Fred Frith | |
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 Frith at theMoers Festival, June 1998 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | Jeremy Webster Frith (1949-02-17)17 February 1949 (age 76) Heathfield, Sussex, England[1] |
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| Instruments |
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| Works | Fred Frith discography |
| Years active | 1968–present |
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| Website | fredfrith |
Jeremy Webster "Fred"Frith (born 17 February 1949)[1][2][3] is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser. Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as a founding member of the Englishavant-rock groupHenry Cow. He was also a member of the groupsArt Bears,Massacre, andSkeleton Crew. He has collaborated with numerous musicians, includingRobert Wyatt,Derek Bailey,the Residents,Lol Coxhill,John Zorn,Brian Eno,Mike Patton,Lars Hollmer,Bill Laswell,Iva Bittová,Jad Fair,Kramer, theARTE Quartett, andBob Ostertag. He has also composed several long works, includingTraffic Continues (1996, performed 1998 by Frith andEnsemble Modern) andFreedom in Fragments (1993, performed 1999 byRova Saxophone Quartet). Frith produces most of his own music, and has also produced many albums by other musicians, includingCurlew,the Muffins,Etron Fou Leloublan, andOrthotonics.
He is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel's 1990 documentaryStep Across the Border. Frith also appears in the Canadian documentaryAct of God, which is about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning. He has contributed to a number of music publications, includingNew Musical Express andTrouser Press, and has conducted improvising workshops across the world. His career spans over four decades and he appears on over 400 albums, and he still performs actively throughout the world.[4]
Frith was awarded the 2008 Demetrio Stratos Prize for his career achievements in experimental music. The prize was established in 2005 in honour of experimental vocalistDemetrio Stratos, of the Italian groupArea, who died in 1979.[5][6][7] In 2010 Frith received an honorary doctorate from theUniversity of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England, in recognition of his contribution to music.[8] Frith was Professor of Composition in the Music Department atMills College inOakland, California, until his retirement in 2018. He is the brother ofSimon Frith, a music critic and sociologist, andChris Frith, a psychologist atUniversity College London.
Frith was born inHeathfield in East Sussex, England[1] into a family where music was considered an essential part of life. He was given the nickname "Fred" at school after the motorcycle road racerFreddie Frith.[2] Frith started violin lessons at the age of five and became a member of his school orchestra, but at 13 switched to guitar after watching a group imitating a popular instrumental band at the time,the Shadows. He decided to learn how to play guitar and get into a band. Frith taught himself guitar from a book ofguitar chords and soon found himself in a school group called the Chaperones, playing Shadows andBeatlescovers. However, when he started hearingblues music from the likes ofSnooks Eaglin andAlexis Korner it changed his whole approach to the guitar, and by the time he was 15, the Chaperones had become a blues band. Frith's first public performances were in 1967 infolk clubs in northern England, where he sang and played traditional and blues songs.
Besides the blues, Frith started listening to any music that had guitar in it, includingfolk, classical,ragtime, andflamenco. He also listened to Indian, Japanese, andBalinese music and was particularly drawn toEast European music after aYugoslav schoolfriend taught him folk tunes from his home. Frith went toCambridge University in 1967, where his musical horizons were expanded further by the philosophies ofJohn Cage andFrank Zappa's manipulation of rock music. Frith graduated fromChrist's College, Cambridge, with a BA (English literature) in 1970 (and by Cambridge custom received apro forma MA in 1974),[9] but the real significance of Cambridge for him was that the seminalavant-rock groupHenry Cow formed there.
Frith metTim Hodgkinson, a fellow student, in a blues club at Cambridge University in 1968. "We'd never met before, and he had an alto sax, and I had my violin, and we just improvised this ghastly screaming noise for about half an hour."[10] Something clicked and, recognizing their mutual open-minded approach to music, Frith and Hodgkinson formed a band there and then. They called itHenry Cow and they remained with the band until its demise in 1978. In the early 1970s Fred's grey Morris Minor sported the band's heraldic logo, much to the amusement of boys at the grammar school in York where his father was headmaster.
Frith composed a number of the band's notable pieces, including "Nirvana for Mice" and "Ruins". While guitar was his principal instrument, he also played violin (drawing on his classical training), bass guitar, piano, and xylophone.
In November 1973, Frith (and other members of Henry Cow) participated in a live-in-the-studio performance ofMike Oldfield'sTubular Bells for the BBC. It is available on Oldfield'sElements DVD.
After Henry Cow's first album, Frith releasedGuitar Solos in 1974, his first solo album and a glimpse at what he had been doing with his guitar. The album comprised eight tracks of unaccompanied andimprovised music played onprepared guitars. It was recorded in four days, at the Kaleidophon Studios in London'sCamden Town, without anyoverdubbing.
When it was released,Guitar Solos was considered a landmark album[11] because of its innovative and experimental approach to guitar playing. The January 1983 edition ofDownBeat magazine remarked thatGuitar Solos "... must have stunned listeners of the day. Even today that album stands up as uniquely innovative and undeniably daring."[12] It also attracted the attention of some musicians, includingBrian Eno, resulting in Frith playing guitar on two of Eno's albums,Before and After Science (1977) andMusic for Films (1978).
Between October and December 1974, Frith contributed a series of ten articles to the British weekly music newspaperNew Musical Express entitled "Great Rock Solos of Our Time". In them he analysed prominent rock guitarists of the day and their contribution to the development of the rock guitar, includingJimi Hendrix,Eric Clapton andFrank Zappa.[13]
While recording Henry Cow's last album, differences emerged between the group members over the album's content. Frith andChris Cutler favoured song-oriented material, while Hodgkinson andLindsay Cooper wanted purely instrumental compositions. As a compromise, Frith and Cutler agreed, early in 1978, to release the songs already created on their own album,Hopes and Fears, under the nameArt Bears (withDagmar Krause). The instrumental material was recorded by Henry Cow onWestern Culture later that year, after which the band split. The Art Bears trio continued purely as a studio group until 1981, releasing two more albums,Winter Songs in 1979 andThe World as It Is Today in 1981.
During this time Frith also releasedGravity (1980), his second solo album, recorded at Norrgården Nyvla inUppsala, Sweden with Swedish groupSamla Mammas Manna, and at the Catch-a-Buzz studio inRockville, Maryland with United States bandThe Muffins. It showed Frith breaking free from the highly structured and orchestrated music of Henry Cow and experimenting with folk and dance music. "Norrgården Nyvla" was also the title of one of the tracks on the album and is considered one of Frith's most recognisable tunes.
Towards the end of 1979, Frith relocated to New York City, where he immediately hooked up with the localavant-garde/downtown music scene. The impact on him was uplifting: "... New York was a profoundly liberating experience for me; for the first time I felt that I could be myself and not try to live up to what I imagined people were thinking about me."[14] Frith met and began recording with a number of musicians and groups, includingHenry Kaiser (With Friends Like These,Who Needs Enemies?),Bob Ostertag (Getting a Head,Voice of America),Tom Cora,Eugene Chadbourne,Zeena Parkins,Ikue Mori,the Residents,Material,the Golden Palominos, andCurlew. He spent some 14 years in New York, during which time he joined a few bands, includingJohn Zorn'sNaked City (in which Frith played bass) andFrench Frith Kaiser Thompson (consisting ofJohn French, Frith, Henry Kaiser andRichard Thompson). Frith also started three bands himself, namelyMassacre,Skeleton Crew, andKeep the Dog.
Massacre was formed in 1980 with bassistBill Laswell and drummerFred Maher. A high energyexperimental rock band, they toured the United States and Europe in 1980 and 1981, and released one album,Killing Time (1981), recorded atMartin Bisi's later-to-be historic studio inBrooklyn. Massacre split in 1981 when Maher left, but later reformed again in 1998 when drummerCharles Hayward joined. The new Massacre released three more albums.
Skeleton Crew, a collaboration with Tom Cora from 1982 to 1986, was anexperimental group noted for its live improvisations where Frith (guitar, violin, keyboards, drums) and Cora (cello, bass guitar, homemade drums and contraptions) played a number of instruments simultaneously. They performed extensively across Europe, North America and Japan and releasedLearn to Talk in 1984. Zeena Parkins (electric harp and keyboards) joined in 1984 and the trio releasedThe Country of Blinds in 1986. In October 1983 Skeleton Crew joinedDuck and Cover, a commission from theBerlin Jazz Festival, for a performance inWest Berlin, followed by another in February 1984 inEast Berlin.
Frith formed Keep the Dog in 1989, asextet and review band for performing selections of his extensive repertoire of compositions from the previous 15 years. The lineup was Frith (guitar, violin, bass guitar),René Lussier (guitar, bass guitar),Jean Derome (winds), Zeena Parkins (piano, synthesizer, harp, accordion), Bob Ostertag (sampling keyboard), andKevin Norton (drums, percussion). Later Charles Hayward replaced Norton on drums. The group existed until mid-1991, performing live in Europe, North America and the formerSoviet Union. A double CD,That House We Lived In, from their final performances in Austria, Germany and Italy in May and June 1991, was released in 2003.
During the 1980s, Frith began writing music for dance, film, and theatre, and a number of his solo albums from this time reflect this genre, includingThe Technology of Tears (And Other Music for Dance and Theatre) (1988),Middle of the Moment (1995),Allies (Music for Dance, Volume 2) (1996), andRivers and Tides (2003). Exploring new forms of composition, Frith also experimented with chance or accidental compositions, often created by building music around "found sounds" andfield recordings, examples of which can be found onAccidental (Music for Dance, Volume 3) (2002) andPrints: Snapshots, Postcards, Messages and Miniatures, 1987–2001 (2002). He was featured in 'Crossing Bridges', a 1983 music programme based around jazz guitar improvisation, and broadcast byChannel 4[15]
As a composer, Frith began composing works for other musicians and groups in the late 1980s, including theRova Saxophone Quartet,Ensemble Modern, andArditti Quartet. He composed and performed the song "Choral Ode 2" for the 1993operaAgamemnon. In the late 1990s, Frith established his ownFred Frith Guitar Quartet consisting of Frith,René Lussier,Nick Didkovsky, andMark Stewart. Their guitar music, varying from "tuneful and pretty, to noisy, aggressive and quite challenging",[16] appears on two albums,Ayaya Moses (1997) andUpbeat (1999), both on Lussier's ownAmbiances Magnétiques label.
The ex-Henry Cow members have always maintained close contact with each other and Frith still collaborates with many of them, including Chris Cutler and Tim Hodgkinson. Cutler and Frith have been touring Europe, Asia, and the Americas since 1978, and have given dozens of duo performances. Three albums from some of these concerts have been released byRecommended Records. In December 2006, Cutler, Frith, and Hodgkinson performed together atthe Stone in New York City, their first concert performance since Henry Cow's demise in 1978.[17][18]
In 1995, Frith moved toStuttgart in Germany to live with his wife, German photographer Heike Liss, and their children Finn and Lucia. Between 1994 and 1996, Frith was composer-in-residence at L'Ecole Nationale de Musique inVilleurbanne, France.
Frith relocated to the United States in 1997 to become Composer-in-Residence atMills College inOakland, California. In 1999 he was appointed the Luther B. Marchant Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills, where he taught composition, contemporary performance and improvisation.[19] He is currently Professor Emeritus of Music at Mills, after having retired in 2018.[20] While Frith had never studied music in college, his credentials of over forty years of continuous practice and self-discovery got him the position. He has, however, maintained that "most of my students are better qualified to teach composition than I am," and that he learns as much from them as they learn from him.[21]
In March 1997 Frith formed theelectro-acousticimprovisation andexperimental trioMaybe Monday with saxophonistLarry Ochs fromRova Saxophone Quartet andkoto playerMiya Masaoka. Between 1997 and 2008, they toured the United States, Canada, and Europe, and released three albums. In March 2008, Frith formedCosa Brava, anexperimental rock and improvisationquintet withZeena Parkins fromSkeleton Crew andKeep the Dog,Carla Kihlstedt andMatthias Bossi fromSleepytime Gorilla Museum, andthe Norman Conquest. They toured Europe in April 2008, and performed at the 25thFestival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville inVictoriaville, Quebec, Canada, the following month.[22]
In 2013, Frith formed theFred Frith Trio in Oakland, California, an improvising group with bassist Jason Hoopes and drummer/percussionist Jordan Glenn, both from the Oakland experimental song group Jack O' The Clock.[23][24][25] The Trio toured Europe in February 2015,[26] recorded a studio album,Another Day in Fucking Paradise, in January 2016,[27] and toured Europe again in February 2017.[28] The album was well received by music critics.[29][30] In January 2018 the trio recorded their second album,Closer to the Ground, which was released in September 2018.[31]
Frith supplied guitar to the albumsThe Fates (2013)[32] andFolklore (2017) byMatthew Edwards and the Unfortunates.[33]
Frith has also collaborated with a number of prominent musicians, includingRobert Wyatt,[14]Derek Bailey,[34]Lol Coxhill,[35]Lars Hollmer,[36] and the Scottish deaf percussionist DameEvelyn Glennie.[37]
Step Across the Border is a 1990 documentary film on Fred Frith, written and directed byNicolas Humbert [fr] andWerner Penzel [fr], and released in Germany and Switzerland. It was filmed in Japan, Europe, and the United States, and also features musiciansRené Lussier,Iva Bittová,Tom Cora,Tim Hodgkinson,Bob Ostertag, andJohn Zorn.
In 2002, Fred Frith created his own record label,Fred Records, an imprint ofRecommended Records, to re-release his back catalogue of recordings and previously unreleased material.
During the early years of Henry Cow, Frith was married to Liza White, a teacher in Cambridge. They wed in 1970,[38] but divorced in 1974 after Frith's commitment to the band left little private life for the couple.[39] In the early- to mid-1980s, after Henry Cow had split up and Frith had moved to New York City, he was married to Tina Curran, a musician and artist. She played bass guitar on several tracks on Frith's albums at the time, and did the photography and artwork for a number of his albums during that period.[40] In the early 1990s Frith married German photographer and performance artist, Heike Liss. She has done the artwork for many of Frith's albums, and has performed with him on several occasions. They lived in Germany in the mid-1990s, then moved to California where Frith taught at Mills College until his retirement in 2018.[41][42]
Fred Frith has used a number of different guitars, includinghomemade instruments, over the years, depending on the type of music he is playing. For the more structured and refined music he has often used aGibson ES-345, for example on his solo album,Gravity. For the heavier "rock" sound, as inMassacre, he has used an old 1961 solid body Burns guitar, created by the British craftsman Jim Burns. On his landmarkGuitar Solos album, Frith used a modified 1936 Gibson K-11 guitar (q.v. for details).
For Frith's early unstructured music, as withHenry Kaiser onWith Friends Like These, and his early table-top guitar solo performances, he used a homemade six- and eight-stringdouble-neck guitar created by a friend, Charles Fletcher. Frith toldDownBeat magazine in 1983: "It was the one and only guitar that he ever built ... he constructed it mainly out of old pieces from other guitars that I had, and for the body I think he used an old door."[12] The possibilities offered by homemade instruments prompted Frith to start creating his own guitars, basically slabs of wood on which he mounted apickup, abridge, andstrings stretched over metal screws. "The basic design of the instrument is supposed to be as rudimentary and flexible as possible," Frith said, "so I can use an electric drill to bore holes into the body of it to achieve certain sounds ... ."[12]
Frith uses a variety of implements to play guitar, from traditionalguitar picks toviolin bows,drum sticks, egg beaters, paint brushes, lengths of metal chain, and otherfound objects. Frith remarked: "It's more to do with my interest in found objects and the use of certain kinds of textures which have an effect on the string ... the difference between the touch of stone, the touch of glass, the touch of wood, the touch of paper – those kinds of basic elements that you're using against the surface of the strings which produce different sounds."[12]
In a typical solo improvising concert, Frith would lay a couple of his homemade guitars flat on a table and play them with a collection of found objects (varying from concert to concert). He would drop objects, likeball bearings, dried beans, and rice on the strings while stroking, scraping, and hitting them with whatever was on hand.[43] Later he added a livesampler to his on-stage equipment, which he controlled with pedals. The sampler enabled him to dynamically capture and loop guitar sounds, over which he would capture and loop new sounds, and so on, until he had a bed of repeated patterns on top of which he would then begin his solo performance.
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Since the late 1980s, Fred Frith has composed a number of longer works. The following is a selection (years indicating time of composition).[44][45]
Fred Frith appears on over 400 recordings: with bands, in collaboration with other musicians, solo, albums he produced for other bands and musicians, and albums featuring his composed work performed by others.
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