KUD Mreža’s FriForma and FriFormA\V event serieses are back with five events for the spring 2019 period with five promising double bills from mid-February until late May at various locations in Ljubljana.
On 21 February, Thursday at 8 pm the concert cycle is welcoming back legendary Japanese guitarist Taku Sugimoto with his new trio, with French musician and sound artist Léo Dupleix and French double bassist Félicie Bazelaire at Klub Gromka. Both Sugimoto and Bazelaire have already performed on previous FriForma events, but Dupleix is giving his first concert in Ljubljana, and it is already known now that he is going to return in April to Metelkova for a two-week residency programme with Danish composer, researcher and theorsit Simon Roy Christensen at KUD Mreža’s artist-in-residence space Studio Asylum. The second set of the February event is going to be played by the voice-double bass duo of Irena Z. Tomažin and Tomaž Grom who are scheduled to record and release their debut duo recording later this year.
The March event sees the American-Hungarian free jazz trio of saxophonists Aram Shelton and István Grencsó, and drummer Szilveszter Miklós which group made its debut in Budapest in last November. Also on the bill: Slovenian jazz trio Acamar with Cene Resnik on saxophone, Matjaž Bajc on double bass and Urban Kušar on drums – the band is presenting their new album Tir released this January on Klopotec Records. This exceptional evening with two fierce free jazz sets is happening on 6 March, Wednesday at 8 pm, again at Klub Gromka.
British musician and sound artist Lee Patterson is spending a five-day residency in Ljubljana to work and record with Samo Kutin as a duo, and they are presenting their first-time collaboration on 3 April, Wednesday at 9 pm at Klub Gromka. The accompanying set is going to be a special audio-visual project entitled Зона (The Zone) by Vienna-based photographer and visual artist Igor Ripak and drummer Szilveszter Miklós. The audio-visual set is featured by the association’s new event series FriFormA\V.
On 14 May, Tuesday FriForma is joining the 50th anniversary festival of Radio Študent with two exciting sets: at last, the concert series is presenting the British-French quartet أحمد (Ahmed) in Ljubljana with Seymour Wright on saxophone, Pat Thomas on piano, Joel Grip on double bass and Antonin Gerbal on drums. The opening set of the May event is going to be performed by the duo of Slovenian pianist Kaja Draksler and Dutch guitarist Terrie ‘Ex’ Hessels.
FriFormA\V is coming with an audio-visual event in two parts at Kino Šiška on 28 May, Tuesday. French visual artist Golnaz Behrouznia and French composer François Donato are performing ElectroAnima Experiment, a multimedia set with computers and gesture controllers; then you can listen to an acousmatic music concert where sound artists François Donato and Mauricio Valdés are playing selected pieces of Slovenian contemporary composers.
In the meantime, KUD Mreža is preparing three Edition FriForma cd releases in collaboration with Ljubljana-based recording label Inexhaustible Editions: from last year’s Borderless Dissonance concerts two Slovenian-Austrian-Hungarian trios made their performances onto two exciting albums, the trio of Tilen Lebar, Gabriele Drab and Szilárd Benes; plus the trio of Dré Hočevar, Christine Schörkhuber and Bálint Bolcsó are both coming with their debut albums. The third recording is by Greek guitarist Tasso Savvopoulos‘ OUXPO quintet with trumpeter Brad Henkel, saxophonist Philipp Gropper, double bass player Felix Henkelhausen and drummer Dré Hočevar.
Draksler & Hessels-photo by Szymon Gasiorek
