Gayle Young and Robert Wheeler – From Grimsby to Milan (Fairpoint Recordings, 2025)

By Nick Ostrum

A mysterious bass hum slithers into a series of fluttering beeps and stutters and creaks. Twangy strings, resembling a muted and detuned sitar, then chimes pierce the background, a long with a choice selection of swipes, beeps, and tweaked nobs, or tuning keys. Sine tones, echoed pixilations, a heavy buzz join for a while. It turns out, this delicious computerized nature walk all comes from two musicians: Robert Wheeler on EML ElectroComp 101 and Gayle Young on her own invention, the amaranth .

From Grimsby to Milan captures the duo on six compositions like that described above. The density runs from sparse to moderate and the elements remain discrete, evoking tightly angled collage-work. It begs and rewards close listening. Rarely do the pieces fall into anything resembling a groove or melody, or even clear movements. Still, the cuts cohere, even as they wander from incidental and acousmatic sounds to glitchy electro ambience and string-entangled-ring tones and scratches of various haptic and synthetic origin. This makes those moments when semblances and hints at melodic progression, frequently derived from the amaranth, develop for a few seconds to, in the 16-minute finale Constant Harmony, several minutes. In places like this one can hear the best of Young and Wheeler’s playful rapport. Young seems intent on drawing out more “music” from the collaboration. Wheeler seems intent on making her stumble, but in the process feints toward, then embraces stretches of rhythmic scratching and tonal dispatches from his ElectroComp. They even fall in (and out of) line, flirting with a sort of harmony toward the middle of the piece, before Young leans into a droning rhythm and Wheeler returns to his role of agitator.

What is remarkable about this duo is the fine line they walk between cacophony and quiet. From Grimsby is neither. Noises rarely overwhelm, leaving them open to textural listening. They also persist at moderate levels. Never does this dip too far into lowercase territory. But the energy is harnessed and, in all its curiosity and exploration, the duo never really break that energy in either direction. Young and Wheeler clearly were on the same aesthetic page on this one and exercise considerable self-restraint to remain there.

From Grimsby to Milan is available as a CD and download here.

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Ivo Perelman and Wadado Leo Smith - Duologues 5 (Ibeji, 2026)

By Sammy Stein 

Ivo Perelman continues his ‘Duologue’ series, this time teaming up with trumpet player Wadada Leo Smith, who needs little introduction to readers of this column. These are players with contrasting voices, and instruments with which either player could dominate, but that never happens in this recording, because, as ever, Perelman chooses those with whom he communicates carefully.

This recording is a statement of intent from the opening with Perelman ringing out repeated, then varied phrases, over which Smith enters with trumpet, adding a subtle, then less subtle voice into the mix. Perelman may have set the tone, but Smith changes it, as only he can, and Perelman willingly changes his take to suit. Gone is the melodic tone, and Perelman replaces it with breathy tones reflecting the intonations of the trumpet. The track is spacey in that each musician has room to develop lines, and the texture remains light and conversational.

The second track sees each musician entering the flow of the music, as full-throttle improvisational sequences segue into occasional melody, largely from the sax but also from the trumpet. Smith creates the path toward intentional musical mayhem, and Perelman slots his sax melodics and harmonies in. At times, there is a competitive air, but at others, there evolves that wonderful sense of two musicians entranced by and listening to each other. The dynamism is intense, with both instrumentalists finding space to free solo, and support – the intensity can be almost tangibly felt.

Track 3 sets off at a pace, with Perelman introducing melodic phrases, under which Smith trips off reflective phrases in response to Perelman’s voice. Later, the roles swap, and Perelman is reacting to Smith. Toward the final phrases, Smith excels and raises his trumpet sounds in melodic triumph – well, almost melodic.

Track 4 is a different kind of beast, with lashings of sonic texture provided by both musicians, with an energy that increases as the track progresses. The art of listening is aptly demonstrated here, as Perelman's musical motifs are picked up, changed, and thrown back at him by Smith, who seems to relish the changes Perelman introduces and adds some of his own. Perelman's gentleness in the midsection is tempered by the delicacy of Smith’s delivery, and when Perelman develops a thematic section, Smith simply drops out and lets him have the space.

Track 5 is a wonderful conversation between sax and trumpet, each instrument's tone and range explored and developed, with the topsy-turvy nature of the sonic landscape further tilted as Smith leads Perelman along musical pathways not explored before, which Perelman gleefully follows. Track 6 is lively and energetic with a dancing mode created first by Smith, then Perelman, who picks up the theme, not in phrases but insertions of notes perfectly placed to intercept the rise and fall of Smith’s phrasing with uncanny accuracy. Like a magician producing yet more magical delights from his pockets, Perelman just keeps delivering, and Smith responds. Noisy, full- on improvisation at its best.

The final track celebrates both instruments from the trumpet’s opening blast to the final harmonics. One recording, two instruments, two masters. You really can’t ask for more than that.

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GoGo Penguin – Necessary Fictions (XXIM Records, 2025)

By Don Phipps

What is it about GoGo Penguin? While neither art, sound experiment, nor cerebral exercise, the music of Necessary Fictions is enjoyable. Call it a guilty pleasure - like popcorn while watching a movie – a comfort food for the ears – delivering a sense of wellbeing inside grounded reality (structure). The trio of Chris Illingworth (piano, synth), Nick Blacka (double bass, bass guitar, synth), and Jon Scott on drums are backed on some numbers by a small string ensemble and guitar, and guest vocals courtesy of violinist Rakhi Singh and guitarist Daudi Matsiko.

The tunes on Necessary Fictions do not generate heat. Instead, they lollygag along – more akin to giant blossoms in a pond responding to the day’s elements – wind blowing them about, rain pouring down, and on sunny days with slight breezes, floating gently on the water. There’s a subtle head nodding vibe to many of the numbers – propelled by syncopated rhythms, delicate synth patterns, and minimalism.

None of the pieces feature piano virtuosity. Illingworth prefers to dwell on single notes and avoid tonal clusters, notes that present a unassuming lyrical odyssey that rotate around a center. And he’s not afraid of repetition. Listen to his piano on “The Turn Within,” “Naga Ghost,” and “State of Flux” for textbook examples.

Scott’s drums provide a galloping yet grounded push to the effort. And he works in some variation. For example, he uses his hands to tap on the drums on “Luminous Giants” and his use of the tom tom provides a bounce on “Silence Speaks.” There’s also his tap-filled brushwork on “Fallowfield Loops” and the interesting syncopation he employs on “Living Bricks In Dead Mortar” and “Naga Ghost.”

Like his bandmates, Blacka’s bass work lays down straightforward lines. There’s nothing free form –just a solid bottom with enough emotional heft to keep the music flowing. Listen to his counterpoint on “Fallowfield Loops.” Or the select fingerings he chooses for his bass solo on “Naga Ghost.” Or the foundation he provides on “The Turn Within.”

The album might have a miss or two. For example, the poppish “Forgive the Damages” might have been omitted. This same poppish approach is evidenced in “What We Are And What We Are Meant To Be.” But in the latter, the piece is planted more firmly in its ethereal effects -the synths providing a drifting background behind the development while Scott’s scattered drumbeat delivers.

Still, despite the highly structured arrangements, many of the rotating motifs create a dancing, hovering aura – an embrace of the beautiful aspects of our world – wind in hair, warm ocean spray on skin, distant vistas, and circular rainbows. Who can begrudge happiness? And, maybe, these are necessary fictions. Enjoy.

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Tom Varner, Joe Morris, Stephen Haynes, Kenny Warren, Josh Roseman – A New Planet (self-released, 2025)

By Dan Sorrells

Tom Varner has had a long career asserting the French horn as a jazz instrument, both as a pioneering hornist and an engaging composer. In recent years he’s leaned into small groups and more open forms, bringing the radical loosening of improvisation back into the chamber along with his horn. On A New Planet he convenes an unorthodox group, setting up a series of encounters in which steadfast guitarist Joe Morris ventures into the breathy and buzzing milieu of a brass quartet.

There’s a strong sense across these 16 tracks of five musicians arriving on an autumn day with shared sympathies, working toward a shared understanding through a process that’s easy to imagine as a genial dialogue. The quartet (Varner plus Haynes on cornet and flugelhorn, Warren on trumpet, and Roseman on trombone) softly converses in sounds that remind how near these instruments are to breath and voice. Murmurs and low whispers that barely set lips vibrating; friendly recountings in long, slurring lines; declamations of hope and melancholy that at times louden in enthusiasm. Morris’s instrument understandably sets him apart. His fleet runs are often the most direct and melodic statements, but he deploys subtle effects to soften his attack or even steps back altogether, one moment the focus of attention, the next receding into the group.

But the conversational metaphor extends only so far. Is that warm, low drone Roseman or Varner? Which thread of that rising whorl is Warren and which Haynes? The boundaries between individual voices slip, and as the fluid brass forms intermix, their density thickening and thinning, metaphors of environment and terrain begin to stir. In his notes on the session Varner portrays Morris’s guitar as “an observer interacting with a shifting new landscape, the landscape created by the brass,” an image conjured most vividly as Morris winds through the undulating uplands in “Have We Arrived?” Gleaming tracks like “A Reflective Rest” and “For the Many That We’ve Lost” edge towards the powerful harmonic luster one might expect with a brass ensemble, but the horns are concerned less with tonal harmony than with a harmony of timbre: viscous, gold, and glowing, a kindred meld of sound. Consonance here is not the agreement of notes but instead a quality of tone, and equally a quality of engagement.

The question posed with “Have We Arrived?” and the journeying image within it strongly resonate with Morris’s own thinking about free music and the “perpetual frontier.” Varner remarks upon how drastically the world seemed to change in the short time between entering the studio in October 2024 and releasing the music the following September. A darkness has set in and the wilderness sprawled out ahead evokes fear and not promise. But to arrive implies you’ve reached the place you intend to stop. The question holds uncertainty, but also an opening. The kind of music-making on A New Planet is a model—foolhardy and utopian, perhaps—of coming together in good faith to negotiate the uncertainty, to keep changing the frame, working the details out as you go until that opening appears and you step through into somewhere new.

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Karl Bjorå Trio - The Essence (Sonic Transmissions, 2025)

By Brian Earley

 The whimsical asides and tumbling surprises of Karl Bjora and his trio on The Essence, his latest 2025 release for Sonic Transmissions Records, delightfully plays with listener expectations. A tune, for example, that opens with an acoustic bass solo may soon become more video game soundtrack than jazz guitar trio. An established moderate tempo may pivot laughably to Keystone Cops by song’s end. Ticklingly silly plucked guitar strings open swiftly to a soundscape as wide as the dawn.

Without knowing Bjora’s discography, then, what would come as the craziest surprise of all is his deep connection to composition. However, the guitarist has built a career, albeit short (he was born in 1991), working in ensembles using compositions that are so much fun to listen to they hardly feel complex at root, though painstakingly complicated they are. Just listen, for example, to Signe Emmeluth’s Spacemusic Ensemble, or to his own rich compositions on 2021’s Whimsical Giant.

For this date, Bjora has assembled fellow Norwegian Ole Mofjell on drums and Norway born and Texas transplant polymath Ingebrigt Haker Flaten as the man with the bass. The trio works, or rather plays, seamlessly, as though successful navigation through these snaking songs were inevitable. Joy glows immediately from the album’s opener, “Consider Yourself Encouraged.” After laughing at the dry irony of the song’s title, one hears Bjora and company cruising swiftly out of the gate. “FOMO” is Wes Montgomery laughing in a child’s toy sailboat as it bounces on ripples and tumbles over waterfalls until the composition opens to broad and deep waters of a soundscape so beautiful I almost cried listening to it for the first time.

If there is a storm in “Maelstrom,” the date’s third piece, it is the electronic surprises the song has in store for its listeners. The trinkling of “Smokes” leads to the album’s closer and title track, “The Essence,” which encounters listeners with layered polyrhythms as it fights its way upstream to the silence that remains as the collection ends and the listener stands on shore again now encouraged to play with sandcastles and children’s toy buckets rather than contemplate the meaning of life at sunset.

None of this is to say this isn’t serious music. It is powerful and deeply moving at times, but the trio performs with such freedom within Bjora’s structures that the whole journey feels like a game to them. And what power it is to help others know the essence of wisdom is finding the humor in the maelstrom.

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Sakina Abdou & Daunik Lazro

For the 25th anniversary of her radio program "A l'improviste" on public service station France Musique, Anne Montaron invited musicians to perform at Carreau du Temple in Paris on November 17. The players included Yuko Oshima/Olivier Lété, Alexandra Grimal/Christiane Bopp/Benjamin Duboc, solos by Joëlle Léandre and Michael Nick, a quintet of students and an inter-generational tenor saxophone duo of Sakina Abdou & Daunik Lazro. The idea stemmed from Lazro having expressed his admiration for the younger player. A video was made of the 20 minute encounter.

The full program is available to listen on replay.

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سماع [Ahmed] - [Sama'a] (Audition) (Otoroku, 2025)

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Ahmed, with their new double LP, made it on my top two for another year. That’s certainly the least important thing, fact or whatever that you will read in the following words. The quartet, consisting of the same line-up over a decade now, defies firstly categorization and, secondly, the short-lived nature of groupings and collectives around improvisational music.

But should Ahmed be labeled or tagged under improvisation? I think not. Not because their music lacks the magic of this practice. Not at all. It’s probably (and I want to use this word a lot as many elements of their music lie in grey zones that, many times, are difficult to pin down or, even, identify) because what they try to achieve is far more interesting, intriguing and difficult.

And what that is exactly? Well, here is another grey zone, while I’m entangled by my own subjectivity and fondness of their music – all at the same time. I liked Ahmed’s music right from the start, I’m proud to say that I have been a champion of their music from the very beginning. Apart from being proud, I’m happy because I see (or feel, it seems more fitting) that the vision of four individuals, that is four musicians, can still infiltrate into a collective summary.The music of Ahmed. And that is, certainly, not an easy task. As someone who finds it hard and difficult to share his image and hope for this world, I must (we all must) acknowledge those who struggle, share, and succeed to present their image as a collective force and exchange of ideas. Those people are, among of the few as the trajectory of modern societies moves rapidly into creating solitary beings, the four musicians, from all over Europe, that construct the music of Ahmed.

Someone would comment that Ahmed’s music is not new by definition. Yes, the easy answer would be that it is a re-working of Ahmed Abdul Malik’s music. This preoccupation with “newness” and all this faux progress is what modern capitalism is selling us in order to keep us happy, while the planet is collapsing. Some, rhetorical maybe, questions about the aforementioned thought: how can someone distinguish between old and new? Is anything really new, so, per se, totally freed from the past? Should, anything, be totally freed from the past? Is the present and, subsequently, the future a continuation of the past? Is it better? And what “better” exactly is? I could go on like this, as those questions are at the core of this reviewer’s thoughts (and so is Ahmed’s music, ha!), but you get the idea I believe.

Where Ahmed’s music stands in all this? Well, if you ask me (or listen to the music and its ideas and decide on your own) it doesn’t answer any of the above in particular and it does, very passionately, at the same time. Malik’s music, any music of importance, comes from the past and continues into the future. The present is the medium, the place where the two (past, future) collide. But they are not for sale; they have nothing to do with the mythology of the great past, or the capitalistic orthodoxy of the optimistic, “better”, “progressive” future.

Ahmed’s music is totally into the three dimensions (past, present, future) because it is uncontrollably avoiding time categories. So, in a way, it is so against the amenities of the society of the spectacle (capitalism, again, that is) where everything is defined so to be tagged with a price. It is also aggressive, passionate, full of energy, maybe a little bit free jazz, also consisting of fragments of collective improvisation. Drums, double bass, alto sax and a piano.

Not that it matters to you dear reader, but I surpassed the five hundred word limit that I have on my writings for this site. The only reason for this, is that Ahmed’s music is important. A rare occasion, idea and feeling indeed.

Listen:

@koultouranafigo

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Tomas Fujiwara - Dream Up (Out of Your Head Records 2025) *****

By Gary Chapin

I went through a phase, decades ago, when I had a deep fascination with like-instrument groupings. The World Sax Quartet, the Clarinet Summit, Rasputina, the League of Crafty Guitarists, ROVA, et many cetera. Among these was Max Roach’s M’boom , a septet that set expectations for jazz percussion ensembles. They included trap sets AND every other thing you can imagine that makes a pleasing sound when you hit it. Part of M’boom’s charm was its outre quality, but part was its connections to traditions from the Caribbean and other places. (The Balafon Marimba Ensemble was a rabbit hole that I well and truly went down.)

All to say there is solid ground in my mind for Thomas Fujiwara’s Percussion Quartet to build from and excel upon—not to mention his own long experiences and collaborations, such as the brilliant Pith (reviewed here). Let’s thank whatever stars (or granting organizations) had to align for Roulette to commission this work.

I’m tempted to just say “there are a lot of drums!” But quantity, in this case, has a quality all its own. Fujiwara does “drums and compositions;” while Tim Keiper comes with “donso ngoni, kamale ngoni, calabash, temple blocks, timbale, djembe, castanets, balafon, found objects, and other percussion.” Kaoru Watanabe wields “o-jimedaiko, uchiwadaiko, shimedaiko, and shinobue.” Patricia Brennan brings her sublime vibes to the mix.

You can hear Brennan shimmer in the opening piece, a haunting reflective number that leans into the disquieting, intentional imperfection of the vibe’s timbre. From this beginning we are reminded that the usual rules don’t apply, that slow-slow and fast-fast can play in the same space together, and that the absence of melodic information from many of these instruments (though there are also many pitched percussion) leaves an opening for other types of information.

One of those types of info would be the ritualistic, spiritual, and uncanny. “Mobilize,” for example, brings to mind New Orleans parade beats, but also the Dr. John voodoo vibe of Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya-Ya(“dance ka-lin-da-ba-doom!”), and “Blue Pickup” comes at us with a martial urgency. Prayer, war, and mating are the most ritualized activities of the human creature, and all have historically required the services of the drummer in order to achieve transcendence—for good or ill.

As the record progresses, Fujiwara uses the drums and their possibilities, stacking up little instruments and large—and again, Brennan’s vibes—in ways that feel impossibly complex but also inevitable. It’s the sort of paradox one expects of a great composer—it’s kinda their job—and the inclusion of rock solid improvisers adds generative chaos to the mix. Dream Up is an extraordinary act of emergence. It’s like water. Neither oxygen nor hydrogen are wet, but bring them together and they sustain all life on the planet. Dream Up’s quality of sustaining—life? soul? spirit? joy?--is equally a function of the quality that arises between the individual percussionists. Five stars.

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Album of the Year 2025

To kick off the New Year, we are happy to announce the Free Jazz Collective's top album of 2025. Last week, we presented our collective top recordings, drawn from the top 10 lists of participating Free Jazz Collective reviewers and then held an internal vote for the top album of the year.

And the results are ... 

#1, Anna Högberg Attack - Ensammseglaren (Fonstret)

After a brief public hiatus from music, in which our 2025 top album winner Anna Högberg worked as a nurse and on her music, the Swedish saxophonist is back with her group, albeit with a refreshed line-up and a bunch of new ideas. Ensammseglaren is a moody masterpiece, steeped in the mourning of her father's passing, Högberg digs deep. Here is what Ferruccio Martinotti writes:

Heavy clouds are incumbent, waters are grey, rotten seaweed all over, the air smells of storm: haunted atmosphere, shows the picture; amazing, jaw dropping sounds, shows the Attack. The distorted, infectious drone guitars, the atonal piano interventions don’t leave any doubt, the boat is at the mercy of the streams, peace turning into chaos and the other way around, a very few and foggy landmarks. But when the band unfolds all the sails and set a large ensemble route, even delivering almost fanfare-esque texture, here it really seems that such a collective dimension could be powerfully helpful to ease the mourning: not yet a flat sea, still some malevolent, sinister waves but the navigation became more secure and some rays of sun is now able to pierce the leaden sky.

Read the full review here.

#2, Wadada Leo Smith & Sylvie Courvoisier - Angel Falls (Intakt Records) 

Coming in second place in our vote is the excellent duo recording from trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier. It is such a stuning album that we had not one but three reviews of it! Writer Don Phipps describes it well:

Dissonance. Abstraction. Tonal clusters. Flurries. Rolling ostinatos. Ornate and defiant piercings. These are some of the various musical elements of Angel Falls, a striking masterpiece of space and sound generated by two of the best – the legendary Mississippi-born Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet (now 83) and the always fascinating Swiss pianist Sylvie Courvoisier. The duo draws on a range of influences and idioms to construct their tone poems. From the formal classical side, one can hear degrees of impressionism, Messiaen abstractions, and Charles Ives. Then there are bouncy, jagged blues passages (the ending of “Naomi’s Peak”) and of course plenty of improvisatory and experimental jazz.

Check out what Don, Stef and Ferruccio said about the album.

#3, Rodrigo Amado The Bridge - Further Beyond (Trost) 

In 2023 the top spot went to saxophonist Rodrigo Amado for his recording with his then new quartet "The Bridge." Beyond the Margins captured the collective's ears then and now, two years later, a second recording from the group has again hit the spot...

 Eyal Hareuveni, in his review, writes:

The quartet itself is a collective platform for creating free music that has a rare, ever-expanding, and uplifting spiritual power, with a rich perspective of the past and the present, bound in tradition while breaking free of it.  

Read the rest here.

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And so now entering 2026 ... it’s clear that the 2020s remain as unsettled as when they began, but the music we’ve been hearing—and the releases coming soon—suggest that the creative music community is still strong, inventive, and ready to find new sounds. As always, "a big hand" to our readers, writers, and, of course, all the musicians, for your engagement and your trust. You all are the reason we keep talking about the music that matters so much.

Thank you from us at the Free Jazz Collective!

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Zeena Parkins, Cecilia Lopez - Red Shifts (Relative Pitch Records, 2025)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

Don’t know you, but for us harp always meant Her Majesty Alice Coltrane first, then Dorothy Ashby and basically the topic was done. The Forum as well doesn’t push you to drill any further. Ah, yes, we saw a couple of years ago Shabaka playing with no less than two harps (!) and by mere chance our ears caught fragments of the likes of Brandee Younger and Alina Bzhezhinska. Anyway, in all the examples as above, harp sounded like harp. 

Q: “How the hell should a harp sound like if not like a harp?”

A: “More than legitimate to be asked, we try to explain.” 

Let’s put it this way: we simply filed that beautiful sound under a sort of time-related directory (The Past not The Present): strictly speaking for Alice, while Shabaka’s last incarnation (with shakuhachi and similar stuff) shaped a kind of spiritual jazz deeply influenced by Lady Coltrane. And by her harp(s). Then one day, joining the dots to track down Mette Rasmussen’s works (the most beautiful sport ever invented, second to skiing only), we bumped into Glass Triangle, a trio where the divine danish turbo-sax player is accompanied by Ryan Sawyer on percussion and Zeena Parkins on, oh christ, electric harp. From that moment on, harp entered, in its own right, the scope of our music (and the one of our credit card as well…). Zeena is most definitely a hell of a top notch artist, as her official bio notes clearly show. 

“New York based electro-acoustic composer/improviser, she’s a pioneer of contemporary harp practices. Using expanded techniques, object preparations and electronic processing she has redefined the instrument’s capacities. Concurrently, Parkins self-designed a series of electric instruments. She leans into the harp’s physical limitations pushing its boundaries and impossibilities. In her compositions, she utilizes collections, recombination, historic proximities, geography, tactility, spatial configurations and movement. Sonic presence and personality is revealed in explorations of subtle frequency shifts, feedback, over and under tones, melodic fragments, timbral and gestural intervals, perception and residues.” 

Her compositions have been commissioned by the Whitney Museum and the Tate Modern, as well as by choreographers like Merce Cunningham and Jennifer Lacey, her music soundtracked films of Daria Martin, Cynthia Madansky, Abigail Child, Mandy MacIntosh and Isabella Rossellini. Over a 30-year career Zeena has worked with an unlikely range of collaborators: Bjork, Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, Butch Morris, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Nels Cline, Elliot Sharp, Nate Wooley, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, Kim Gordon, Matmos, Chris Corsano, Anthony Braxton, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Ingrid Laubrock, Tom Rainey and many others. One of a kind, we told you. 

This time around, Zeena is teaming up with Cecilia Lopez. composer. musician and multimedia artist from Buenos Aires, currently based in New York. She works across the media of performance, sound, installation and the creation of sound devices and systems. Her work has been performed in several museums and galleries and her collaborators include Carmen Baliero, Aki Onda, Brandon Lopez, John Driscoll, Carrie Schneider and Lars Laumann among others. On “Red Shifts”, the first collaboration between them, out for Relative Pitch Records (one of the brightest stars among record companies’ galaxies) Cecilia is taking care of electronics, Red (a handwoven electronic instrument made from speaker wire) and synthesizers, while Zeena adds electric harp, acoustic harp and e-bow piano (an electronic device normally used for guitars that, creating a magnetic field, let the strings vibrate in a continuous motion) for an outcome of 8 pieces that drives the listener through a sonic labyrinth where traces of Ikue Mori or Eiko Ishibashi seem to show the exit: fake indications of course, there is no way to solve this free-electro Rubik's Cube but why the hell should we? 

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