Jazz Articles about Fred Frith

Two Sides of Fred Frith

by John Eyles
September 14, 2012

From the very start of his musical career, guitarist Fred Frith has been equally at home as an improviser, a songwriter or a combination of the two. His first group, the legendary Henry Cow, always featured a balance between songs that were used as a springboard for improvisation and free improvisations. In contrast, his debut solo album Guitar Solos (Caroline, 1974) featured eight tracks of unaccompanied improvised guitar, including prepared guitar; Frith's innovative, experimental approach to his instrument was highly ...

Fred Frith: Clearing Customs

by AAJ Italy Staff
July 18, 2011

Questo progetto di Fred Frith, che vede coinvolti musicisti di diversa nazionalità e formazione, approda alla documentazione ufficiale su CD, a distanza di circa quattro anni dalle esibizioni dal vivo e registrazioni di studio effettuate in Germania sotto l'egida della Südwestrundfunk, in occasione della rassegna New Jazz Meeting. Aiutato con buona probabilità dal lavoro di editing, il sistema di improvvisazione controllata escogitato dal chitarrista britannico guida, non senza qualche difficoltà, lo sviluppo del discorso musicale. Le iniziali sonorità liquide e ...

Fred Frith: Clearing Customs

by Nic Jones
May 10, 2011

Over the decades of his solo career, Fred Frith's music has grown more reflective of the range of his musical interests. As well as being an improviser of significance he has also shown an interest in a diversity of folk musics, with initial signs showing up already, in his work of the late 1970s. Clearing Customs might, in a sense, be a culmination of the process started back then. An unusual instrumentation enhances the singularity of the ...

Cosa Brava: Ragged Atlas

by Nic Jones
May 23, 2010

There's a lot to a title as far as Ragged Atlas is concerned. The members of Cosa Brava have long been skilled in avoiding the obvious and their music incorporates influences from disparate sources. The range of their musical activities and affiliations in the past result in a coherence that is notable. When allied to the self-evident depth of intelligence at work here it amounts to something special.

There's impishness about the music, a sense of fun that maybe stems ...

Cosa Brava: Ragged Atlas

by John Kelman
May 3, 2010

Probably the most curious reaction guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith's Cosa Brava, when it debuted at the 2008 International Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville, was that it was “too melodic." Detractors of that show will likely be equally nonplussed by the group's overdue debut disc, Ragged Atlas, but it'll be their loss, as Frith's first “rock band" in far too many years may possess a decidedly lyrical bent, but is no less profound for it. Cosa Brava finds the perfect nexus between ...

Fred Frith: Mapping the Further Reaches

by Nic Jones
May 3, 2010

Multi-instrumentalist/composer Fred Frith occupies a unique niche. As a charter member of Henry Cow, a band for which improvisation was always an integral part of musical expression, he was partly responsible for some of the most radical music ever to have emerged from beneath the rock umbrella.So much so, in fact, that the discontinuities between that band's albums will always be more pronounced than their continuity. Any notion of music in a state of flux that ...

Cosa Brava: Ragged Atlas

by Mark Corroto
May 1, 2010

In the last forty years, no one has been about to categorize just what exactly Fred Frith music is. His seminal early work with the British prog-rock band Henry Cow--along with the likes of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart--developed the idea rock artists could also be accomplished and serious musicians. Later he founded the New York Downtown scene with John Zorn, Tom Cora, Gary Lucas, and Thomas Chapin. His continuing interests accompany the worlds of free improvisation, film music, chamber ...