Auditory Conuum is a research-driven artistic project by the duo Fred Frith (guitar) andJaka Berger (drums), exploring the subtle interplay between environmental sound and freeimprovisation. Natural and urban soundscapes do not function as a backdrop, but as a living,equal interlocutor that triggers musical responses in real time. Through refined, almost meditative listening, the performers capture delicate sonic shifts like rustling wind or the pulse of the city and transform them into an organically evolving soundscape. The project dissolves the boundaries between composition, improvisation, and acoustic ecology, opening a space for a deeper experience of sound as a reflection of the world we inhabit.
Fred Frith (UK) is a composer, improviser and educator best known for the reinvention of the electric guitar that began with Guitar Solos in 1974. He learned his craft playing in rockbands - notably the iconic Henry Cow - and creating music in the recording studio. Fred’scompositions have been performed by ensembles ranging from BBC Scottish SymphonyOrchestra and Arditti Quartet to Hieronymus Firebrain and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Filmmusic credits include Rivers and Tides and Tracing Light by Thomas Riedelsheimer, The Tango Lesson and The Party by Sally Potter, Werner Penzel’s Zen for Nothing, and the Oscar-nominated Last Day of Freedom, by Nomi Talisman and Dee Hibbert-Jones. As an improvisor Fred has performed with key figures spanning several generations, including Núria Andorrà,Lotte Anker, Derek Bailey, Alvin Curran, Camille Émaille, Joëlle Léandre, George Lewis, PhilMinton, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Pauline Oliveros, and Susana Santos Silva. He is the subjectof Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s much loved film Step Across the Border.
Jaka Berger (SLO) – Brgs is a versatile and uncompromising artist who has been shaping the core of Slovenia’s independent music scene for more than two decades. As a drummer,percussionist, composer, and improviser, he moves fluidly across jazz, free jazz, electroacoustic music, dub, noise, experimental hip-hop, and punk, collaborating innumerous national and international projects. A distinctive part of his oeuvre is his prepareddrum kit, which he has been developing since 2014 - a hybrid instrument where acousticand electronic elements merge into a unified sonic body. Through it, he creates rich texturesand subtle sonic shifts at the intersection of improvisation and contemporary composition,with his works regularly released on internationally recognized labels. Among his notableprojects is the ensemble Fresh Dust, featuring Samo Šalamon, Benoît Delbecq and SusanaSantos Silva. As the initiator of the Clockwork Voltage community, he actively connects theSlovenian experimental and modular scene, within which he also develops his project DUF,focused on dark, atmospheric electronic sound. He performs and teaches extensively, hisartistic trajectory is notably shaped by his latest collaboration with the world-renownedguitarist Fred Frith, with whom he is developing a project Auditory Continuum at thecrossroads of improvisation and acoustic ecology. Berger remains a key force in contemporary Slovenian music, an explorer of sound and an artist constantly pushing theboundaries of listening.
