Wells / Vidiksis / Biggs — Fracture Identification Album Release & Parsa Ferdowsi – Solo
Sam Wells, Adam Vidiksis, and Chris Biggs perform freely improvised electroacoustic music from their new album, Fracture Identification.
Parsa Ferdowsi will open the concert with a solo performance.
Fracture Identification will be released on October 23 via ex_log.records: ex-log.bandcamp.com/
Fracture Identification is an album of freely improvised electroacoustic performances by Sam Wells (trumpet), Adam Vidiksis (percussion), and Christopher Biggs (electronics). Although the three had collaborated extensively in pairs, the session documents the first project as a trio. The improvisations carry the excitement of a new encounter while revealing how deeply each player understands the others’ musical approaches. The album plays on a central conundrum of free improvisation, the collective shaping of musical form in real time. How do improvisors recognize when a section or a piece begins or ends, and what happens in the transitions when that recognition isn’t shared or immediate? The performances assembled from this collaboration each have distinctive materials, and display a robust collective approach to identifying fracture and establishing continuity.
About the trio
Sam Wells (trumpet), Adam Vidiksis (percussion), and Christopher Biggs (electronics) perform as an electroacoustic free improvisation trio. They build rich textural landscapes and intense gestural material, producing sound worlds both familiar and alien. Sam is a performer, multimedia artist, and composer based in Philadelphia, where he is Associate Professor of Instruction in Music Technology and Composition at Temple University. Adam is a drummer, composer, and music technologist, and Associate Professor and Director of Music Technology and Composition at Temple University. Christopher is a composer and electronic musician, and Professor of Music Composition and Technology at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI.
Parsa Ferdowsi
Parsa Ferdowsi is a musician and artist, born and raised in Karaj, Iran. He has regularly worked with (and befriended) artists such as Nat Baldwin, Mat Wellins, Michael Pestel, Ramtin Mokhtari, Manuel J. Perez, Shawn O’Sullivan, Eliza Marovitz, Katarina Mazur, Tobias Haus, Sam Boston, Emma Mistele, Loren Wang, Marie Carroll, Xingyan Guo, Negar Soleymanifar. He collaborated on some projects with Peter Zummo, David Vantieghem, Alex Waterman (as a part of the Arthur Russell’s City Park project led by Nick Hallet), David Behrman, Nicolas Collins, Lea Bertucci, Wesleyan, Laptop Ensemble, Pamplemousse Ensemble and String Noise Duo. He is also a member and assistant director of artistic planning in Shiraz Ensemble.
He works with sound, space, image, words, expectations, and frames. His works include compositions, photographs, videos, improvisations, performance, poetry, and acting. His compositions usually benefits form use of verbal notations, theatrics, collaborative environments, site-specificity, and collective improvisation. As an improviser, he implements some of his compositional techniques and issues around decision-making alongside the language and affordances of Iranian Dastgahi music.
He is currently studying Music Technology in the graduate program at Temple University. He holds an MA in Experimental Music/Performance from Wesleyan University where he worked with Ron Kuivila, Paula Matthusen, and Neely Bruce, and a BA in Composition from the Tehran University of Art and has years of experience studying santur and Radif of Iranian Dastgahi music with Majid Kiani.