Pat plays UPRIGHT AND ELECTRIC BASS
Pat Swoboda is a NYC-based upright and electric bass player active across many genres. Swoboda writes, records, and tours with the Latin-alternative project LADAMA and tours internationally with Malian guitar legend Vieux Farka Toure. With LADAMA, Pat has performed at NPR’s famed Tiny Desk series, and given three TED Talks. Active in the contemporary classical music space, Pat is a founding member of the trio Bearthoven, and long standing member of the contemporary chamber orchestra Contemporaneous. With Bearthoven, Swoboda has commissioned and/or premiered over 75 new works and released three studio albums. An accomplished orchestral player, Swoboda has performed with the Albany Symphony, American Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, the New York Pops Orchestra, the Westchester Philharmonic, and the Fort Greene Orchestra among many others. Active in New York’s world class theater scene, Pat has played in the pit for over a dozen Broadway musicals. Recent highlights include Chess, Sunset Blvd, Gypsy, Floyd Collins, The Notebook, Illinoise, and Les Misérables.
Pat plays bass for BEARTHOVEN
Bearthoven [ \'bâr-toh-vən\ ] is a piano trio creating a new repertoire for a familiar instrumentation by commissioning works from leading young composers. Karl Larson (piano), Pat Swoboda (bass), and Matt Evans (percussion) have combined their individual voices and diverse musical backgrounds, coming together to create a versatile trio focused on frequent and innovative commissioning of up-and-coming composers. Bearthoven is rapidly building a diverse repertoire by challenging composers to apply their own voice to an instrumentation that, while common amongst jazz and pop idioms, is currently foreign in the contemporary classical world.
Pat plays bass for LADAMA
LADAMA is an ensemble of women musicians (and me) from across the Americas who, as well as performing as a touring band, strive to engage youth in their respective communities in the process of music-making, dancing, composition and audio production through collaboration and performance workshops. They are Mafer Bandola (bandola llanera), Lara Klaus (percussion, drums), Daniela Serna (percussion) and me, Pat Swoboda (upright and electric bass). Together they combine the rhythms and traditional instrumentation of frevo and maracatu from Pernambuco, Brazil; joropo songs from the high plains of Venezuela; cumbia, gaita and champeta from the Colombian coast and contemporary strains of American pop, rock and jazz. Members of LADAMA specialize in, among other instruments, the bandola llanera from Venezuela, the tambor alegre from Colombia, and the pandeiro and zabumba from Northeast Brazil. Their performances include original compositions and traditional songs sung in Spanish, Portuguese and English combining disparate elements into a cohesive whole. The result is a sonic experience through which we can view our future as a world that communicates across continents and cultures, with sound and story.
Pat plays bass for Vieux Farka Toure
Often referred to as “The Hendrix of the Sahara”, Vieux Farka Touré was born in Niafunké, Mali in 1981. He is the son of legendary Malian guitar player Ali Farka Touré, who died in 2006. Ali Farka Touré came from a historical tribe of soldiers, and defied his parents in becoming a musician. When Vieux was in his teens, he declared that he also wanted to be a musician. His father disapproved due to the pressures he had experienced being a musician. Rather, he wanted Vieux to become a soldier. But with help from family friend the kora maestro Toumani Diabaté, Vieux eventually convinced his father to give him his blessing to become a musician shortly before Ali passed. Vieux has released 12 studio recordings, both solo and collaborative. His most recent release is a collaboration with the Houston psych band Khruangbin honoring the music of his father, Ali.