Henry Fraser performs Orexis, a new arrangement of his ongoing solo work, made for Lampo. Grounded in the physical properties of the double bass—its resonances, tactility, and size—Fraser explores the relationship between player and instrument. He attends to the bass’s smallest sounds: the sympathetic vibration of a string against a fingernail, the texture of fingers passing over a string, or beating patterns that emerge between tones.

He also draws on sources as disparate as Black American music, spectralism, Deep Listening, Gaelic psalm singing, and harsh noise, and finds among them a kind of coherence. Crucially, though, Fraser doesn’t turn the work into a succession of styles or techniques. In Orexis, the musical ideas may vary, but his way of treating them remains consistent.

Combining planned material and improvisation, Fraser “collaborates with the bass,” as he puts it, while inviting the audience to listen their way into the music alongside him.

Henry Fraser (b.1991, Boston, Mass.) is a New York-based double bassist, improviser, and composer. Collaborators include Ka Baird, Cleek Schrey, John Zorn, Uniform, Mary Halvorson, Randall Dunn, and Joey Arias. Performances include Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, New York; Roulette, Brooklyn; National Concert Hall of Ireland, Dublin; Moers Festival, Moers, Germany; Unlimited Festival, Wels, Austria; and Unsound Festival, Kraków. Since 2019, Fraser has concentrated on solo music for the double bass. His fourth solo album, Pneuma, was released by Kou Records in June 2026. Fraser was an Art Omi Music Fellow in 2021 and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow finalist in Music/Sound in 2022. In 2023, he joined Carnegie Hall’s Future Music Project as a teaching artist, leading music workshops with incarcerated youth in New York City. He held residencies at Pioneer Works and The Stone in 2025.