Fred Frith Solo

Multi-instrumentalist, composer and improviser Fred Frith is one of the most prolific and versatile musicians of the last 50 years. He first came to prominence as guitarist/violinist/pianist/xylophone player and one of the principal composers in the seminal RIO band Henry Cow, which he co-founded with Tim Hodgkinson in 1968. He also appeared as a guest on numerous other albums by the likes of Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt and Jade Warrior, Violent Femmes, John Zorn, and many others. When Henry Cow ended in 1978, Frith embarked upon a career that would take him into all kinds of weird and wonderful places and has since appeared on over 400 albums. Best known as a pioneering electric guitarist and improviser, songwriter, and composer for film, dance and theater, he played with the bands Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, Cosa Brava, and the FF Trio and his compositions have been performed by ensembles ranging from Eclipse Quartet and the Bang on a Can All Stars to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, ROVA and Arte Sax Quartets, and more. He has collaborated with everyone from George Lewis, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley to Han Bennink, Peter Brötzmann, Janet Feder, Butch Morris, and Evan Parker, to name a few. The recipient of Italy’s Demetrio Stratos Prize for his life’s work in experimental music as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in his home county of Yorkshire, Frith also taught for twenty years at Mills College in Oakland, CA – the legendary epicenter of American experimental music –  from which he retired in 2018. He co-directed the improvisation master’s program at the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland until 2020, and has been acting as an advisor in the creation of the new School of Music and Sound art at the Universidad Austral in Valdivia, Chile while also being the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s much loved Step Across the Border, cited as one of the 20th century’s hundred most influential films by Cahiers du Cinéma. 

Fred Frith will also perform a concert on Saturday, September 13 & and a workshop on Sunday, Sept. 14, both at Entropy Gallery in Santa Fe. Tickets for the concert here. Tickets for the Workshop here.