Two weeks after MacArthur genius Anthony Braxton cast his creative thrall over Pittsburgh, a stopover by Chicago-based cellist/composer Fred Lonberg-Holm -- who studied with Braxton at Mills College -- provides an excellent guideline of continuity for Pittsburgh's bubbling experimental music scene.

Just as saxophonist Ben Opie was responsible for Braxton's arrival, so is guitarist Dave Bernabo culpable for Lonberg-Holm's. Bernabo runs the locally based Abstract on Black label which recently issued a CD by Friction Brothers -- Lonberg-Holm's aural exploration trio with percussionist Michael Zerang and "dry ice" master Michael Colligan.

Recorded live at Chicago's Elastic performance space, the three pick up whatever household objects are lying around, producing a fantastic array of improvised sounds.

The Friction Brothers' method of spontaneous generation is akin to the way Lonberg-Holm has navigated through the varied experiences of his storied musical career. Growing up in New York City, he studied the cello classically at the famed Manhattan School and at summer Juilliard sessions, but quit the instrument for a while in 1982.

"I was trying to play in bands and to improvise -- things you're not supposed to do while you're in music school -- so my heart wasn't in it," he recalls. "I dropped out, tended bar and drove a cab. I was writing music for theater, and playing bass in a rock band that had a tour which actually ended in Tunisia."

Fred's budding interest in electronic music led him to the program at Brooklyn College (where he studied for a semester with Pauline Oliveros) and back to the cello. "They wouldn't let me be a major in computer music as an undergrad, so I took regular composition classes, and I had to either play an instrument or sing in the choir. So I chose to cello to play in their New Music ensemble. I realized that the cello was a way I could get into the contemporary music world without having to be a rich composer. I could instead participate in a community of people who play each other's music. I could have gotten a Ph.D. in composition, but the cello sounded more interesting than being Mr. Academic [Professor] at a college somewhere."

Nonetheless, Lonberg-Holm went on to receive his master's at Mills, and acknowledges his two great influences as being Braxton and respected minimalist composer Morton Feldman. "Anthony was more of a philosopher-teacher, [while] Feldman was only interested in the nuts and bolts. The great thing about Anthony is that his music is more complex than you can describe in words. An encounter with him is a conundrum and an enigma, making him a person worthy of investigation."

His adventure as self-described "anti-cellist" began in the early '90s Manhattan avant-garde, where he founded a group called Trigger (who made an early Pittsburgh appearance at the now-defunct Oakland Beehive) and worked with core downtown scenesters such as art-punkers God Is My Co-Pilot and composers Anthony Coleman and John Zorn. Along the lines of Zorn's structured improvisation piece Cobra (and similar concepts by composers Earle Brown and Butch Morris), Lonberg-Holm later developed an idea for group interaction called the Lightbox Orchestra, which is still ongoing.

"In the simplest terms, it's about operating a box of lights," he explains. "Each musician has a light, and when that light is on they're invited to play, while when the light is off, they're not. When you think about it, even though the function is basically binary, when you have 10 people, that's still '10 factorial' combinations of instruments and personalities. Unlike the usual 10-piece improv orchestra, there's an opportunity to get a dynamic environment -- it's more about orchestral challenges than it is about button-pushing."

In 1995, Lonberg-Holm moved to Chicago ("my wife was going there with or without me") and immediately discovered fertile ground there for his musical pursuits. It didn't take long for Lonberg-Holm to cement his position as go-to cellist in the Windy City music scene, and he became an integral element of several well-known, respected avant-jazz outfits, including Joe McPhee's Survival Unit, Peter Brotzmann's Tentet, and the Ken Vandermark 5.

"I was playing with all these guys who were really fantastic. So it would have been stupid to go back to New York, where the whole emphasis was on building your position, like a chess game. In Chicago, we're just playing music, which is all I wanted to do anyway. People [here] seem to have a work ethic-oriented attitude to do the best they can, not because the New Yorker or The Times might come to review them.

"I've said it before -- Chicago's like a production town and New York is a finished goods town," he continues. "We don't think so much about barriers between scenes and genres -- a free improvisor can play with rock bands and jazz bands and [even] Courtney Love-type pop."

So while Lonberg-Holm might consort with the cream of European free improvisors, such as Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, British saxophonist John Butcher and "lowercase" trumpet hero Axel Dorner, he's not averse to his cello being heard on various indie rock releases, from Superchunk and U.S Maple to Califone, Smog and Wilco. He jokes that his motives are purely "imperialistic."

"I want my cello to be vibrating in as many houses as possible all over the world. There's never a moment in the day when somebody isn't playing an A-440 [note], so why not be a part of that? [Screw] Andy Warhol -- the idea of fame is outdated -- now we're all about ubiquity."

And indeed, sometimes it does seem that Lonberg-Holm is everywhere in the music scene, especially with groups such as his Valentine Trio with bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Frank Rosaly, which recorded three CDs, including the newest "Terminal Valentine" on the Atavistic label.

However, after a U.S. tour last summer with Valentine, Lonberg-Holm felt that the music needed a change in direction.

"With the last Valentine record, I really wanted to go for more of a groove feel, but Jason wasn't really feeling it. So I'm putting together a band that'll specialize in the deep pocket groove, playing with a really great young drummer named Charles Rumback. Our first gigs aren't until the fall, but we already have a tour of Europe that we're rehearsing for."

Could the king of the anti-cello, the master of abrasion and distortion, actually be feeling the itch of the funk? Lonberg-Holm confirms it. "Yeah, Curtis Mayfield, Erykah Badu -- I basically like the love jams, the music for making babies," he jibes. "But within that context, we're still open to improvise. You can have a more traditional harmonic and melodic vocabulary, and at the same time be adventurous with the manipulation of the material. It doesn't have to be all asymmetric, disjointed, noisy new jazz -- you can definitely keep it more in the pocket."

A James Brown drum break, however, is probably not what's in store for the audience when Lonberg-Holm brings his cello and kitchen implements to town on Saturday, where he'll do a solo set and then a free-ranging quartet with Bernabo, vocalist Eden McNutt (curator of the Wood Street Gallery's Radical Riffs series, of which this concert is a part) and bassist Tracy Mortimore.

What if the airline loses his cello in transit (such incompetence has been known to happen) and Fred arrives with nothing but his toothbrush and his wits? "I have a piece of aluminum siding that I picked up in Philly. I've got a whistle in my pocket, I can clap my hands and stomp my feet, and maybe someone will lend me their French horn and a greeting card."

"A composer once said to me -- and he didn't intend it in a nice way -- that I could make music if I only had a tree and a rock. And I actually thought that was a great point. That's the goal I should be able to achieve."