Multi-instrumentalists Ruth Bruckner and Fred Thomas met in Tuscany in 2019, immediately connecting through their love of medieval music and in particular the viella. Performing on combinations of strings, recorders, prepared piano, tenor banjo and voice, their duo is dedicated to recording experiments, the Chantilly Codex, Bach, song-writing, extended techniques and free improv. Their first release is an exquisite madrigal composed by the medieval composer and theorist Paolo da Firenze.
Fred Thomas has been collaborating with Albanian/Swiss singer Elina Duni since 2017. Their album ‘Lost Ships’ was released in ECM Records in 2020, featuring Rob Luft, Mathieu Michel. Their second album together will be released on 2023, recorded at La Buissonne Studios by Gérard de Haro.
Elina Duni – Vocals Rob Luft – Guitar Mathieu Michel – Flugelhorn Fred Thomas – Piano and Drums
Born into an artistic family in Tirana, Albania, in 1981, Elina Duni made her first steps on the stage as a singer aged five, singing for National Radio and Television. In 1992, after the fall of the communist regime, she settled in Geneva, Switzerland, with her mother, where she started studying classical piano and thereafter discovered jazz.
‘Dick Wag – a Tribute to Richard Wagner’ is a new jazz trio dedicated to the notorious German composer, despised and idolised in equal measure. Comprised of the most unlikely collaborators, this tribute band attempts to reconcile itself to opera’s most depraved, politically divisive and love-hated little man. With huge dramatic scenes boiled down to discreet miniatures, each expressed on a single piece of paper and treated like found objects as a jazz musician might, the resulting improvisations teeter surreally between the playful lyricism of swing and the abstraction of modernist prepared piano grooves.
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Fred Thomas has masterminded these respectfully profane interpretations of Wagner’s sublime, bombastic, time-stopping, sexually suggestive and earth-shatteringly beautiful creations by assembling a seemingly dysfunctional trio of motley talents. Prepared piano legend Benoît Delbecq’s child-like and profoundly vocal outbursts miraculously synthesise with Ewan Bleach’s unparalleled sense of melody and tone, glued together by Fred Thomas’ foundational bass playing. Deadly serious and and deadly silly, ’Dick Wag’ serves up chunks hacked off masterpieces such as Tristan and Isolde, transforming them into grotesque parodies of Teutonic pomp, luscious jazz ballads, jingoistic marches and Ellingtonian jungle grooves. And if you listen closely, just audible between the cracks of these affectionate caricatures, is the unmistakable sound of Richard Wagner turning in his grave.
“Jazz listeners will be happy to hear that you don’t have to like Wagner to like Dick Wag but ironically it actually might be a good entry point…..an affectionate parody” – Jazzwise Magazine
“Transformation is the word! Unlike the case of the straight-forward transcription of Wagner´s music undertaken by the Uri Caine Ensemble, the Dick Wag Trio explores it in search of new paths towards an unknown musical space…This throbbing sonority acts a musical trough in which Wagner’s material is first drained and then reassembled as a constellation of darkness and light permeated by a movingly sensitive touch of humour – a kind of ironic new age minimalism viewed through the eyes of Debussy and, as always, Ellington.
I left the Vortex as satisfied as I do after a good performance in Bayreuth, with some of the most original paraphrasing of Wagnerian tunes I ever heard ringing in my ears” – MundoClasico
Richard Wagner has met his musical match in the person of the present-day Fred Thomas, an astonishingly versatile composer, arranger and producer…This is someone with a strong instinct to make new things happen in a brilliantly individual way…..a master of many instruments. – London JazzNews
Fred Thomas – double bass and arrangements Ewan Bleach – reeds Benoît Delbecq – (prepared) piano
Recorded at Alice’s Loft Studios, London, December 2017 Engineered and mixed by Alex Bonney Mastered by Peter Beckmann Artwork by Peter Beatty Produced by Fred Thomas
Fred Thomas works regularly with theatre companies The National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe. He was Musical Director for the Globe’s worldwide tour of ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ in 2016, as well as ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, ‘Twelfth Night’ & ‘Titus Andronicus’. Other productions include the NT’s “Pericles’ and the Globe’s ‘After Edward’. Fred has collaborated with, amongst others, Emma Rice, Michelle Terry, Nina Steiger, Nick Bagnall and James Fortune.
“Launce is a particular delight, especially in her interactions with multi-instrumentalist Fred Thomas who she claims as her dog Crab.” – inthecheapseats.co.uk
Recorded 2014 at St. Paul’s Hall, Huddersfield courtesy of Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay & University of Huddersfield Engineered & Mastered by Dominic Thibault Mixed by Alex Bonney and Fred Thomas Artwork by Ted Allen Produced by Fred Thomas
Some words……
There were several sources of inspiration for this recording: a sudden love affair with church organs, Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and Glenn Gould’s obsession with technology and how it relates to classical music.
Then I heard some lectures by the historian Hayden White that seem pertinent to the interpretation of music or art of the past. His ideas are a gift to anybody into period performance practice.
Here are some of Hayden White’s thoughts (paraphrased):
– How can a creative student of the past use imagination to supplement the kind of knowledge, always fragmentary, always incomplete, often hidden, that historical methodologies dig up? Is there an essence that you can derive from a combination of so-called scientific enquiry and poetic imagination, without transforming fact into fiction? In fact, what is the status of fact and fiction? Can they even be clearly demarcated?
– History can be an artistic treatment of reality. Novelist Toni Morrison says her book ‘Beloved’ is “historically true in essence, but not strictly factual”.
– Literary devices such as the anecdote or epigraph are instruments for treating the past artistically, for interpreting facts poetically, for drawing attention to your message by giving it formal coherence. Form articulates or even enacts message. These literary devices are poetic precisely in so far as they draw attention to their own processes of production. They tell you something about the text itself.
– To tell things chronologically results in a chronicle. To relate a history you must violate chronology, and it’s this that gives it narrative force. Why do we want a narrative or story? Because identifying the structure that holds events together in a particular pattern of cause and effect or functional relationship is not enough; the dramatisation of events is key i.e. to separate agents into protagonists/antagonists, strong/weak, agents/patients and thus extract meaning.
In my mind at least, all this relates deeply to recording music of the past. In the case of ‘electrofeit’, I recorded the fugues by over-dubbing (multi-tracking) the voices. Starting off by recording a whole fugue with all its voices, I then replaced each voice individually, finally removing the original template from underneath – a bit like drawing on tracing paper on top of an original.
To a certain extent, this ‘device’ tells the listener how I feel about the text. It draws attention to itself, through technological tricks such as panning, distance, eq, timbre etc. It dramatises the music by separating the voices into their ever-changing roles of protagonist or antagonist, leader or follower. And the device itself enacts the polyphonic nature of the music.
While all this might be vaguely true, possibly, most of all it was really really fun and satisfying to record.
“These pieces take on a deep and magical dimension…each detail revealed in overwhelming relief thanks to quality sound recording and mixing, supported by an interpretative finesse that brings to mind the contemporary and subtle games of a Glenn Gould. More than yet another standard interpretation of the works of J.S. Bach, ‘Electrofeit’ is a brilliant renewal of his work’s modernism, a wonderful bridge between past and present, a moment of auditory peace and contemplation. In a word: sublime” – SilenceAndSound
“Fred Thomas…is utilizing modern recording and post-production technologies to create unique compositions and reinventions of traditional classical music. By utilizing this kind of creative experimentation and exploring the realm of multi-track recording, Thomas is challenging the status quo of the classical music genre…Electrofeit is…a creative product and work of art wholly his own. Just as Brian Eno considers himself a composer beholden to the studio and constantly evolving recording technologies, Thomas is now pioneering this methodology in the classical genre. Electrofeit has a sound that is both more full and resonant than typical Bach recordings, with a sonic depth that can only be paralleled in music and film genres outside of the traditional“ – The Creators Project
Born into the great line of Kouyate Griots in southern Senegal, Kadialy plays original songs inspired by his traditional repertoire. Old friends, Kadialy and Fred have been playing together for over 10 years.
“Senegalese kora virtuoso/singer Kadialy Kouyate showcases his fleet-fingered skills on this mesmerising instrument, complementing it with his hauntingly, darkly beautiful voice, to create a Toumani Diabate-meets-Youssou N’Dour sound.” – Time Out
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Jamie Doe and Fred Thomas have been making music together since they were 11 years old.
The Magic Lantern is the musical moniker of British Australian singer-songwriter and composer Jamie Doe, an artist dedicated to examining the limitless depth of human experience in our search for meaning.
The sound of A Reckoning Bell starts with Doe’s inimitable, soothing voice, before building outward from the piano, from jazz and Debussy-influenced harmony (Fault Line, Holding On, There’s a Light), to minimalism inspired ostinatos (Bound for Glory, This Life, Weariest River). Groove plays an important role in propelling the songs along, with both live and programmed drums interacting to create a mood of late night introspection. The arrangements are supported lush orchestration from the warmth of stacked bass clarinets (Weariest River) to a chorale of trombones (Bound for Glory), swelling strings (This Life) or the subtle echos of the shakuhachi (There’s a Light). The album also includes beautiful examples Doe’s trademark classical guitar based songs (Blades of Grass, Enough, Learning to Swim).
Working with a core band from London’s genre-banding jazz scene, improvisation played an important role in the album’s arrangements, most notably on How Simple, recorded as an acapella folk ballad before inviting different players to improvise around the vocal melody, without hearing any other instruments. The result is joyous example of chance interaction as a compositional tool and focusing attention on what really matters – the message.
On making the album Doe himself says:
“Making music has always been a way of working out what I think, but in the midst of this in- tensely emotional time, it has also been a raft when the ground has given way. But as much as music helps me, I don’t make records for myself. I do it because I believe that music has a social function in allowing people to project themselves into and onto songs to come to know them- selves and their own lives better. This belief gives me a sense of purpose and that is the spirit in which I offer this music to you, that it may be useful if it’s what you need”
Born in Australia, before moving to the UK at 12, Jamie adopted the stage name of The Magic Lanternand began writing songs while studying philosophy in Bristol. He lives in London and has released four full length albums and two EPs in addition to a compilation of other artists versions of his songs for the male suicide prevention charity CALM.
A Reckoning Bell is his unashamedly emotional fourth album written and recorded while helping to care for his father with Alzheimers disease – who’s portrait features on the album’s cover. A Reckoning Bell examines what loss can teach us about love and how love’s many small acts give a life meaning. The result is a study in masculine vulnerability that sits with and acknowledges the inevitability of a loss witnessed in slow motion and the unexpected moments of joy that sustain us.
Working with producer Chris Hyson, A Reckoning Bell manages to sound both dreamy and direct, the richness of the orchestration belying the devastating songwriting. Lyrically, A Reckoning Bell is one of The Magic Lantern’s most powerful and accomplished achievements and while containing references as diverse as Woodie Guthrie, Macbeth, the New Testament and Don Quixote, it is most notable for Doe’s knack of using startling simplicity to imply something greater than the sum of its parts such as the chorus for There’s a Light:
‘Today’s going to be a good day / I decided that while I was crying / You can’t keep folding a tragedy over and over again’.
The Magic Lantern is part of a thriving scene of genre bending contemporary musicians in London who are going about things their own way. The Magic Lantern has toured the UK supporting artists including This Is The Kit, Sam Lee and Alabaster Deplume, sung with Jamie Cullum at the BBC Proms and as a guest vocalist with Sikh virtuoso Manika Kaur in Trafalgar Square. He has performed for the Queen and over 50 Commonwealth Heads of State, sung in the Sussex Woods with nightingales and recorded in Abbey Road Studios as part of the Help Musicians UK ‘Music Minds Matter’ campaign.
The Magic Lantern has received praise from numerous supporters including BBC Radio 1’s Huw Stephens, BBC 6 Music’s Guy Garvey, Lauren Laverne, Gideon Coe, Tom Robinson, BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction and BBC Radio 2’s Jamie Cullum, Mark Radcliffe and Bob Harris among others; and publications such as The Guardian, Acoustic Magazine and Atwood Magazine among others.
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