The Fred Frith Guitar Quartet was an American-based contemporary classical and

experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...

guitar

quartet In music, a quartet (, , , , ) is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers. Classical String quartet In classical music, one of the most common combinations of four instruments in chamber music is the string quartet. String quar ...

comprising

Fred Frith Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith (born 17 February 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser. Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as a founding member of the English avant-rock group Henry ...

, René Lussier,

Nick Didkovsky Nick Didkovsky (born 22 November 1958) is a composer, guitarist, computer music programmer, and leader of the band Doctor Nerve.Dorsch He is a former student of Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros and Gerald Shapiro. Career Didkovsky formed Docto ...

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 The Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville () is an annual international music festival held in Victoriaville, Quebec that showcases contemporary music. The festival is known for its small scale (usually no more than 20 perfo ...

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, Canada in May 1997. They recorded their first album, '' Ayaya Moses'' in 1996, and released a live album, '' Upbeat'' in 1999. The quartet experimented with guitar music, composing and performing their own material, improvising, and re-arranging existing guitar pieces by other composers. Their music varied from "tuneful and pretty, to noisy, aggressive and quite challenging."

History

The

comprised four "

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

" guitarists and composers:

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from

Henry Cow Henry Cow were an English experimental rock group, founded at the University of Cambridge in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler, b ...

French Canadian French Canadians, referred to as Canadiens mainly before the nineteenth century, are an ethnic group descended from French people, French colonists first arriving in Canada (New France), France's colony of Canada in 1608. The vast majority of ...

René Lussier from Conventum, and

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musicians

from Doctor Nerve and Mark Stewart from

Bang on a Can Bang on a Can is a multi-faceted contemporary classical music organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three American composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon. Called "the c ...

. Frith had been collaborating with Lussier on various projects since the early 1980s, had performed regularly with Stewart, and had produced Doctor Nerve's album, ''Armed Observation'' (1987). Frith originally created the quartet in 1989 to perform a composition for four electric guitars, "The As Usual Dance Towards the Other Flight to What is Not" that he had previously written for, but not performed in, Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar. The original quartet, Lussier, Didkovsky, Mark Howell and Frith, recorded the composition in April 1992 and it was released on Frith's ''

Quartets In music, a quartet (, , , , ) is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers. Classical String quartet In classical music, one of the most common combinations of four instruments in chamber music is the string quartet. String quar ...

'' album in 1994. Later Stewart replaced Howell and the group became known as the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet. The quartet's first album under its new name was recorded in

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's Studio 12 at

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in July and November 1996, and was released on Lussier's own Ambiances Magnétiques label. The CD consisted of three pieces composed by

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Olivia Bignardi and Québécois Claude Vivier; a piece composed by each member of the group; and a collection of improvised suites by the quartet. Their second album, '' Upbeat'' was drawn from concerts the quartet had performed in

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and

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in November 1997. It contained composed material from each of the group members, plus improvised pieces, and was released on Ambiances Magnétiques in 1999.

Members

– electric guitar * René Lussier – electric guitar *

– electric guitar * Mark Stewart – electric guitar * Mark Howell – electric guitar (original member)

Discography

*'' Ayaya Moses'' (1997, CD, Ambiances Magnétiques, Canada) *'' Upbeat'' (1999, CD, Ambiances Magnétiques, Canada)

References

{{Authority control American experimental musical groups Musical groups established in 1989 Contemporary classical music ensembles Free improvisation ensembles Fred Frith