Results for "Fred Frith"

Fred Frith

Born: February 17, 1949

Multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser Fred Frith has been making noise of one kind or another for almost 50 years, starting with the iconic rock collective Henry Cow, which he co-founded with Tim Hodgkinson in 1968. Fred is best known as a pioneering electric guitarist and improviser, song-writer, and composer for film, dance and theater. Through bands like Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, Keep the Dog, the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet and Cosa Brava, he has stayed close to his roots in rock and folk music while branching out in many other directions. Composing for dance throughout his long career, Fred has worked with Rosalind Newman and Bebe Miller in New York, François Verret and Catherine Diverrès in France, and Amanda Miller and the Pretty Ugly Dance Company over the course of many years in Germany, as well as composing for two documentary films on the work of Anna Halprin. Theater credits include the Creation Company in New York and François-Michel Pesenti’s Théâtre du Point Aveugle in Marseille, where he spent six months in 1990 working with “jeunes rockers en chômage des quartiers défavorisés” (young unemployed rock musicians from the ghettos) on the opera Helter Skelter. His compositions have been performed by ensembles ranging from Arditti Quartet and the Ensemble Modern to Concerto Köln and Galax Quartet, from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra to ROVA and Arte Sax Quartets, from rock bands Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Ground Zero to the Glasgow Improvisers’ Orchestra. Film music credits include the acclaimed documentaries Rivers and Tides, Touch the Sound and Leaning into the Wind, directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer, The Tango Lesson, Yes and The Party by Sally Potter, Werner Penzel’s Zen for Nothing, Peter Mettler’s Gods, Gambling and LSD, and the award-winning (and Oscar-nominated) Last Day of Freedom, by Nomi Talisman and Dee Hibbert-Jones. Fred has performed works by and sometimes alongside composers John Luther Adams, Gavin Bryars, Sylvie Courvoisier, Alvin Curran, George Lewis, René Lussier, Jose Maceda, Meredith Monk, Terry Riley, and Christian Wolff; improvised with Paolo Angeli, Lotte Anker, Derek Bailey, Chris Brown, Lol Coxhill, Chris Cutler, Janet Feder, Joëlle Léandre, Miya Masaoka, Phil Minton, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Bob Ostertag, Evan Parker, Zeena Parkins, and Camel Zekri, to name a few; collaborated with classical virtuosi Evelyn Glennie, Katia Labèque, Viktoria Mullova, and Werner Bärtschi; and—as session musician—recorded on albums by, for example, Brian Eno, The Residents, Robert Wyatt, The Swans, Violent Femmes, Material, Negativland, John Zorn, Matthew and the Unfortunates, and Half Japanese. He is currently performing with the Fred Frith Trio and Frelosa. The recipient of Italy’s Demetrio Stratos Prize for his life’s work in experimental music and an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in his home county of Yorkshire, Fred is Professor Emeritus at the legendary epicenter of American experimental music, Mills College in Oakland, California

Francesca Gemmo, Magda Mayas: Tides In The Mirror

by Neri Pollastri
April 20, 2026

Tides in the Mirror documenta lo splendido incontro in studio di due pianiste, l'italiana Francesca Gemmo e la tedesca Magda Mayas, entrambe dedite all'improvvisazione ancorché partendo da esperienze e punti di vista diversi. Gemmo, formazione classica, ha esplorato molti ambiti dell'improvvisazione contemporanea, anche assieme al compagno d'arte e di vita Sergio Armaroli, arrivando recentemente ...

Big Ears 2026

by Mark Sullivan
April 9, 2026

Big Ears Festival Knoxville, TN March 26-29, 2026 Another year, another jam-packed festival lineup. The Spotlight presentations included SUSS Presents Across the Horizon, an ambient country experience; films and performances related to Ethiopia's musical legacy; and David Byrne's Who is the Sky? Polish pianist/composer Hania Rani offered an ambient concert and the ...

From New Age to Nuclear

by Patrick Burnette
April 5, 2026

We try to cover a wide gamut of improvised music in the podcast, but today's episode must surely have the widest spread of any recent offering. We've got spiritual jazz from the late sixties, a quartet featuring clarinet from a few weeks ago, an album by a British mover and shaker that could easily be filed ...

Marilyn Mazur, Angelika Niescier, Pat Thomas & Tomeka Reid

by Maurice Hogue
January 5, 2026

There's some great music coming in 2026, so I dropped in a preview tracks of upcoming albums by alto saxophonist Angelika Niescier collaborating with some of Chicago's finest, England's free jazz pianist Pat Thomas with XT (2.5 hours of screamin' free jazz on Strata Act (Joy Contemporary), Chicago's cellist supreme Tomeka Reid & quartet, Flea from ...

Forlì Open Music 2025

by Luciano Rossetti
November 24, 2025

Sergio Armaroli: The Musical Omnivore

by Mark Corroto
November 19, 2025

Sergio Armaroli is an Italian composer, percussionist, vibraphonist, teacher and visual artist whose music can be found on multiple labels including ezz-thetics, Leo Records, Dodicilune, Ictus Records and Da Vinci Classics. His 2025 releases include Deconstructing Ayler In The Universe (Dodicilune), And I Entered Into Sleep (Die Schachtel), and the ezz-thetics discs Introducing A Very Heavy ...

Jazzfest Berlin 2025

by Giuseppe Segala
November 10, 2025

Jazzfest Berlin 2025 Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Quasimodo Jazz Club, A-Train Jazz Club, Chiesa monumentale Kaiser Wilhelm Berlino 30 ottobre--2 novembre 2025 Già nella prima serata di questa sessantaduesima edizione, il Jazzfest Berlin calava senza indugi una delle sue carte vincenti, con Wadada Leo Smith e Vijay Iyer sul grande ...

Uneven Eleven: Live In Brighton

by Mark Corroto
November 5, 2025

Since the dawn of this century, time seems to move faster and faster. Trends flare up and fade almost instantly--what is celebrated today becomes yesterday's news by morning. Music is no exception. Perhaps it is the digital age, meme culture or our shrinking attention spans that push us ever onward in search of the “next new ...

50 Years Later: 10 Jazz Albums from 1975 That Deserve Another Spin

by Kyle Simpler
October 1, 2025

1975 was a landmark year for music, marked by several outstanding album releases. Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks (Columbia), Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti (Swan Song), Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here (Harvest), Frank Zappa's One Size Fits All (DiscReet) and Jeff Beck's Blow by Blow (Epic) were just a few of the titles that have ...