FIRE&FLUX
Benjamin Kates / Alto Saxophone
Richard Gilman-Opalsky / Drums and Percussion
FIRE&FLUX is an improvising duo consisting of saxophone and drums that draws on various traditions in freejazz and improvisation, as well as on a variety of [+]FIRE&FLUX
Benjamin Kates / Alto Saxophone
Richard Gilman-Opalsky / Drums and Percussion
FIRE&FLUX is an improvising duo consisting of saxophone and drums that draws on various traditions in freejazz and improvisation, as well as on a variety of other music and genres outside of the mainstream that have inspired us. The two of us have been playing and practicing together for the past eight years.
FIRE&FLUX's improvisations are always accompanied with some text or imagery, both in performances and on record. At a performance, listeners may see a projection, an easel with imagery, or they may receive a program for the show. These measures are taken in order to anchor an otherwise extremely abstract music to particular ideas and arguments. Our improvisations, in other words, are a part of an effort to communicate particular things that we are thinking about, in addition to the experience of our sonic output. Our music is often accompanied with political reflections and critiques that address issues of social, economic and political inequalities, matters of foreign policy, and problems of political culture. This does NOT mean that we don't play pieces about love, music, happiness, and other more uplifting matters of the human spirit. We do. We try to express a broad range of feelings and thinking, to engage a diversity issues.
FIRE&FLUX generally utilizes four approaches to making music: 1) Some pieces are organized around written melodies-we play the melodies and improvise "outwards" from them, going "outside" of the melodies. 2) Some pieces are read off of a kind of "sheet music" on which tempo, volume, intensity, pauses, silences and solos are indicated, but where the actual notes and actual rhythms are wholly improvised under the guidance of the spirit or the meaning of the theme of the piece. 3) Some pieces could be called "game pieces." With these, each of us plays a predetermined role or "acts out" a predetermined relationship to/with the other player. 4) Finally, some pieces are entirely improvised, with no structural guidelines other than the meaning, the mood, and the spirit or the theme of the piece.
BENJAMIN KATES started playing saxophone in the 4th grade. He got serious in high school and started at NYU in 1996 as a music education majo
|
 |
Genre/Tags: 
Ringtones
Full Tracks
