Solomon Frank

About

Solomon Frank is a queer improviser, composer and educator living and working on Cammeraygal land, whose inter-disciplinary practice straddles cross-species musical collaboration, vacuum cleaners and time travel. Solomon receives emails from the future including music and musical instructions written by future humans and entities for Frank to perform and carry out in the present. Solomon’s works and those received from the future have been performed by Ensemble Offspring, Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellows, Kirkos Ensemble (Ireland), double bassist, Will Hansen, Willoughby Symphony Orchestra and E-Mex Ensemble (Germany). These fictional conceits provide a frame for listening, a way of situating art music and making audiences aware of their cultured ears. Solomon’s improvisational practice expands upon the clarinet, replacing parts of the clarinet with other objects, homemade aluminium and plastic reeds, hoses, vacuum cleaners, watering cans and water. His academic research explores canine-human musical collaboration as a mechanism to question the human uniqueness of music. He also performs regularly with the Splinter Orchestra, percussionist, Niki Johnson as Throat Pleats, and his aquatic duo with saxophonist, Charlie Sundborn, Baptism, who perform musical rituals at waterways around Sydney to mark the seasons. Education forms an integral part of Solomon’s practice and he relishes instilling lateral ways of thinking in young minds.

Photo credit is Monisha Chippada.

Queer Workshop Intensive participating artist as part of the Queer Development Program 2020/21
Day For Night, Liveworks 2022