Ava Mendoza + Farida Amadou

Here’s an original and singular event, as the Rhino has always been fond of, off the beaten track and open to curious ears, featuring a double solo from ladies who have a relationship with strings as explosive as it is explosive. First up is Belgian bassist Farida Hamadou, a thirty-something who got her start a dozen years ago with a blue-jazz and hip-hop repertoire that saw her tour with a host of European bands before switching to punk-noise with Cocaïne Piss. Since 2019, this iconoclastic musician with a strong character has been devoting herself to a solo performance – rather rare among bassists – which has revealed her art for improvised music, somewhere between free-jazz and experimental rock, giving birth to a maelstrom of sound that she delivers with feverish rage.

An intuitive awareness of improvisation, a visceral outlet expressed through tension-filled playing, shared in the same way this time on guitar by Ava Mendoza, a composer from Brooklyn who has been developing her technique for nearly three decades, between tours with musicians like John Zorn and Fred Frith, or as frontwoman of the rock band Unnatural Ways. The author of a dozen albums, this energetic and expressive guitarist deconstructs blues to punk, and has been playing solos since 2010, proposing, without effects pedals, an unprecedented sonic strangeness in which she tames the fever of free-rock and prog metal, as well as the colourful, saturated textures that emanate from her staggering playing.