IMPROVISED MUSIC WORKSHOP WITH FARIDA AMADOU (FLINTA+ ENCOURAGED)

Farida Amadou invites participants to gather for an improvised music workshop where sound unfolds without hierarchy and where each participant’s presence shapes the music. FLINTA* participants are encouraged (women, lesbians, intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender people).

The session works with bass, voice, electronics, objects, and silence. Farida proposes simple structures and listening practices that encourage responsiveness, risk-taking, and mutual attention. Improvisation is approached as a shared process rather than a display of skill. No musical background is required—openness and curiosity are enough.

The workshop pays particular attention to how space is taken and shared, how to play with intensity without erasing others, how to support one another, and how to build confidence through collective sound-making. FLINTA* identities are not explained or justified; they are simply present, informing how bodies sound and how relationships interact.

This workshop welcomes all FLINTA* people interested in improvisation, noise, and experimental music practices. Bring an instrument if you like, or come with your voice, your body, and your ears.

This event is co-presented with Queer Arts Festival.

Presented by Barking Sphinx as part of the Unwritten Weekend festival.
Red Gate
Sunday, March 28.
Doors: 1:30pm
$5 PWYC

FARIDA AMADOU

If there's one musician in the last decade that you may hear in wildly diverse musical contexts it is Belgian electric bassist and sound sculptor Farida Amadou. Not only can you enjoy the unerringly  skillful command she has over her instrument but also the transformative power to reinterpret and  expand her material in spontaneous and unconventional ways. 

Known for her raw, intuitive approach to improvisation, she has become a vital force in experimental music, collaborating with artists such as Thurston Moore, Peter Brötzmann, and Moor Mother. Blending free jazz, noise, and deep rhythmic structure, Amadou creates immersive soundscapes that balance intensity with clarity. 

Amadou is self-taught and radically aware of her idiosyncratic relationship with the bass guitar. She neither emulates the virtuosos of the electric bass, nor does she use the instrument as a pure sound  generator that merely emits humming and feedback. She takes a completely independent and unique approach. This freedom enables her to create an overwhelming wall of sound, as well as simple, clear structures that are rhythmically concise yielding a wide associative space that lands  somewhere between free jazz and noise. 

Photo credit: Niclas Weber

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Thank you to the BC Arts Council for their support.

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We acknowledge that our work takes place in Vancouver on traditional and unceded Indigenous land belonging to the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish),Stó:lō and səlil̓wətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. We are grateful for this place.