Alexandra Grimal REWILD
REWILD is a collective conceived by French saxophonist and composer Alexandra Grimal.
The ensemble brings together five highly acclaimed yet uncompromising and radical creative minds whose work has profoundly marked the field of adventurous music:
One of the defining figures of experimental music since the emergence of Henry Cow and the Rock in Opposition Movement, guitarist and composer Fred Frith;
French avant-garde guitarist Marc Ducret, whose vision is shaped by a distinctive approach to improvisation, composition and long-standing collaborations such as his work with Tim Berne;
One of the leading voices of today’s European improvised music scene, Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva;
And American drummer and composer Gerry Hemingway, whose decade-long collaboration with Anthony Braxton and work with a wide range of pioneering musicians have established him as one of the essential drummers and percussionists in the boundary-pushing jazz scene.
Rather than moving toward aesthetic agreement, the ensemble allows differences to remain visible at every moment. Live composition, improvisation, and fearless experimentation intertwine without hierarchy, producing a field of textures in flux where dense structures break apart into detail, silence carries weight, and sudden lines of lyric clarity emerge unexpectedly, forming a sonic ecology of nuanced interaction and resonance.
This continuous state of reconfiguration is held together only by attention, friction, and the precision of listening between these five highly distinctive creative artists whose work has long moved across the edges of contemporary jazz and adventurous music.
Alexandra Grimal – soprano & tenor saxophones, voice
Fred Frith – guitar
Marc Ducret – guitar
Susana Santos Silva – trumpet
Gerry Hemingway – drums
Artists:
Alexandra Grimal is a French saxophonist, vocalist, and composer, widely recognized as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary jazz and European experimental music.
Trained at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and the Paris Conservatoire, she maintains an artistic practice flowing beyond conventional boundaries, combining refined lyricism with rigorous avant-garde exploration.
She works both as a bandleader and an active performer and composer, having recorded with canonical figures such as Lee Konitz, Gary Peacock, and Paul Motian on her critically acclaimed album Owls Talk, while also leading exploratory ensembles including her Nāga septet and the Fly Line trio.
Increasingly focused on multidisciplinary forms and large-scale composition, Grimal approaches listening as an active and radical engagement with space, form, and narrative. Her work spans chamber music, opéra clandestin, sound installations, and symphonic pieces commissioned by institutions such as the Philharmonie de Paris.
Formerly a professor of composition at the Bern University of the Arts and a recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship, she continues to pursue her artistic inquiry in an ongoing dialogue between sound, visual arts, and nature.
Fred Frith stands as one of the most significant figures to emerge from the experimental music movements of the late twentieth century. As a co-founder of the legendary avant-rock collective Henry Cow, the multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser first came to prominence in the late-1960s experimental rock scene. Over the decades, he has continuously expanded his practice across guitar, violin, bass guitar, and keyboards.
Alongside key projects such as Art Bears, Massacre, and Skeleton Crew, Frith has developed an extensive body of work. This includes large-scale compositions performed by renowned ensembles like Ensemble Modern and the Rova Saxophone Quartet. His collaborative reach includes a diverse roster of pioneers, including Robert Wyatt, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Derek Bailey, Bill Laswell, and Bob Ostertag.
His artistic practice also extends into cinema, most notably as the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s acclaimed 1990 documentary Step Across the Border. Additionally, his appearance in Thomas Riedelsheimer’s Evelyn Glennie documentary, Touch the Sound, offers a rare "close-up" on his creative process
In recognition of his contributions to experimental music, Frith was awarded the 2008 Demetrio Stratos Prize for lifetime achievement. Beyond his work as a performer and composer, he is a Professor Emeritus at Mills College, where his long-standing teaching career has influenced and shaped generations of experimental musicians.
Susana Santos Silva is a Portuguese trumpeter, improviser, and composer based in Stockholm, Sweden, widely regarded as one of the most compelling voices in the contemporary adventurous and improvised music scene. Her artistic approach traverses contemporary classical, boundary-pushing jazz, and electro-acoustic works.
She reimagines the trumpet through extended techniques, microtonality, and dense breath textures, transforming it into a physical and spatial sound architecture. Her work moves between quiet minimalism and intense avant-garde expression, often extending into interdisciplinary works involving image, video, and movement, dissolving boundaries between genre, perception, and media.
Her work as a leader includes Devil’s Dress, Impermanence, and the solo recording All the Rivers. As a central figure in the contemporary creative music scene, she performs both in large ensembles—such as Mats Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra—and in smaller configurations with legendary innovators and contemporary artists. She has extensively collaborated with Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Joëlle Léandre, Mat Maneri, Paul Lovens, Hamid Drake, Lotte Anker, Kaja Draksler, Camila Nebbia, Chris Pitsiokos, Sten Sandell, Torbjörn Zetterberg, Catherine Christer Hennix, Jorge Queijo, Alexandra Nilsson, and Joachim Badenhorst, among others.
Marc Ducret is a distinctive, uncompromising guitarist in European creative music and avant-garde jazz. His work shifts the traditional vocabulary of the instrument through asymmetrical phrasing, complex polyrhythms, and a sharp focus on sonic texture.
In contemporary improvised music, Ducret’s long-standing dialogue with American saxophonist Tim Berne remains a key reference point. Alongside drummer Tom Rainey, they formed the core of Bloodcount and Big Satan. This collaboration expanded with the quartet Science Friction, which integrated keyboardist Craig Taborn. Ducret's work in this scene also connects closely with bassist Michael Formanek.
In Europe, Ducret is anchored in continental avant-garde networks. He has worked with French jazz figures Daniel Humair and Michel Portal, and became a member of Louis Sclavis's acoustic projects, performing alongside clarinetist Louis Sclavis, violinist Dominique Pifarély, and bassist Bruno Chevillon.
As a leader, his projects move between solo performances and larger formations. His multi-part work, the Tower Project, takes its structural cues from Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada and features musicians Kasper Tranberg, Matthias Mahler, and Peter Bruun. This interest in larger orchestral frameworks is also evident in his time as a featured soloist with the Orchestre National de Jazz under the direction of Claude Barthélemy.
Throughout this output, improvisation operates not as a performance gesture, but as a physical, precise, and intellectual method of exploration.
Gerry Hemingway is an American drummer, percussionist, and composer who has been a central figure in creative music and avant-garde jazz for over five decades.
He is widely recognized for his historic eleven-year tenure in the Anthony Braxton Quartet (1983–1994), a formative ensemble that significantly reconfigured the structures of modern jazz.
Beyond this foundational period, Hemingway’s practice has developed through sustained dialogues within international improvisational networks.
His collaborative trajectory includes significant work alongside pioneers such as Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, and Reggie Workman, as well as long-term creative partnerships with Ray Anderson, Mark Helias, and Marilyn Crispell.
Rather than treating contemporary composition and free improvisation as disparate realms, Hemingway dissolves the boundaries between fluid electroacoustic spaces and spontaneous acoustic dialogue.
In his work, collective discovery operates as the core structural principle, anchoring both his chamber-scale collaborations and his own exploratory ensembles.
Across an extensive discography as a leader and decades of international performance, his practice remains a rigorous investigation into the balance between structural design and open-ended spontaneity.
Photo credits:
Alexandra Grimal - © unknown / b&w © Pascal Bouclier
Susana Santos Silva - © Florian Fritsch / © Harald Krichel / b&w © Harald Krichel
Fred Frith - © unknown / b&w © Geert Vandepoele
Marc Ducret - © L. Poiget / b&W © Tsogi
Gerry Hemingway - © Simon Zangger / b&w ©Simon Zangger
