The Freedom in Fragments suite was also recorded in January 2008 by the ARTE Quartett, and released by Intakt Records (Switzerland) in January 2009 on a CD entitled The Big Picture by Fred Frith and ARTE Quartett.[4] One of the tracks from the suite, "Freedom Is Your Friends II" was performed by the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet on their 1997 album Ayaya Moses.
Background
Freedom in Fragments was commissioned by the San Francisco-based Rova Saxophone Quartet and was composed by Frith specifically for them while he was living at Big Sur, California. He wrote it as a suite of 23 short pieces, or "stories", that can be played as a whole, or in part, and in any given sequence. Frith wanted a composition "which could reach their narrative potential by a force of accumulation ... small stories that, when heard together, become big stories."[5]
Frith also composed the suite in a way that the music could be improvised: "The determining factor was the understanding that Rova wanted material which they could transform through improvisation. Most of the stories, therefore, involve some question about what might constitute musical freedom."[5] One reviewer of the album stated that "[t]he suite's greatest strength is the way it lets Rova crawl around their instruments, from the melodic ballads to noisy skronk."[2]
The "story" sequence performed here by Rova was created by Frith, although it is just one configuration of the work, and only 16 of the 23 pieces appear on the album. The entire work was dedicated to the memory of Charles Mingus, with certain pieces inspired by Frank Zappa, Jimmy Giuffre and Ikue Mori.
