Fred Frith appears on over 400 recordings. This is a selection from bands he was/is a member of, collaborations with other bands and musicians, and his solo recordings. The year indicates when the album was first released. For a comprehensive discography, see the Discography of Fred Frith by Michel Ramond, Patrice Roussel and Stephane Vuilleumier. [1]
With Bruce Ackley, Henry Kaiser and Aram Shelton
With Noël Akchoté
With Núria Andorrà
With Lotte Anker
With ARTE Quartett
With Derek Bailey and Antoine Berthiaume
With Derek Bailey, Sonny Sharrock, John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Charles K. Noyes
With Anne Bourne and John Oswald
With Anthony Braxton
With Chris Brown
With John Butcher
With John Butcher and Theresa Wong
With Lindsay Cooper, Lars Hollmer and Gianni Gebbia
With Lol Coxhill
With Chris Cutler
With Chris Cutler and Tom Cora
With Chris Cutler and Thomas Dimuzio
With Lesli Dalaba, Eric Glick Rieman and Carla Kihlstedt
With Totsuzen Danball
With Jean Derome, Pierre Tanguay and Myles Boisen
With Michel Doneda
With Mark Dresser and Ikue Mori
With Jean-Pierre Drouet
With Jean-Pierre Drouet and Louis Sclavis
With Ensemble Modern
With Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles
With Anil Eraslan, Tom Malmendier and Clara Weil
With Janet Feder
With Hardy Fox
With Evelyn Glennie
With Barry Guy
With Tim Hodgkinson
With Percy Howard, Charles Hayward and Bill Laswell
With Nicolas Humbert and Marc Parisotto
With Darren Johnston
With Darren Johnston Devin Hoff, Larry Ochs and Ches Smith
With Henry Kaiser
With Carla Kihlstedt and Stevie Wishart
With Hans Koch
With Joëlle Léandre and Jonathan Segel
With Annie Lewandowski
With René Lussier
With Amanda Miller
With Helen Mirra
With Macio Moretti
With Ikue Mori
With Mózg Injectors
With Bob Ostertag and Phil Minton
With Bob Ostertag and John Zorn
With Evan Parker
With Francois-Michel Pesenti
With Marc Ribot
With Ferdinand Richard (as Fred & Ferd)
With Danielle Roger
With Rusconi
With Susana Santos Silva
With Katrin Scholl, Daniel Erismann, Lucas N. Niggli, Hans Koch and Peter Kowald
With Sonargemeinschaft (Sonar Community)
With Studio Dan
With Sudhu Tewari and Cenk Ergün
With Toychestra
With Benjamin Vergara
With Katharina Weber and Fredy Studer
With Michel Wintsch, Franziska Baumann and Bernard Trontin
With John Zorn
With John Zorn, Onnyk and Toyozumi Yoshisaburo
Henry Cow / Slapp Happy
MMM Quartet [lower-alpha 4]
Lantskap Logic
Ikue Mori, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, electronic musician, composer, and graphic designer. Mori was awarded a "Genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2022.
Thomas Henry Corra, better known as Tom Cora, was an American cellist and composer, best known for his improvisational performances in the field of experimental jazz and rock. He recorded with John Zorn, Butch Morris, and the Ex, and was a member of Curlew, Third Person and Skeleton Crew.
Skeleton Crew was an American experimental rock and jazz group from 1982 to 1986, comprising core members Fred Frith and Tom Cora, with Zeena Parkins joining later. Best known for their live improvisation performances where they played various instruments simultaneously, they also recorded two studio albums Learn to Talk (1984) and The Country of Blinds (1986). The group drew on music and themes from a number of sources, including world music, left-wing politics and pre-recorded tapes.
Zeena Parkins is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist active in experimental, free improvised, contemporary classical, and avant-jazz music; she is known for having "reinvented the harp". Parkins performs on standard harps, several custom electric harps, piano, and accordion. She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and professor in the Music Department at Mills College.
Chris Cutler is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of other bands, including Art Bears, News from Babel, Pere Ubu and (briefly) Gong/Mothergong. He has collaborated with many musicians and groups, including Fred Frith, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins, Peter Blegvad, Telectu and The Residents, and has appeared on over 100 recordings. Cutler's career spans over four decades and he still performs actively throughout the world.
Timothy "Tim" George Hodgkinson is an English experimental music composer and performer, principally on reeds, lap steel guitar, and keyboards. He first became known as one of the core members of the British avant-rock group Henry Cow, which he formed with Fred Frith in 1968. After the demise of Henry Cow, he participated in numerous bands and projects, eventually concentrating on composing contemporary music and performing as an improviser.
Recommended Records (RēR) is a British independent record label and distribution network founded by Chris Cutler with Nick Hobbs in March 1978. RēR features largely "Rock in Opposition" and related music, but it also distributes selected music released on other independent labels.
Lindsay Cooper was an English bassoon and oboe player and composer. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians. She collaborated with a number of musicians, including Chris Cutler and Sally Potter, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She wrote scores for film and TV and a song cycle Oh Moscow which was performed live around the world in 1987. She also recorded a number of solo albums, including Rags (1980), The Gold Diggers (1983), and Music For Other Occasions (1986).
Massacre was founded in 1980 in New York City by guitarist Fred Frith, bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Fred Maher as an improvising and experimental rock band. They performed live for just over a year and recorded a studio album, Killing Time (1981). Frith and Laswell reformed Massacre in 1998 with drummer Charles Hayward, and released four more albums, Funny Valentine (1998), Meltdown (2001), Lonely Heart (2007) and Love Me Tender (2013). The last three albums were recorded live, the first in London, and the others at European festivals between 1999 and 2008.
Bill Gilonis is an English guitarist and composer. He co-founded the gritty experimental rock group The Work in 1980 with Tim Hodgkinson. The group was active intermittently until 1993, recording four albums and touring extensively, including in Russia, Japan Finland, Yugoslavia and Switzerland.
Gerry Hemingway is an American drummer and composer.
Joëlle Léandre is a French double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation.
The Fred Frith Guitar Quartet was an American-based contemporary classical and experimental music guitar quartet comprising Fred Frith, René Lussier, Nick Didkovsky and Mark Stewart. The group was formed in 1989 by Frith and they performed extensively across North America and Europe for the next ten years, including at the 14th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada in May 1997. They recorded their first album, Ayaya Moses in 1996, and released a live album, Upbeat in 1999.
Jean Derome is a French Canadian avant-garde saxophonist, flautist, and composer. A prominent figure in the Montreal musique actuelle scene, Derome has been a member of experimental, jazz, and rock groups, and has appeared on over 30 albums, including seven solo albums. He has written scores for over 30 films and co-founded Ambiances Magnétiques, a Canadian musical collective and independent record label.
Fred Records is a British independent record label created in 2002 by the English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith to re-release his own back catalogue of recordings and previously unreleased material. It is an independent company working in co-operation with Chris Cutler and Recommended Records, utilising Recommended Records' distribution network.
Mark Stewart is a New York City-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer and instrument designer.
Hervé Richard, better known as Ferdinand Richard, is a French avant-rock bass guitarist and composer.
Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar, also known as Les Quatre Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar was an electric guitar quartet founded by André Duchesne in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1986. It was one of the first electric guitar quartets and was billed as a band from post-apocalypse Canada "inspired by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix".
Live in Prague and Washington is a live album of improvised experimental music by Chris Cutler and Fred Frith. It was recorded at the 8th Prague "Jazz Days" Festival in Prague in former Czechoslovakia on 25 May 1979, and at the DC Space in Washington, D.C., on 20 December 1979. The album was released by Recommended Records in 1983 on a 45 rpm 12" LP. It was Frith and Cutler's first collaborative duo album.
Upbeat is a 1999 live and studio album by the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, an American-based contemporary classical and experimental music guitar quartet comprising Fred Frith, René Lussier, Nick Didkovsky and Mark Stewart. It is their second album, after Ayaya Moses (1997), and was released by Canadian record label, Ambiances Magnétiques. The live material was drawn from concerts the quartet had performed in Germany, Switzerland, France and Spain in November 1997. The studio tracks were recorded at Tonstudio Amann in Vienna, Austria, also in November 1997.
