29 April 2025, Brussels
14h00 Conversation with Fred Moten and Brandon López at Pianofabriek (free entrance)
An extended conversation with Fred Moten and Brandon López about their thought and practice, music and language, improvisation and politics, jazz and study.
Free entrance
20h00 Performances at Les Ateliers Claus (entrance: €12)
Fred Moten and Brandon López have been playing music together since 2018. They have released two remarkable albums with drummer Gerald Cleaver on the Reading Group label. Their first duo recording is due to be released on TAO Forms. “It’s poetry as music and music as poetry. Moten’s words lead, lyrically, timbrally, poetically – but the bass and percussion loosen the grammar. Associative inflections elevate the raw sound of each player, which at root – even if they were stripped of meaning or mood – runs each part in a constantly moving triangulated constellation of sound and meaning, evolving and repeating; stretching, infilling, and expanding.” (Jennifer Lucy Allen)
Fred Moten is a cultural theorist and poet creating new conceptual spaces that accommodate emergent forms of Black cultural production, aesthetics, and social life. Moten’s writing and wording are characterised by a refined opacity and a musicality that is inspired by jazz and goes to the limit of noise: “what it is I want to say is subordinate to the sound, subordinate to a kind of feeling, a content that only that sound can provide”. His books include In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, the trilogy Consent Not To Be A Single Being , The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study and All Incomplete, co-authored with Stefano Harney, as well as numerous poetry collections.
Brandon López is a bassist, composer, and improviser working at the fringes of jazz, free improvisation, noise, and new music. His music has been praised as “brutal” (Chicago Reader) and “relentless” (The New York Times). His exploration of new sonic possibilities on the double bass has led him to work with the luminaries of the contemporary avant garde like John Zorn, Nate Wooley, Tyshawn Sorey, Leila Bordreuil and Cecilia López. He was a featured soloist with the New York Philharmonic and has been the recipient of numerous awards.
https://readinggroupcompany.bandcamp.com/album/moten-l-pez-cleaver
https://readinggroupcompany.bandcamp.com/album/the-blacksmiths-the-flowers
https://taoforms.bandcamp.com/album/revision
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In the context of the research project Echoes of Dissent (KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts Gent), in collaboration with In vitro.
With the support of Flanders State of the Art, KU Leuven Commission for Contemporary Art & Royal Conservatory of Brussels (EhB).
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Graphic design by Ran De Vos.