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The Friction Brothers The Friction Bros Recorded by Paul Giallorenzo at Elastic Prepared for release by Gordon Comstock Mastered by Rick Gribenas Photographs by Thymme Jones Michael Colligan, dry ice and implements Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello and implements Michael Zerang, piano insides and implements 1. Untitled 2. Untitled 3. Untitled |
| Chicago’s The Friction Brothers consists of Michael Colligan (dry ice, implements), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, implements), and Michael Zerang (percussion, piano insides). While each member has a lengthy resume on his own, their combined forces have produced an endlessly interesting record full of harmonic resonances, grinding objects, manipulated dry ice, and, of course, heavy friction. Reedman and dry ice-r, Michael Colligan has been a member of The Flying Luttenbachers, Pillow, and Math, in addition to contributions to records by Jim O’Rourke, Smog, and Boxhead Ensemble. After studying at Julliard, as well as, with Anthony Braxton and Morton Feldman, Fred Lonberg-Holm founded the Valentine Trio, a jazz trio that started with the music of Fred Katz and now focuses of Fred’s writing, and the Lightbox Orchestra, a rotating cast of improvisers that work with a lightbox and set of cue cards that provides playing instructions. Ever busy, Fred also performs in Vandermark 5, Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, Territory Ensemble/Band, Guillermo Gregorio Trio, Keefe Jackson’s Fast Citizens, Joe McPhee Survival Unit III, Boxhead Ensemble, among others. He has also contributed cello to albums by Wilco, Smog, Will Oldham, Califone, etc. Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois and is a first generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms. He has collaborated extensively with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms and has received three Joseph Jefferson Awards for Original Music Composition in Theater, in 1996, 1998, and 2000. He has over sixty titles in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally since 1981 with and ever-widening pool of collaborators. He was the artistic director of the Link's Hall Performance Series from 1985-1989 where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. He continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at his own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 - 2005. He has taught as a guest artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in performance technique, sound design, and sound/music as it relates to puppetry; rhythmic analysis for dancers at The Dance Center of Columbia College, Northwestern University, and MoMing Dance and Arts Center; courses in Composer - Choreographer Collaborations at Northwestern University; music to children at The Jane Adams Hull House. He has held workshops in improvisational music and percussion technique and teaches private lessons in rhythmic analysis, music composition, and percussion technique. (taken from www.myspace.com/michaelzerang) PRESS The Friction Brothers: rubbing the right way by Peter Margasak for The Chicago Reader on April 2nd 2008 - 12:38 a.m. Among the extended techniques that occupy such an exalted role in the vocabulary of free improvisation, rubbing and scraping may seem humble, but they're vital all the same. Obviously many instruments are played by rubbing their strings with a bow (what those in the biz call arco), but an infinite number of objects can be rubbed or scraped to produce a surprisingly wide variety of sounds--it's common, for example, for a drummer to bow his cymbals or rub a moistened finger across a drum head to create evocative whines and moans. The Chicago trio called the Friction Brothers push this idea to an extreme: on the group’s self-titled debut, released by the Pittsburgh label Abstract on Black, all the sounds are generated by some kind of friction. Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm long ago moved beyond the bow, just as percussionist Michael Zerang has gone beyond drums. Michael Colligan (pictured) barely uses musical instruments at all, creating most of his sounds with dry ice and metal. The list of instruments they're credited with sounds like the contents of a kitchen cabinet, junk drawer, or utility closet: knitting needles, cheese slicer, coins, pachinko balls, frying pan, clothespins, marbles, popsicle sticks, and on and on. Since so many of the sounds are hard to identify by ear, watching the group play live has a special appeal. Many a Chicagoan has thrilled to the sight of Zerang rubbing one of his drums with a vibrator, but no improviser in Chicago (or maybe anywhere) is as fun to watch as Colligan. Over the years he's elaborated on his basic setup: a couple of teakettles, heated on an electric hot plate and then placed on, pushed into, and dragged across the dry ice to produce wonderfully excruciating shrieks and ominous rumbles. These days he also uses the aforementioned frying pan, trombone and trumpet mouthpieces, tin cans, spoons, keys, and more, all of which produce slightly different timbres and resonances when heated and touched to the dry ice. The last time I saw him perform, he lodged a variety of small metal objects in the ice and left them there, which not only made a steady drone but altered the notes he got when he placed other objects on the ice or against those lodged pieces. It reads almost like an absurdist joke, and if it were only about making weird noises in unusual ways, it'd sound like one too. But the Friction Brothers' ensemble sound is diverse and extremely tactile, blending resonant long tones with abrasive blats, and the three players coax all of these noises out of their hardware in the context of a deeply intuitive spontaneous musical conversation. The Friction Brothers celebrate the release of their CD with a performance Wednesday night at the Hideout. The Green Pasture Happiness, an electronic trio with Aaron Zarzutzki, Daniel Fandiño, and Brian Labycz, plays first. |