Fred Ho

Music

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General Info

Genre: Experimental / Jazz / Other
Location BROOKLYN, New York, US
Profile Views: 25155
Last Login: 6/6/2011
Member Since 1/24/2007
Website www.bigredmediainc.com
Record Label Big Red Media
Type of Label Indie
Bio
.. .. .. .. .. .. ........ Fred Ho is a one-of-a-kind revolutionary Chinese American baritone saxophonist, composer, writer, producer, political activist and leader of the Afro Asian Music Ensemble and the Monkey Orchestra. For two decades, he has innovated an Afro Asian New American Multicultural Music imbedded in the swingest, most soulful and transgressive forms of African American music with the musical influences of Asia and the Pacific Rim. As Larry Birnbaum writes in Down Beat "Fred Ho's style is a genre onto itself, a pioneering fusion of free-jazz and traditional Chinese music that manages to combine truculence and delicacy with such natural ease that it sounds positively organic." .... Ho is a prodigious composer, having written over a half dozen critically acclaimed operas, music/theater epics, cutting edge multimedia performance works, martial arts ballet, oratorios and recording over a dozen albums as a leader. Recent commissions include: the nationally toured and celebrated Voice of the Dragon; Josephine Baker's Angels from the Rainbow for Imani Winds; Suite for Matriarchal Shaman Warriors for the unique Asian zither and percussion ensemble IIIZ+ and a Jazz Commissioning Award to compose Suite Sam Furnace (in honor of the late alto saxophonist and 20 year member of the Afro Asian Music Ensemble) from Chamber Music America. The work premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the fall of 2004. .... Current blockbuster music/theater projects composed by Ho include: Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon!, a martial arts sword epic paying homage to Japanese manga and samurai cult film classics; a new opera Mr. Mystery: The Return of Sun Ra to Save Planet Earth with libretto by Quincy Troupe; and for the Apollo Theater and the Brooklyn Academy of Music 2008 Next Wave Festival Dragon vs. Eagle. .... As a musical leader, Fred Ho founded the Afro Asian Music Ensemble in 1982; the Monkey Orchestra in 1990; co-founded the Brooklyn Sax Quartet with David Bindmanin 1997; and recently started Caliente! Circle Around the Sun (featuring Ho's solo baritone saxophone with poets Magdalena Gomez and Raul Salinas). .... Fred Ho currently resides in Brooklyn, NY..... PLEASE NOTE: This is Fred Ho's Official Myspace Page, but not maintained by Fred himself. ...... ......
Members
Current Members of the Afro-Asian Music Ensemble: .. Fred Ho, baritone sax/leader .. Bobby Zankel, alto sax.. Salim Washington, tenor sax.. Art Hirahara, piano.. Wesley Brown, bass.. Royal Hartigan, drums/percussion....... Management & Booking:.. .. Spectrum Music.... spectrum [at] spectrummusic.net....
Influences
Archie Shepp, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Thad Jones, Charles Mingus, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Cal Massey, Max Roach, Korean pansori, Chinese opera and folk music, Leo Parker, Serge Chaloff, Pepper Adams, Chinary Ung, Gerald Fried, Lalo Schiffrin, Earth, Wind and Fire, Azteca, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Mandrill, War, Chicago, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chase, Santana, The Beatles, Iron Butterfly, Yes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Minnie Riperton, The Pyramids, Natalie Cole, Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Kalamu ya Salaam, Isabelle Allende, Jayne Cortez, Sun Ra, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Aretha Franklin, Charles Tolliver, Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, Raul Salinas, Magdalena Gomez, Chrystos, W.E.B. DuBois, Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Mao Zedong, Jose Maria Sison, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Richard Aoki, Carlos Bulosan, H.T. Tsiang, Lu Xun, Ho Chi Minh, Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon, Dudley Randall, Hoyt Fuller, the Black Arts Movement, the Asian American Movement, Herbert Apthekar, John Bellamy Foster, Albert Memmi, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Sweet Honey in the Rock, Sidney Finkelstein, Eddie Palmieri, Tadao Sawai, Ennio Morricone, Hideakira Sakurai, Kunnihiko Murai, Qiu Jin, Nana ya Asantawa, Lakshimi Bai the Rani of Jhansi, Buddy Rich, Henry Hampton, Paul Robeson, Queen Mother Audley Moore.
Sounds Like
an avant garde shaman