Kees Boeke and Fred Thomas play French and Italian medieval duos from the Modena & Squarcialupi Codices, as well as the music of Paolo da Firenze, Matteo da Perugia, Giovanni da Cascia, Ciconia, Francesco Landini, Lorenzo Masini and Guillaume de Machaut.
Kees Boeke – recorders
Fred Thomas – vielle
Kees Boeke is an internationally acclaimed artist in the field of early music, specialising in recorders and medieval fiddle both as a performer, teacher and director. He has recorded over 80 CDs with various labels including his own record label, Olive Music, founded in 2001. He has been published as a composer and editor of renaissance and medieval music (Zen-On, Schott, Donemus, Olive Music Editions).
His activities in the realm of medieval music began as a member of Kees Otten’s ensemble Syntagma Musicum in the mid 1970’s, continuing with the renowned ensembles Quadro Hotteterre (1968), Sour Cream (1972), and later Little Consort Amsterdam (1978) and Mala Punica (1989). In 2003 he founded his medieval ensemble Tetraktys.
Professor at the Institut fur Alte Music in Trossingen, Germany, Kees Boeke became Director of the Medieval/Renaissance program there. He was also professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Zurich for 25 years. Presently, he is in his seventh year as director of the medieval summer course Settimana musicale del Trecento in Arezzo, Italy. He regularly gives master classes all over the world including Amsterdam, The Hague, Tokyo, Seoul, Taiwan, Tel Aviv, Palermo and Innsbruck. Kees has lived in Toscana for over 40 years, where he makes organic olive oil. www.o-livemusic.com
South African cellist Abel Selaocoe is redefining the parameters of the cello. He moves seamlessly across a plethora of genres and styles, from collaborations with world musicians and beatboxers, to concerto performances and solo classical recitals.
Fred Thomas and Abel Selaocoe have been collaborating since 2021, when they recorded the album Where is Home?(Hae Ke Kae) for Warner Classics. Fred Thomas produced and played multiple instruments on this internationally acclaimed album, which featured Yo-Yo Ma and won Songlines Magazine best album of 2022. In a quartet with Dudu Kouate and Alan Keary, Thomas and Selaocoe have toured Europe’s most prestigious concert halls, including the Berlin Philarmonie, Köhlner Philarmonie, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Amsterdam Concertgebouw, as well as appearing on Later with Jools Holland.
Abel Selaocoe is an exclusive recording artist with Warner Classics and his debut album Where is Home?(Hae Ke Kae) was released on Friday 23 September 2022.
Fred Thomas & Phaedra Ensemble have been collaborating for the past six years. Thomas’ composition ‘Taking a Nap, I Pound the Rice’, for string quartet, percussion, prepared piano and spoken voice, was recorded and released by Phaedra in 2022.
The EP features Phaedra Ensemble string quartet, Maurizio Ravalico (percussion), Jill Feldman (voice) and Fred Thomas on prepared piano. The five-movement piece sets to music texts drawn from various writings of Thelonious Monk, Anton Webern, J.A. Baker, Morton Feldman and John Cage, and then re-assembled into poems by Fred Thomas.
Founded in 2014 by violinist Phillip Granell, Phaedra has evolved from its inception as a string quartet to a larger collective of like-minded performers, drawn from London’s diverse musical landscape.
2023 sees the culmination of their collaboration with the extraordinary vocalist/composer Meredith Monk, with the forthcoming release of their debut album featuring the first recording of her only string quartet Stringsongs plus two works for larger ensemble. The album will be released on ECM Records.
Previous UK performances include Kings Place, The Barbican, Kammer Klang @ Cafe Oto, Royal Festival Hall & Purcell Rooms, The Royal Opera House, and internationally at NYU Arts Center (Abu Dhabi), and La Seine Musicale (Paris). They have been broadcast and performed live on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance.fm.
Their ongoing VOX project explores the radical use of the human voice in music and performance, leading to a dozen new collaborative commissions and two concert series, featuring guest artists such as Heloise Werner (The Hermes Experiment), Neil Luck, Laura Moody and Bastard Assignments, alongside performances of Jennifer Walshe, Florent Ghys, Cassandra Miller, David Lang, and many others.
In 2017, they recreated two albums for live strings with Mercury Award-nominated singer Susheela Raman and performed internationally with Gondrong Gunarto Gamelan (Java) and Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals (Pakistan)
Since 2015, they have worked with multi-sensory arts collective Bittersuite, creating large-scale immersive experiences, including Held, a home listening experience developed in response to the Covid-19 crisis.
Fred Thomas curates an ongoing series at the legendary Sands Films Studios in Rotherhithe, inviting artists he admires to play duos or small ensembles followed by informal interviews delving into their artistic practice. Featuring Elizabeth Kenny, Abel Selaocoe, Kit Downes, Dudu Kouate, Gerry Hemmingway, Liam Noble, The Magic Lantern, Barnaby Keen, Saied Silbak, Julia Biel, Kadialy Kouyate, Preetha Narayana, Alice Zawadzki, Maurizio Ravalico, Ewan Bleach, Laura Jurd, Rob Luft, Elina Duni and Misha Mullov-Abbado. Production by Sands Films and Olivier Stockman.
As a fundamental part of his practice, Fred Thomas plays ancient bowed strings instruments such as the viella and viola da gamba, as well as double bass, electric bass, guitar, cavaco and tenor banjo.
Inhabiting their own stylistic realm encompassing mediterranean folk song, chamber music, improvisation and the world of acoustic jazz, this trio comprises the award-winning singer, multi-instrumentalist and song-writer Alice Zawadzki, joined by two of London’s most distinguished musicians, Fred Thomas and Misha Mullov-Abbado. The clear synergy harnessed by these three musicians is the result of almost a decade’s work together, drawing upon the successes and singular abilities of its members: multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer Fred Thomas, whose recent exceptional album for ECM Records received 5 stars from Gramophone Magazine, Misha Mullov-Abbado, whose stature as bassist and composer has garnered commissions from the BBC Concert Orchestra, and Alice Zawadzki, described by The Guardian as “a genuine original”. The group plays acoustic chamber music, guided by a special emphasis on intimacy, delicacy of sound, space and subtle interaction, qualities which have led them to ECM Records, whose founder Manfred Eicher produced their debut album ‘Za Górami’ in Lugano in 2023.
Album Liner Notes:
Za Górami (Behind the Mountains) is much more than a geographical place, though the cautionary tale of the young Maɫgorzatka certainly paints the Polish Carpathians vividly. An ancient rallying cry, this cryptic phrase summons something transcendental, reminiscent of ’Once upon a time…’ It’s in this spirit of openness that the ten stories of our album Za Górami unfold.
Collected on our travels and taught to us by our friends, these are songs we have learnt and loved together. Though our musical and cultural backgrounds encompass Europe, Russia and South America, we were all three born in England. This happenstance was the product of love, war, exile, the arbitrariness of borders and the yearning for a new life – all themes which are themselves woven through the narratives you’ll hear within. Gathered from Argentina, France, Venezuela, Poland and the deep well of Sephardic culture, these folk tales speak to the moon, the mountains, the rain, the madness of humans and the prophecies of birds.
Our trio relies on the intimacy of deep listening and a trust in our long-standing friendship. The discovery of what each song wanted to be was a patient process of contemplation, omission and distillation of ideas, animated by the flexibility of our instrumentation: voice, piano, double bass, violin, vielle and percussion. Za Górami was recorded behind the mountains of the Lugano Alps, under the nurturing guidance of Manfred Eicher. In a concert hall whose unique acoustic encourages delicacy of sound and space, we strived to be both free and controlled, to tread softly and to summon the night.
“This is a fascinating and musicologically daring concept. The basic form of the Baroque dance suite is maintained, but the actual movements are pic’n’mixed from the Partitas and French Suites: we open with a Sinfonia (Partita No 2) before proceeding to an Allemande (French Suite No 5), thence to a Corrente (Partita No 6), and so on. Two such ‘complete’ suites are presented.
If it were not for the persuasive pianism and musicality of Thomas, this would be easy to dismiss. It says much that he is almost as persuasive as Perahia in the latter’s DG recording in the Allemande of the French Suite No 5. Thomas lists Rosalyn Tureck as principal influence and there is a line of purity from first to last, delivered with a markedly multivalent touch. Remarkable.”
***** 5 stars – International Piano Magazine
“a boundary-blurring composer and improviser”
“Assembled with the ingenuity of a seasoned DJ”
“beautifully ruminative…the serious care and thought characterising Thomas’ acoustic choices happily extend into his pianism” – Gramophone Magazine
ARTIST STATEMENT: It took me a long time to pluck up the courage to record some of Bach’s solo keyboard music. Its emotional, intellectual, technical and spiritual demands seemed overwhelming. Twice I started only to quit the idea, daunted and feeling unready. Then, in a moment of lucidity, I wondered: when you’re dealing with the most miraculous body of human creation in all the arts, when are you ever ready? Life is short. Bach himself was not prone to procrastination. He produced a quantity and quality of music some consider literally unbelievable.
I recorded alone with a huge piano, trying to coax the monster-machine into behaving well. Why the piano and not something ‘authentic’? For one thing, it’s my first instrument, but ultimately it’s a tired question, certainly in comparison with the sheer wonder of the music itself. In the end, the most scholarly ruminations on the abstractness of Bach, or on the piano’s range of articulation, or on the futility of pursuing authenticity in the absence of an authentic audience, just can’t match the sonic revelation that, played with some imagination, Bach sounds good on a tenor banjo – more on that soon.
His music is the most transcendent, all-encompassing, wise and child-like thing I know. In the words of Bernard Chazelle, “Bach’s music is soft and gentle, often suffused with piercing tenderness. If his work has an unmistakable child-like quality, it’s because its spiritual aspirations, borne of faith, joy, grace, and wonder, call for the deepest seriousness – and no one is more serious than the child”. I have the immovable feeling – knowledge, almost – that Bach fathoms and encircles everything.
John Cage considered music from the past useful only to the extent to which it leads to the creation of new things, a view far removed from the occasional dogmatism of the historical performance movement. Though I value both viewpoints, my aim lies somewhere in between: to derive something personal from a combination of historical enquiry and poetic imagination, using fantasy to supplement the fragmentary knowledge that contextual study reveals. Furthermore, the violation of chronology – my choice and ordering of tracks – is an attempt to give this record narrative force.
Creative recording techniques also played an aesthetic role. Using many microphones and basing their blended combinations on inherent musical character enables each movement to inhabit a unique soundworld. This process became genuinely interpretative, post-production. Although relatively under-explored in classical music recording (where the goal is often to reproduce the ‘natural’ sound of a live concert), my aim is to treat recording technique as an independent, exploratory art form.
Recorded at the Royal Academy of Music, London, March and June 2015 Engineered and Mixed by Alex Bonney Mastered by Thomas Vingtrinier, Paris Produced by Fred Thomas Piano technician: Clive Ackroyd Piano: Steinway D
Here is Johann Sebastian Bach in transfigured light: with organ chorale preludes, vocal cantata movements and orchestral sinfonias – 24 pieces in all – transcribed for trio and solo piano by Fred Thomas, and threaded into a compelling new sequence by Manfred Eicher.
On Three Or One, Bach’s idiom is respectfully explored by three innovative players, a process Thomas describes as “quietly joyful,” and the trio pieces, primarily drawn from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein, acquire a fresh character in the hands of Kazakh violinist Aisha Orazbayeva and British cellist Lucy Railton, musicians more often associated with contemporary composition’s cutting edge.
Fred Thomas, who makes his ECM New Series debut here, has always worked across contexts and genres, and considers the trio’s wide-ranging experience “an incitement to creativity. Bach often re-used his own material and it is no surprise it came out differently each time. With his imaginative, technical and improvisatory powers, do we really believe that Bach would play the same thing the same way twice?” It’s a good question, and the key to the approach taken on Three Or One.
“Mesmerizing…utterly beguiles…an illuminating if idiosyncratic Bachian” – BBC Music Magazine
“Thomas’ ECM debut sees him elegantly arrange and reinvent a series of Bach sinfonias, vocal cantata and organ preludes” – The Guardian
“Lyrical and haunting. It’s hard to know what Bach would have thought of it, but it does seem to reveal deep secrets in the music, and it is, well, very much like nothing anyone has heard before” – All Music
“Let this programme sink in over several hearings and the music will quietly insinuate itself into your next playlist” – Gramophone
“One of the most transportive albums of the year” – Between Sound and Space
“Fred Thomas is an astonishingly fine musician…highly effective, and deeply affecting” – The Arts Desk
“Magnificent sonorities and meticulous transcriptions from Fred Thomas” – France Musique
“Fred Thomas transfigures the master…interpreted with nuance and extreme sensitivity” – FIP Radio
“The essence of Bach’s music is further magnified. A Bach record to be remembered” – RTBF Belgium
“Wonderfully musical, sensitively communicative” – Fono Forum
“Those led by their emotional response will be touched by Bach’s calm and grace. Church music becomes chamber music” – Stern
“Magnificently performed…Thomas manages to play Bach perfectly, or better still intimately…lively, current, eclectic, contemporary… A precious recording” – Giornale della Musica
“Be prepared for something different from what you can possibly imagine” – Yellow Box
“This is a beautiful album that is flawless in its conception and execution and plunges the listener into Bach’s world with a fresh perspective and set of ears. Essential listening” – JazzViews
“Thomas has shown himself to be both fearless and deferential in his interpretations. He remains faithful to the source, radical in execution but beholden to the intention…an easy, joyful listen” – Stereophile *****
“Intelligent and musical, sensitive and powerful…the pianist and magician Fred Thomas has created an opus that opens the ears; meditative and contemplative and at the same time expressly offering succour for our thoughts and feelings” – Neue Musik Zeitung
Recorded 2012/2018
University of Huddersfield,
courtesy of Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay
Engineers: Alex Bonney, Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay and Rob Sutherland (trios),
Elliott Parkin (solos)
Recording producer: Fred Thomas
Liner Photos: Phelan Burgoyne, Francis Fuego, Scarlett Casciello
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