Pacifica (Fred Frith album)


Pacifica is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It was composed by Frith in 1994 as "a meditation for 21 musicians with texts by Pablo Neruda", and was performed, under the direction of Frith, by the Bolognese Eva Kant ensemble in 1995 in Modena, Italy. Texts, taken from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's works, were recorded by Sergio Meza in September 1997 in Santiago, Chile and were added to the music in 1998. The album was released on Tzadik Records' Composer Series in 1998.
Frith does not perform on this album.

Background

Pacifica was composed by Frith at Big Sur, California in a cabin overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It is "a slow meditation on life and death" and reflects a series of events that occurred in Frith's life at the time, namely the death of two close friends and the birth of his daughter.
Pacifica was composed for an ensemble that included prepared guitars, wind instruments, percussion, a vocalist and a performer on records, CDs and tapes. The 19 member Eva Kant ensemble performed the piece, with fragments of recited text from the Death Song of the Cupeño tribe of California and the tribal names of all the original inhabitants of California. The recording was supplemented later with texts from Pablo Neruda's Soneto IX and Cien sonetos de amor, read by Sergio Meza.

Track listing

All tracks composed by Fred Frith.

Personnel