Fred Frith
In the 1990 film made about him, Step Across the Border, Fred Frith plays a guitar lying flat on a table, worked with brushes, chains and bows: not an instrument to be held but an object to be questioned. That gesture holds fifty years together. Born in England in 1949, he founded Henry Cow in 1968, then Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew, and recorded alongside Robert Wyatt, Derek Bailey, John Zorn and Brian Eno. He has written long pieces for Ensemble Modern and the Rova Saxophone Quartet, appears on more than four hundred albums, and has spent decades teaching improvisation. In 2008 he received the Demetrio Stratos prize.
In the 1990 film made about him, Step Across the Border, Fred Frith plays a guitar lying flat on a table, worked with brushes, chains and bows: not an instrument to be held but an object to be questioned. That gesture holds fifty years together. Born in England in 1949, he founded Henry Cow in 1968, then Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew, and recorded alongside Robert Wyatt, Derek Bailey, John Zorn and Brian Eno. He has written long pieces for Ensemble Modern and the Rova Saxophone Quartet, appears on more than four hundred albums, and has spent decades teaching improvisation. In 2008 he received the Demetrio Stratos prize.
