Angel City Arts returns to REDCAT for its annual Jazz Refractions Festival with a dynamic double bill featuring Fred Frith’s Fremakajo + DoYeon Kim’s Quartet.
Fred Frith’s newest quartet, Fremakajo, unites adventurous musicians from the Bay Area to create a music that lies somewhere between jazz improvisation and dance music for dark times. Frith, playing bass and viola, is joined by curious and playful drummer Jordan Glenn, experimental saxophonist Kasey Knudsen, and stylistically globetrotting accordionist Marié Abe. Fremakajo—an amalgamation of band members’ names—is the latest in a long line of Frith’s bands that explore and explode the song form. Together they will be playing new compositions and, in the grand Frith tradition, improvising.
DoYeon Kim presents music from her celebrated 2026 album Wellspring showcasing her as an unparalleled practitioner of the Korean gayageum (a silk-string zither). In her debut as bandleader, Kim is joined by Lauren Baba (viola), Miller Wren (bass), and Alex Cline (drums) in compositions and improvisations that weave together Korean lullabies, improvisational interplay between strings and percussion, and a unique musical expression of self. Heralded for her virtuosic technique, Kim brings a contemporary approach to a 1,500-year-old instrument in a boundary-pushing, energetic performance.
The music featured at Jazz Refractions is rooted in the jazz tradition of radical improvisation, freedom, and technical mastery. However, once it passes through the Angel City’s lens, it bends, distorts, and shatters into entirely new forms unrestricted by musical genres. Jazz is the source light, and Angel City is the prism.
