Live Report:

Fred Frith and Paolo Angeli (w/ La Pieuvre)
    - Lille - L'Aéronef - November 18 2005


Friday November the 18th, was the day I went to see a concert of Fred Frith with Paolo Angeli, because not every night can be filled with booty bass.

Opening for them was La Pieuvre, "Grand orchestre d'improvisation placé sous la conduction d'Olivier Benoît", which are composed of 29 musicians, although there appeared to be less than that on the night, but I didn't count so I couldn't tell for sure. They were placed circularly in the middle of the room, with Olivier Benoit conducting from the center, and us the silly little audience surrounding them.
It started with a big BANG (for three minutes) and an hour later it ended with me being all happy. Very noticeable: the odd socks of one of the voice-people (like boat-people but with their voice, we won't call them singers because this is improvised music, we don't do it that way sir). It was the night of the feet just as much as the night of Improv, follow the review to know why. The interweaving of the participants was quite a show, and Olivier Benoit walking around in the center, patrolling the area while making code signs with his fingers and coupling groups of two or more players together to sustain a tone or certain angle was actually quite a fascinating experience to watch, just as the music itself would take off in incredible ways, a mostly vibrating effect, at times mantra-like, at times expertly cacophonic.

Half an hour later, after the room has been entirely cleared and transformed into an amphitheater-like venue (the celerity involved in the process pretty much making obvious to us the reasons behind the high frequency of stadium collapsing accidents), Fred Frith and Paolo Angeli walk up to the stage and take place. They both look extremely cute, Angeli looking utterly italian and Frith excessively british (what with that people's propensity to grow in width with age), but I'd still hit it.



Fred is barefoot, Paolo is red-striped socked (we're on first name basis because they vaguely looked in my direction), and they do the works (even though K.V. complained that Paolo didn't use the perpendicularly placed strings enough, a common complaint in puppetry). It's jazzy, it's gypsy, it's fucky, it's funny, it's pretty.







The rest of the photos of the concert are available here or through the Documents section.


More Info and Links:
FredFrith.com
PaoloAngeli.it
a little bit of info on La Pieuvre