André Vida (born 1974) is

Hungarian-American Hungarian Americans ( Hungarian: ''amerikai magyarok'') are Americans of Hungarian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau has estimated that there are approximately 1.396 million Americans of Hungarian descent as of 2018. The total number of people wit ...

saxophonist The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pro ...

, lyricist,

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

musician and experimental composer based in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

. Vida has been on the forefront of several major developments in experimental music, including his membership in Anthony Braxton’s original Ghost Trance Ensemble, as founding member of New York collective the CTIA, performances with The Tower Recordings and subsequent ‘ freak folk’ groups.

Early life and education

André Vida was born in 1974 in the United States. Throughout the 1990s, he played in bands with

Anthony Braxton Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Ch ...

, a Professor of Music at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

. In 1995, Vida moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and co-founded the Creative Trans-Informational Alliance Presents (CTIA) with Brandon Evans and

Dominique Eade Dominique Frances Eade (June 16, 1958) is an American jazz singer and composer. She has taught at the New England Conservatory. Career She attended Vassar College and the Berklee College of Music before finishing her degree at New England Con ...

. Vida graduated from

in 1997. He was awarded a M.F.A. degree in Experimental Sound Practices in 2005 from the School of Music at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

Career

In 2001, Vida moved to

and soon after launched the ''Kreuzberg suite,'' a once a week concert series with Vida and a frequently changing musical guest creating improvisational music around the subject of "Fish And Green". His musical language is informed by an awareness of the human body and its limits. Vida worked in a collaboration with

Anri Sala Anri Sala (born 1974) is an Albanian contemporary artist whose primary medium is video. Life and career Sala studied art at the Albanian Academy of Arts from 1992 to 1996. He also studied video at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs, Pari ...

for the exhibition "3-2-1" at The Serpentine Gallery in London. Vida was scheduled to perform over 400 improvisational saxophone concerts over the course of 51 days (from October 1 to November 20, 2011). Vida was an Eyebeam Honorary Fellow in 2013. In 2013, as part of the Global Art Forum 7, Vida performed ''"Score"'' at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, challenging the question what if we spoke music instead of words? 2015 Sculpture Park,

Frieze Art Fair Frieze Art Fair is an international contemporary art fair in London, New York, and Los Angeles. Frieze London takes place every October in London's Regent's Park. In the US, the fair ran on New York's Randall's Island from 2012–19 and in 2 ...

London presented a live performance by Anri Sala in collaboration with André Vida. The piece is called ''To Each His Own (in Bridges)'', it is based on 74 pieces of music, combining fragments of jazz, folk, and pop songs played on the saxophone, clarinet and trombone. In 2016, Vida participated in the art exhibition, "Anri Sala: Answer Me,” at the

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sch ...

in New York City. Vida live improvises sound with his saxophone next to a video of Jemeel Moondoc’s performance, shot on the balcony of a building in Berlin. Vida has collaborated with artists such as; Elton John, MV & EE,

Anaïs Croze Anaïs, full name Anaïs Croze (born August 20, 1976), is a French singer. Her first album, called ''The Cheap Show'', was recorded live in January 2004 and released in 2005. ''The Cheap Show'', a pun on "peep-show", is titled such as she is t ...

Kevin Blechdom Kevin Blechdom (born Kristin Grace Erickson; 1978 in Florida) is an American experimental electronic musician and performance artist. She is based in Santa Cruz, California. Early life and education Kristin Grace Erickson was born in 1978 in Fl ...

, Oni Ayhun,

Tim Exile Tim Exile (or Exile) is the recording alias of Tim Shaw, a producer and performer of electronic music spanning drum and bass, IDM, breakcore and gabber. History A classically trained violinist, he began experimenting with electronic music ...

James Tenney James Tenney (August 10, 1934 – August 24, 2006) was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microto ...

David Rosenboom David Rosenboom (born 1947 in Fairfield, Iowa) is a composer-performer, interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator known for his work in American experimental music. Rosenboom has explored various forms of music, languages for improvisation, ...

Sonny Simmons Huey "Sonny" Simmons (August 4, 1933 – April 6, 2021) was an American jazz musician. Biography Simmons was born on August 4, 1933 in Sicily Island, Louisiana. He grew up in Oakland, California, where he began playing the English horn. (Along w ...

, Cecil Taylor,

Lee Ranaldo Lee Mark Ranaldo (born February 3, 1956) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, guitarist, writer, visual artist and record producer, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth (guitar and vocals). In 2004, ''Rolling ...

, Heatsick, Jim O'Rourke, Dean Roberts, Tony Buck, Hildur Gudnadottir,

Jimmy Edgar Jimmy Edgar is an American conceptual artist and sound designer from Detroit, Michigan. Influenced by minimalism, Yves Klein and Immaterialism, early in their career Jimmy released two hip-hop glitch albums under the names Michaux and Kristuit ...

Chilly Gonzales Jason Charles Beck (born 20 March 1972), professionally known as Chilly Gonzales, is a Canadian musician, songwriter, and producer. Currently based in Cologne, Germany, he previously lived for several years in Paris. Gonzales is a musical polymat ...

Mocky Mocky (born October 7, 1974) is a Canadian singer, music producer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and composer. Biography Mocky was born Dominic Salole in Saskatchewan, Canada. He later moved to Ottawa and Toronto, and then to London, Amst ...

Tyshawn Sorey Tyshawn Sorey (born July 8, 1980) is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, and professor of contemporary music. Sorey has received accolades for performances, recordings, and compositions ranging from improvised solo percussion to opera, ...

, Susie Ibarra, Guillermo E. Brown, and many others.

Discography

References

External links

Official websiteAndré Vida/Vidatone performances
on YouTube
List of Vida's tracks
on

The Wire (magazine) ''The Wire'' (or simply ''Wire'') is a British music magazine publishing out of London, which has been issued monthly in print since 1982. Its website launched in 1997, and an online archive of its entire back catalog became available to sub ...

Video interview with André Vida
on

Vimeo Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software a ...

from Eyebeam {{DEFAULTSORT:Vida, Andre 21st-century American composers American lyricists American male saxophonists Living people Hungarian-American culture in New York (state) 1974 births Avant-garde jazz composers Avant-garde jazz musicians California Institute of the Arts alumni Musicians from New York City Songwriters from New York (state) 21st-century American saxophonists American male jazz composers American jazz composers 21st-century American male musicians Wesleyan University alumni 21st-century jazz composers Jazz musicians from New York (state) American male songwriters