Duane Pitre Sextet

To be blunt, New Orleans’ Duane Pitre is a little bit of a badass. I first learned about Pitre through his radiant compositions; he curated and contributed to The Harmonic Series: A Compilation of Musical Works in Just Intonation, a fantastic collection released by Important Records and exploring a tuning system that’s alien to most Western listeners. But he really caught my ear on last year’s Origin, a collection of shimmering pieces written for six bowed guitars and in the same system (just intonation) he’d mined for the earlier compilation. Those pieces felt demanding and aggressive, almost like drone metal pulled into the auspices of the academy. With overtones flying through the room, they seemed to saturate every space. “To recreate this experience via this recording, the listener should try playing it at relatively loud volumes in a space large enough to convey the piece's resonant qualities,” Pitre wrote in the liner notes. A badass, I tell you.

If you still have your doubts (granted, as he is a modern classical composer), consider that Pitre was a sponsored professional skateboarder—named one of the modern best, even. His interest in music was actually inspired by early skate videos that were driven by punk rock. They inspired him to buy a bass and learn how to play. “Speed Freaks came out —Dinosaur Jr., fIREHOSE, Bad Brains—that’s what started it right there. That’s why I’m here today playing music, because of that video,” he once said. Pitre joined the post-hardcore band, The Camera Obscura, and eventually returned to New Orleans, where his interests in modern classical music really took hold.

At Hopscotch, Pitre will return to his loud roots, joining metal bands like Krallice and Horseback in a dingy rock room. But with an all-star ensemble that includes Jesse Sparhawk, Shannon Fields and a string section, he’ll play Feel Free, a long-form piece depending on just intonation and aleatoric harmonics that only recently debuted. It's overkill, sure, but a badass. —Grayson Currin