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As part of his research into the music of J.S.Bach, Fred Thomas has delved into the world of the organ. Electrofeit is an album of J.S. Bach solo organ music released by music publisher and record label The Silent Howl. This was followed by ‘Cut From Air‘, released in 2023.

“In a word: sublime” SilenceAndSound

Some words on ‘Electrofeit’:

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 seemed relevant to the interpretation of art from the past. His ideas are a gift to anybody interested in 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.

All of 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.

This ‘device’ tells the listener how I feel about the text. It draws attention to itself, through technological tricks such as panning, distance, eq and timbre. 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.

All of this might be vaguely true…

Press:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/kbng9v/fred-thomas-is-bringing-bach-into-the-21st-century

“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

Click here to read the whole article.

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“A revelation” Apple Music     “Utterly beguiles” BBC Music Magazine

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. www.ecm.lnk.to/ThreeOrOne

Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

Transcriptions by Fred Thomas, published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen and available to buy here.

Video playlist of Fred Thomas discussing ‘Three or One’:

“Mesmerizing…utterly beguiles…an illuminating if idiosyncratic Bachian” BBC Music Magazine

“Lyrical and haunting….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

“A Bach record to be remembered” RTBF Belgium

“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

“There is something purifying about their simple beauty. With historical performance knowledge, musical sensitivity, while paying attention to the theological content, he carefully reorganized them with a multitude of different compositional techniques…subtly executed interpretations…stimulating transcriptions” Wolfgang Sandner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“Thomas’ ECM debut sees him elegantly arrange and reinvent a series of Bach sinfonias, vocal cantata and organ preludes” The Guardian

“Immaculately conceived” Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk

“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 *****

“Thomas’s solo flights are memorable…the three engage deeply with Bach’s material and execute it with the majesty, respect, and affection it deserves. The impression ultimately left is of musicians luxuriating in the splendour of the magnificent material they’re playing and savouring every moment of their real-time interactions” Textura

© Phelan Burgoyne
© Ruth Bruckner
© Ruth Bruckner
© George Nebieridze
© Ruth Bruckner

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Dance Suites is a solo J.S. Bach piano album by Fred Thomas. 

“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.” International Piano Magazine 5*****

“A boundary-blurring composer and improviser…beautifully ruminative…the serious care and thought characterising Thomas’ acoustic choices happily extend into his pianism” Gramophone Magazine

Buy it here.

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.

© Ruth Bruckner
© Ruth Bruckner
© Ruth Bruckner
© Ruth Bruckner
© Ruth Bruckner
© Arantxa Hurtado
© Emma Werner
© Ruth Bruckner

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

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Monk Spent Youth is a celebration of the music, the life and the spirit of Thelonious Monk. The original line up formed in 2014 and released their debut recording, “Monk Spent Youth”, in 2019. Buy it here on Bandcamp.

Zac Gvirtzman – piano, bass clarinet, organ, toy piano
Ben Davis – cello
Fred Thomas – drums, bass, prepared piano

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Fred Thomas Trio will be recording their debut album for ECM.

 

Fred Thomas – piano and transcriptions

Aisha Orazbayeva – violin

Lucy Railton – cello

 

Transcriptions by Fred Thomas, published and available to buy from Edition Wilhelm Hansen or Music Sales

 

“A brilliant young trio. With extreme sensitivity to colour and nuance, Fred Thomas has made these organ preludes into tiny character pieces for chamber ensemble” – BBC Music Magazine

“Thomas’ treatment of the Baroque score was modern but respectful. The pieces were full of colour and creativity making full use of the dynamic combination of violin, cello and piano…great concept” – Bachtrack