Event Details
X AVANT New Music Festival
Saturday Oct. 24
IVA BITTOVÁ
+ CHRIS CUTLER
With guest, Antonin Fajt
Location: SPK (Polish Combatants Hall), 206 Beverley St.
Doors 8pm, concert 9pm
Advance tickets $20 at TicketWeb, Rotate This & Soundscapes
BUY TICKETS ONLINE NOW!
At the Door: $25 regular, $20 member & senior, $15 student
In Nov. 2007, the Czech singer and violinist Iva Bittová performed at the Music Gallery at a concert presented by Gary Topp. The room was packed and the atmosphere electric. We are thrilled to have this unique and uncategorizable performing artist back so soon, to perform in both solo and collaborative contexts. In addition to her gripping yet trickster-ish solo performance, she will also perform in a duo with Chris Cutler (a past collaborator). As an added treat for the X Avant Festival, she will also be joined by her son, pianist Antonin Fajt.
We are also thrilled to present a special solo performance at X Avant by legendary U.K. improv/rock drummer Chris Cutler, well known for his membership in such groundbreaking groups as Henry Cow, Art Bears and Pere Ubu, and collaborating with musicians such as Fred Frith and Zeena Parkins. In addition to his solo set, he will also join violinist/vocalist Iva Bittová for a rare duo performance.
Iva Bittová: Biography
Iva Bittová describes her work as “my own personal folk music.” In her singularly original and powerful performances, Bittova sings, plays, and acts simultaneously to create pieces that have been described as “… so intimate and personal you can almost feel her breath on your ears.” (CMJ). Her compositions and improvisations are highly abstract yet deeply rooted in the classical and gypsy music of the tiny Moravian villages where she spent her formative years. Uninhibited and unaffected, Bittová sings in poetry that is sensual, fervent and evocative.
A charismatic performer with an established reputation both in Europe and Japan, Bittová toured North America first as a solo performer in 1992. She returned in 1998 upon the release of her eponymous album on Nonesuch Records, selling out concerts in Boston, New York, and Berkeley.
As much at home in classical music as in avant-garde and folk, she has sung the role of Donna Elvira in the Mozart opera “Don Juan in Prague” as well as performed songs by Leos Janácek. In 2005, she began collaborating with the Bang On A Can All-Stars, recording the CD “Elida” (Cantaloupe Music), and performing together at Carnegie Hall, in Philadelphia, Los Angeles as well as in London and Prague. Other recent recordings are “Mater” by Slovakian composer Vladimír Godár (ECM), Leos Janácek’s “Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs” with the Skampa String Quartet (Supraphon), and “Moravian Gems” with bassist George Mraz.
After moving to the United States in 2007, Bittová now lives with her son Antonin in the Hudson River Valley, just a few hours from New York City. She has since performed more frequently in the US and Canada, as a soloist as well as in collaborations with her fellow countryman Mraz, pianist Lisa Moore, clarinetist Don Byron, guitarist Marc Ribot, drummer Hamid Drake, and the Wendy Osserman Dance Company.
Iva Bittová was born in Bruntal, in northern Moravia. Her father, a classical double bass player, relocated the family often. Bittová attended violin and ballet classes as a child and also appeared in the Silesian Theatre of Zdenek Nejedly. As a teenager she attended a local conservatory and studied music and drama. Upon completion of school in Brno, she won a contract at the avant-garde Theatre On A String. She has since appeared in multiple television and film roles, including “Zelary,” one of the most successful Czech movies in recent years and nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign film in 2003. She received a Czech "Oscar" and the Best Actress Award at the Syracuse International Film Festival for her starring role in the 2007 film "Tajnosti" (Little Girl Blue). As a performer, she can be seen in the acclaimed documentary about Fred Frith, “Step Across The Border,” a film that introduced her to a wider audience in the West.
Chris Cutler: Biography
At the start of the ’70s, Chris Cutler co-founded The Ottawa Music Company — a 22-piece rock composer’s orchestra — before joining British experimental group Henry Cow, with whom he toured, recorded and worked in dance and theatre projects for the next eight years. Subsequently he co co-founded a series of mixed national groups: Art Bears, News from Babel, Cassiber, The (ec) Nudes, The Science Group and p53, and was a permanent member of American bands Pere Ubu, Hail and The Wooden Birds. He has written an awful lot of lyrics. Outside a succession of special projects for stage, theatre, film and radio he still works consistently in successive projects with Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Jon Rose, Tim Hodgkinson, David Thomas, Peter Blegvad, Daevid Allen, Daan Vandewalle, Stevan Tickmayer and spectralists Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana Maria Avram. He has toured the world as a soloist with his extended electrified kit.
Recent projects include commissioned works for radio, various live movie soundtracks, pieces for the Hyperion Ensemble, Signe de Trois for surround-sound projection, a daily year-long soundscape project for Resonance FM, London and p53 for Orchestra and Soloists.
He founded and runs the independent label ReR Megacorp and the art distribution service Gallery and Academic, edits the New Music magazine Unfiled and is author of the theoretical collection File Under Popular - as well as of numerous articles and papers published in 16 languages. He was on faculty for a while at the Museum School in Boston and lectures irregularly on theoretical and music related topics worldwide. He has appeared on many recordings.
“Chris Cutler has to be one of the finest, most inventive drummers this country has ever produced” — BBC
“Britain’s most broadly musical drummer, an electronic composer who just happens to have chosen a drum kit” — The Wire
