Pavel Fajt: Percussion in Chapel

St. Benedict chapel

Pavel Fajt returned to the Hermit II festival after his fabulous duo project with Fred Frith in 1992. This year he came with a new instrument set - the "drum trek" - expanding the acoustic sound of his percussion with strings attached to steel ring and electronics.


Since the mid-80s, Pavel Fajt (born 1957) has been one of the most prominent musicians on the Czech alternative rock scene. As a drummer, a composer, and a bandleader, he has been instrumental in the shaping of a distinctive Czech rock identity. Internationally, he is best-known for his duo project with Iva Bittová and for his appearance in the film and on the soundtrack Step Across the Border about avant-garde guitar hero Fred Frith.
He began to work as a composer of music for dance and theater in the early 80s and started as a professional musician in 1983 in groups that left little or no trace (Nucleus, Manana, Jeste jsme se nedohodli). 1983 was also the year he co-founded Dunaj.

In 1985, Fajt began to collaborate with singer/violinist Iva Bittová. This project yielded a couple of critically acclaimed albums in the late 80s and took the duo around Europe, America, and Japan, attracting the attention of Fred Frith, who performed with both of them at the 1988 MIMI Festival (France).

The first half of the 1990s saw a number of projects filling Fajt's schedule: the Josef Boys with ex-Dunaj guitarist Vladimír Václavek, the Vogel Europas, Macaronic Sines with Anna Homler and Geert Waegeman, and duos with Mikoláš Chadima and drummer Jim Meneses (the Stickmen, Zero Pop, Palinckx).
Fajt founded his own group, Pluto, in 1995, recruiting singer Václav Bartoš, guitarist Petr Zavadil, and bassist Tomás Fröhlich, who would remain a trusty sideman in the drummer's other projects. Pluto brought out the best in Fajt, channeling his heavy yet subtle playing style in energy-driven songs that were generally accessible yet always on the verge of something avant-garde. In the late '90s, he participated in the Danubians with Amy Denio and members of the Hungarian avant-rock group Kampec Dolores.

Since 2001, he has continued to play solo with his own program called Drumtrek.

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