Fire Museum Presents 25th Anniversary: Iva Bittová & Antonin Fajt duo + The Other Side of a Dream
Hailing from the present-day Czech Republic, Iva Bittová is one of Europe's most innovative and celebrated artists. She began her career as an actor in the mid-1970s, appearing in several Czech and Slovak feature films. Born to famed Roma violinist Bittó Kálmán, she was playing violin and singing at a very early age. In 1987 Iva & percussionist Pavel Fajt released an album of original minimalist fusion of alternative rock music with Slavic and Roma motifs. Iva Bittova's first solo record ("Iva Bittova" - 1991) fully outlined her extraordinary complexity as an artist. She composed all of the 14 tracks on the album, except for Czech folk song "One Sister".
Bittova is one of those rare artists who know how to put all possible extremes of the emotional scale into one song: she laughs and cries, cackles as a hen, chirps as a bird, slaps her tongue, makes strange throat noises. Bittova's violin playing is as impressive as her vocal acrobatics, distilled from different techniques, constantly mixed. She might pluck her instrument as a ukulele or a banjo,or play with a bow or a wooden stick to get a rhythmical pattern from the string. Bittova uses everything she has, plays with her entire body, beats a rhythm with her feet.
In addition to her solo concerts Bittova has collaborated and performed with Jiri Stivin, Emil Viklicky, Fred Frith, Tom Cora, Chris Cutler, David Moss, Pavel Fajt and many others.
Antonin Fajt's music combines elements of folkloric traditions of Eastern Europe, jazz and classical composition. Toni grew up in Lelekovice, in the Moravian region of Czech Republic in a musical family. His mother, Iva Bittová is a singer, violinist and composer, and his father, Pavel Fajt is a drummer and composer. Antonín moved to the Hudson Valley, NY in 2007. He likes to work with preparations, folk materials, sampling, texture, and repetition. Toni holds a BA in music from Bard College ’14, where he studied under the mentorship of the composer Joan Tower.
Besides music, he likes to cook, work outside, make events, and pretend to know things. He's been fortunate to work with wonderful musicians such as Dean Sharp, Niloufar Shiri, Window Quartet, Andrei Kvapil, Henry Birdsey, George Mráz, Jessika Kenney, Eyvind Kang, Michael Dessen, PUBLIQuartet, & the ICE ensemble. He can be heard with his group Mantis with Niloufar Shiri, in duo with Iva Bittová, or in improvised music scenes in New York and southern California. He holds an MA from the Integrative Composition, Improvisation and Technology program at UC Irvine where he is currently finishing his PhD dissertation and composing a larger musical work centered around the Hudson River and its two-way flow as a representation of time.
Outsider jazz ensemble The Other Side Of A Dream was formed in 2021 by Jordan Burgis (Systolic Murmurs) as a pedal steel and analog synthesizer trio. After a few years of experimenting and recording at home, the project was resurrected in 2025 with a new focus on electro-acoustic piano improvisations. With fellow dreamers Darian Scatton (Song People) on analog synths and Mary Beth Ray (MB + MP) on processed electric guitars, the trio’s atmospheric music explores the space between daydreams and ecstatic visions, always posing the question: “Who will I be on the other side of a dream?”
Fire Museum Presents turns 25! Our first ever event took place on January 20th, 2001 in Berkeley, Ca. To celebrate we are hosting three events with series favorites, tonight with Iva Bittová in duo with Antonin Fajt and the exploratory sounds of The Other Side Of A Dream.
We cherish our long standing collaboration with The Rotunda and are glad to be hosting two of the events here!
Admission is FREE, donations are appreciated!
