there to the organs up there, and the audience as close as possible.”
”Without alarm, without trial, without warning to the listener trapped below, the set begins from the top of the organ loft. Naturally, the music buzzes, bangs and structures the relationships between sounds, resonances and space. I’m not sure if it’s looking for epiphany, but if it’s beating the breach of an ultra pagan sacredness, that’s for sure. The high notes, for example, are violent, tense even for the most tenuous of them. And they nail your eyes to the masked heights from which the three swordsmen play. We know the trick by now: see to believe etc, cuckoo St-Thomas. But here we are blinded, or one-eyed for the best of us, and it’s the ear that receives the untempered keyboards, the skilful drones, the resurgences struck with splendour and accuracy.
It’s hard to avoid the illustration, to avoid imagining the OST of a crucifixion filmed by Tarkovsky, by receiving this music in the body. But it is in no way illustrative. It is simply music, and in that sense magnificent. The ear then becomes autonomous when it comes to accounts of battles, little wars painted on the illuminations and minutiae of the Middle Ages by Burgundian and Flemish painters. The brushstrokes are raw, rough, not looking for harmony but for something close to the necessary impetus. Grimacing at times, full of lumps and a vitality that surpasses the one who makes it tinkle. Here lies the radical beauty of Gésir.”
Asger Thomsen
The solo project of Asger Thomsen is an exploration of radical approaches to the double bass as an acoustic sound source. Improvising freely with use of objects and various extended techniques the music is inspired by noise and concrete sound.
He has played concerts in small venues and festivals all over the world and released three solo albums, all of them focusing on different aspects of the raw unaccompanied sound making without the use of overdubbing or other electronic equipment.
Quotes from the press:
“(…) It is that struggle that Thomsen beautifully voices here. But Thomsen struggles with that double bass throughout this album, it is strikingly physical music that he manages to create here. We hear him toil, scrape and wring in ‘Contortions’; wring, purge and scratch in the exciting ‘Spastics’ and create an equally strange sound world in ‘Samsa’, with more than thirteen minutes by far the longest part of this album.”
– Ben Taffijn, nieuwenoten.nl (translated from Dutch)
“The double bass produces countless strange voices, none are associated with conventional double bass, and some even sound like coming from hungry and angry alien insects.”
– Eyal Hareuveni, salt-peanuts.eu
Magda Mayas
Magda Mayas, born 1979, is a pianist and composer performer living in Berlin. Over the past 25 years she developed a vocabulary utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, using amplification, preparations and objects that become extensions of the instrument itself. Mayas has developed a set of techniques that draw on the history of prepared and inside piano vocabulary, but are highly individualized and expand the language for internal piano music making.
She holds a PhD in Music Performance and Interpretation from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Since 2019, she is the program coordinator and teaches improvisation at Luzern University of applied Sciences and Arts.
Mayas performs internationally solo and in collaboration with a large number of musicians and composers. Current projects are Spill, a duo with drummer Tony Buck, a duo with Christine Abdelnour, Jane in Ether with Biliana Voutchkova and Miako Klein and Filamental, with Christine Abdelnour, Anthea Caddy, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies, Magda Mayas, Zeena Parkins, Aimée Theriot-Ramos, Michael Thieke.
Objects of interest, interpreting Tina Douglas’ scores on Room40
Solo LP ”Terrain” on Gaffer records
Solo ”Heartland” on Another Timbre
Johan Jutterström Quartet
Johan Jutterström has brought together a new quartet to premiere at this year’s FRIM FALL festival that features a cast of rising stars in the experimental jazz scene within Europe. Johan, a deft saxophonist in his own right, will be joined by French saxophonist, Sakina Abdou, Norwegian cellist Joel Ring and American/Stockholm-based percussionist, Ryan Packard. You may know Jutterström’s large ensemble, the Swedish Septet STHLM svaga, which has merged the delicate nature of playing at extreme dynamics (in this case quite softly) with new takes on the language of jazz and post-bop to create a singular musical experience. This new quartet will continue, in some cases, on that same trajectory but with new compositions by Jutterström that will bring new ideas to the fold within intricate and subtle chamber music.
Topias Tiheäsalo
is an improvising guitarist living in Turku/Åbo, Finland. Currently he is sharing his time between various forms of improvised music ranging from free jazz and free improvisation to baroque music and extended cinema performances. In 2022 he started a publishing platform Sormi Editions together with his partner, visual artist and graphic designer Pauliina Mäkelä. In 2023 Sormi released Tiheäsalo’s solo LP Skeletons which is a collection of ’Free Jazz Ballads’ – skeletal improvisations on compositions by Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. Whether playing electric or acoustic guitar or earlier plucked instruments, his focus is always on the delicate aspects of sound: sparsely and slowly delivered resonances, overtones, chords and single notes.
VAKAMRU
An exploding band bringing together four strong personalities from today’s Post-European improvised and experimental music scene. Their music is hypnotic and cathartic, made from spasmodic rhythms and words of mouth. Their uncommon use of hands, feet and voices redefine sound and form through acoustic instruments and electronic machines. A healing dreaming wake of the ill fated tongue. From the knowledge they developed in bands like [Ahmed] and Yeah You!, they can deploy an ancient and modern music : all at once (now and then).
Originally from Wales, Elvin Brandhi improvises her texts and builds aberrant rhythms from field recordings, tapes, vinyls, instruments and voices.
Kamaru, aka KMRU, is a Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist whose work is grounded on the discourse of field recording, noise, and sound art. His work posits expanded listening cultures of sonic thoughts and sound practice to consider and reflect on auditory cultures beyond the norms.
Joel Grip is a fiddler of situations and transforms them instantaneous through sound and the tension they possess. His tone and timing heralds a long history of bass and its resulting movements.
An eclectic musician, Antonin Gerbal has been developing a unique approach to rhythms and sound for ten years, mainly on drums and percussion.
Trio Holistic
With Veslemøy Narvesen on the drums, Kit Downes on the organ and piano and Ketija Ringa on the flute, Trio Holistic appeared for the first time ever at the A’LARME festival 2023. The three artists work at the intersection of composition and improvisation. Individual themes written by the musicians for one another establish a foundation for collective journeys into the realm of possibility offered by the unusual combination of their respective instruments. At the same time, Narvesen’s kinetic energy and chemistry with Downes and Ringa guarantee an electric performance filled with surprises. The three musicians are active on the European music scene in a number of different constellations both with their own projects and as side-members.
Emil Strandberg
Emil Strandberg is one of the most versatile improvisers on the Swedish jazz scene. He has played classic jazz with the Umlaut Big Band and free improvisation in the trio Stockholm Sweden Polyphony (with Sten Sandell and Patric Thorman). He has released five albums with different combos playing his compositions, and has over the years played in a lot of different bands, including Seval, Oskar Schönning, Hederosgruppen and Vilhelm Bromander Unfolding Orchestra.
However, the core of all this music is the improvising: the interplay, the creating in the moment, the quest for an individual expression on the trumpet – an expression that could be labeled abstract lyricism.
Once in a while Emil performs solo, but it is rare, and it is a treat to hear him work without an ensemble or any precomposed material. Instead, all attention is directed to the trumpet.
Niklas Persson Trio
Gothenburg-based saxophonist, Niklas Persson, brings together legendary Swedish drummer, Raymond Strid and the versatile Patric Thorman on bass. Expect a joyous evening of buoyant free jazz from three of Sweden’s finest improvisers.
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