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Davis - Frith - Greenlief: Lantskap Logic

By Glenn Astarita

Guitarist Fred Frith (Henry Cow, Massacre, Arte Quartett) is one the earth's greatest improvisers. He is joined on Lantskap Logic by a pair of attuned futurists--pipe organist, educator Evelyn Davis (Cheer Accident), and saxophonist/composer Phillip Greenlief (They Might Be Giants)--to record this album at the Mills College chapel, which houses the pipe organ, and seemed to be an ideal venue for this rather utopian electro-acoustic musical event. Soon after this recording, Frith retired from his position as Professor ...

Fred Frith Solo Live at BIMHUIS Amsterdam

By BIMHUIS

Since the 1960s, composer and multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith has been blurring the borders between rock, folk, improvisation and contemporary music. His influence as an artist was already evident in the early seventies, first as a result of his work with the innovative British rock band Henry Cow and later with Brian Eno. He moved to New York at the end of that decade, and began collaborating with artists like John Zorn, Tom Cora and Bill Laswell. He has worked as ...

Fred Frith's solo performance at the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra's Concert Hall

By Nenad Georgievski

Fred Frith The Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra's Concert Hall Skopje, Macedonia February 21, 2018 Nothing about guitarist Fred Frith's quiet demeanor as he walks on stage towards his guitar would give any indication of what will follow soon and where he will take the music and the audience with him. And during the performance at the Concert Hall of the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra, this master improviser and master conceptualist has shown the audience why he is ...

Fred Frith Trio: Another Day in Fucking Paradise

By Glenn Astarita

The album title may equate to what a disgruntled co-worker may utter at the office on a Monday morning. Yes, some of us have used this line, but master improviser, guitarist Fred Frith's prowess and boundless creativity is the antithesis to anything that may cause a semblance of drudgery. Jason Hoopes' bursting e-bass lines and Jordan Glenn's vigorous drumming and colorful accents supply all the ammo Frith needs via his speed riffing, unearthly effects and keen use of ...

Fred Frith / Darren Johnston: Everybody's Somebody's Nobody

By John Sharpe

Here's a West Coast entrant to the slim body of guitar/trumpet duets from iconoclastic strummer Fred Frith and trumpeter Darren Johnston. It collects 11 short cuts from two studio sessions into a three-quarter hour program. They're not averse to co-opting rhythms (Frith) or melodic figures (Johnston), meaning that what we have here can be termed the accessible avant-garde. Each jointly crafted extravaganza explores a different mood. They ring the changes both between numbers but also within them, especially in some ...

Brilliant Corners Jazz Festival 2015

By Ian Patterson

Brilliant Corners Jazz Festivaljny:Belfast, Ireland March 25-28 , 2015 Brilliant Corners may not be the biggest jazz festival in Northern Ireland--that accolade belongs to the City of Derry Jazz and Big Band Festival--but in just three editions it can already lay claim to being the best. Eschewing the populist acts that characterize jny:Derry's sprawling jazz festival, promoter Moving On Music has quickly established Brilliant Corners as the home of new and cutting edge ...

Two Sides of Fred Frith

By John Eyles

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 Nic Jones

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

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

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

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

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 ...