Oct. 30, 2024 (Wed.): FRUE Presents MUSIC FOR JAPAN & TOUR — Fukuoka
Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes tour Japan under the title MUSIC FOR JAPAN & TOUR.
The seven stops are Shizuoka, home of FESTIVAL de FRUE 2024, along with Fukuoka, Okayama, Shibuya, Nagoya, Kanazawa, and Kyoto.
Their music is neither jazz, hip-hop, electronic, nor folk, yet somehow all of them. Come experience it!
We look forward to seeing you at each venue.
Event information
Date: Oct. 30 (Wed.); doors 6:30 p.m., performance 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Sawara Civic Center
Address: 2-2-1 Momochi, Sawara-ku, Fukuoka
Performers: Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes
Advance: ¥6,000
Same day: ¥7,000
Preschool-age children may not enter. Elementary and junior-high students enter free with a guardian. High-school students and older require tickets.
Artist Information
The innovative music duo Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes—Sam × Sam—reunites after embodying FRUE’s own idea of artists in residence.
Both are progressive composers and multi-instrumentalists. Their vast output of releases and live work over the past year has earned excellent reviews across projects.
Gendel began with AUDIOBOOK, fused with an art project late last year, then launched a succession of new ventures including the strange jazz-meets-indie-rock trio Earth Flower and The Hard Quartet with composer Emile Mosseri. The reissue of archival work The Room with Fabiano do Nascimento and their extraordinary duo performance at WWW X in Shibuya in July remain fresh in memory. That July visit also included a collaboration with Argentine legend Juana Molina and a Kyushu solo tour on which Gendel recreated layered ensembles alone, showing an ever-deeper immersion in music.
Wilkes has been equally prolific. After last year’s ambient-pop gem DRIVING, he released Sam Wilkes, Craig Weinrib and Dylan Day in July, born from sessions with Craig Weinrib and Dylan Day. The lineup extends the Sam Wilkes Quintet heard at FESTIVAL de FRUE in 2022.
Gendel’s work crosses jazz, avant-garde, ambient, and experimental pop, while Wilkes ranges from pop to highly improvisational groups. Their recurring meetings focused on saxophone and bass have always opened intriguing musical directions.
The project began in 2017 with Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar, documenting the live performance that launched it, followed by More Songs. At Sam × Sam’s last Japan performance at FESTIVAL FRUEZINHO in 2022, much of the set was recorded for The Doober, released this May.
Reuniting after two years, will Sam × Sam return to the basic saxophone-and-bass format, or reveal a new landscape without constraints? Either way, a new chapter will undoubtedly begin here in Japan.
Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes
