Fred Frith (born February 17 1949) is an English musician and composer. He is brother of Simon Frith, a well-known music critic and sociologist and Chris Frith, a psychologist working at University College London.

He primarily performs on guitar, producing an innovative series of experimental Guitar Solos albums during the 1970s. He also plays bass guitar, violin and xylophone. He was a founder member of British avant-garde progressive rock bands Henry Cow and Art Bears. While living in New York City he formed two improvising groups in the early 1980s, Massacre and Skeleton Crew. He has collaborated with Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno, Lars Hollmer, The Residents, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Derek Bailey, Rova, Attwenger and others. Frith has also made two records with experimental group French Frith Kaiser Thompson (consisting of John French, Frith, Henry Kaiser, and Richard Thompson).

In 1990, German film makers Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel filmed Step Across the Border, a documentary on the Frith's life, work and philosophy of music making, as well as many famed musicians of New York's East Village and the New Music world: Arto Lindsay, Cyro Baptista, Iva Bittova, René Lussier and Tom Cora, to name a few.

He is a professor of the Music Department at Mills College, Oakland, California.

External links

• FredFrith.com Official homepage.
• Art of the States: Fred Frith.
• Discography.
• .

Films

• "Step Across The Border" CH 1990 Film by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel

1949 births | Living people | Free improvisation | English bassists | English keyboardists | English guitarists | English songwriters

Fred Frith | Fred Frith