André Vida

André Vida (born 1974) is an American-born German saxophonist, lyricist, avant-garde musician, and experimental composer. Vida has been on the forefront of several major developments in experimental music, including his membership in Anthony Braxton’s original Ghost Trance Ensemble, as founding member of New York collective the CTIA, performances with The Tower Recordings and subsequent ‘freak folk’ groups. He is based in Berlin. His father was Julius A. Vida (1928–2018), a Hungarian refugee to the U.S. during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; and a prominent chemist and pharmaceutical businessperson in Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S.. In 1995, Vida moved to New York City and co-founded the Creative Trans-Informational Alliance Presents (CTIA) with Brandon Evans and Dominique Eade. Vida graduated from Wesleyan University in 1997. He received a M.F.A. degree in experimental sound practices in 2005 from the school of music at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

Career In 2001, Vida moved to Berlin and soon after launched the Kreuzberg suite, a once a week concert series with Vida and a frequently changing musical guest creating improvisational music around the subject of "Fish And Green".

His musical language is informed by an awareness of the human body and its limits. Vida worked in a collaboration with Anri Sala for the exhibition "3-2-1" at The Serpentine Gallery in London. Vida was scheduled to perform over 400 improvisational saxophone concerts over the course of 51 days (from October 1 to November 20, 2011).

Vida was an Eyebeam Honorary Fellow in 2013. In 2013, as part of the Global Art Forum 7, Vida performed "Score" at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, challenging the question what if we spoke music instead of words?

The 2015 Sculpture Park, Frieze Art Fair London presented a live performance by Anri Sala in collaboration with André Vida. The piece is called To Each His Own (in Bridges), it is based on 74 pieces of music, combining fragments of jazz, folk, and pop songs played on the saxophone, clarinet and trombone.

In 2016, Vida participated in the art exhibition, "Anri Sala: Answer Me,” at the New Museum in New York City. Vida live improvises sound with his saxophone next to a video of Jemeel Moondoc’s performance, shot on the balcony of a building in Berlin.

Discography

Publications