Frith, Fred

The Happy End Problem (Music for Dance Volume 5)

Label: Recommended Records Country: USA

Frith's Music for Dance Volume 5 - two works for small ensembles, which were performed for each of Amanda Miller's dances created for The Pretty Ugly Dance Company. The first is based on Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, and the other a deliberately Western look at Japanes culture. According to Chris Cutler:

'Happy End' presents two, related, small-ensemble works for 6 and 7 musicians respectively - mostly strings of one sort or another, with percussion, flute, clarinet and electronics. Fred, violinist Carla Kilsteht and percussionist Willie Wynant play throughout providing continuity across the pieces, as the music constantly unfolds into new textures and dialects. Melody, harmony and rhythm are omnipresent, though not always obviously colluding, and the music moves with a constant assurance, never hesitating and never marking time. There are some affinities with Nicola Kodjbashia's luminous 'Solitary Walker' here (which it predates), particularly in its use of minimal instrumentation to maximum effect, popular materials, exquisite articulation and a kind of modest transcendence. The necessity and simplicity of these pieces conceals a catalogue of experimental techniques and novel ideas - there are those who'd have squeezed a score of albums from this material.