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Fred Frith (composer) Fred Frith is a songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist (bass, keyboards, violin) and  improviser performing mostly on various permutations of the electric and acoustic guitar. Occasionally he uses crude home-made instruments, either of his own invention or in collaboration with his long-time colleague Sudhu Tewari in the band Normal. Fred learned how to compose in rock bands, starting with Henry Cow in 1968. This meant writing for and with people that he knew, and then arriving at the final result through a collective rehearsal process. During the Henry Cow years he fell in love with the recording studio and its endless possibilities. Fred embraces the idea of the “work” as an unfinished and constantly mutating entity. Collaboration, improvisation, sculpting sound in the studio, and treating composition as an open-ended process remain central to how he makes music.

photo by Heike Liss