Born in 1949 in England, Fred Frith began musical life with violin lessons at the age of five and a place in the church choir. He first picked up a guitar while in his teens and gave his earliest performances in the relatively forgiving atmosphere of British folk clubs. In 1968 he joined up with Tim Hodgkinson to form Henry Cow, an enduring ëotherí rock group which achieved a certain notoriety on the European independent circuit and beyond. Through this intense ten-year collaboration, Frith developed a willingness to try anything and learn as he went along, as well as a lasting appetite for collective work. He also began to approach composing from an improviserís perspective, and vice-versa.
After the break-up of Henry Cow in 1978, Frith moved to New York, where he came into contact with many of the musicians with whom heís since been associated, including John Zorn, Tom Cora, Bob Ostertag, Ikue Mori and many others. Fourteen years in New York gave rise to groups like Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher), Skeleton Crew (with Tom Cora and Zeena Parkins), Keep the Dog (a sextet performing an extensive repertoire of Frithís compositions), and the continuing Guitar Quartet. It also provided a fertile environment for improvisation, an activity which is still close to his heart.
Starting in the late eighties, Frith began to concentrate on composing for dance, film, and theatre, and this in turn led to writing music for others to play. Recent examples include ìLong on Logicî and ìFreedom in Fragmentsî for ROVA Sax Quartet; ìIn Memoryî for four voices, four guitars and four percussionists; the string quartet ìLelekovice,î ìPacificî for the twenty-piece Ensemble Eva Kant in Bologna; and ìHelter Skelter,î an opera that resulted from a six-month visit to Marseille working with ìyoung, unemployed rock musicians.î
As a composer, his work is characterized by an unusual approach to melody and the way that melodies are played, a fascination with continuously subverting musical surfaces, the contradiction between rigorous form and improvised content, and the incorporation of ëfoundí sound and home-made instruments. He has been as much influenced by painters and writers as by other musicians, particularly in the contrast between brutal reality and lyrical fantasy (and the epigrammatic structures) inherent in the work of Eduardo Galeano and the Parisian painter BÈatrice Turquand díAuzay.
Alongside his other activities, Frith has continued to perform in a variety of contexts, playing bass in John Zornís Naked City, violin in Lars Hollmerís Looping Home Orchestra, and guitar on recordings ranging from the The Residents and RenÈ Lussier to Brian Eno and Amy Denio. Current projects include ìStone, Brick, Glass, Wood, Wireî (graphic scores for 11 to 21 players), a forthcoming collaboration with the Ensemble Moderne, and music for choreographers Amanda Miller and Paul Selwyn Norton. He is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzelsí award-winning documentary film ìStep Across the Border.
Visit Fred's web site at Fred Frith.com.
Born in Yancey Mills, Virginia, Tom Cora made his musical debut as drummer on a local television program, DandyDoodleShow. Reared on the gospel, blues and country music of the Appalachians, he passed the mid-seventies as guitarist with the house-band of a Washington, DC jazz club. He then suddenly abandoned the guitar and took up the cello instead. Cora secluded himself and studied cello with Casals' student, Luis Garcia-Renart. During this time he explored non-idiomatic improvising and Turkish and Eastern European folk music, as well as constructing instruments for his group, The Moose Skowron Tuned Metal Ensemble.
For two years, prior to the age of Reagan, he led a government funded group that spent its summers performing at various ports along the Hudson River, aboard the Floating Foundation of Photography; and he toured Europe with a group led by Karl Berger that included Lee Konitz and Don Cherry.
By 1979 Tom had moved to New York where he began an extended working relationship with Shockabilly guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, introducing the cello to the honky tonk circuits of North America. Between stints on the road with Chadbourne he became a familiar face in the improvising clubs and venues of New York alongside John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, David Moss, Toshinori Kondo and others. There followed the formation of Curlew, a collaboration with George Cartwright, whose records won much recognition for helping define new areas of rhythmic music.
In the summer of '82 Tom Cora and Fred Frith formed Skeleton Crew. It was based on the premise of stretching the resources of the minimum number of people in the maximum number of ways. They divided up the drum kit between them and played it at the same time as their other instruments, an extension of the one-man-band principle. Tom took up the bass guitar and began constructing musical contraptions to be played with the feet, thus throwing himself into a four-limbed approach to music. During its five years --the last two of which it became a trio with Zeena Parkins-- Skeleton Crew performed hundreds of concerts in North America, Europe and Japan, including an extensive tour of Eastern Europe.
1986 was the year that Tom began in earnest to address himself to the problem of the solo concert. The ìproblemî lay in the fact that the prospect of carrying a concert-length performance single-handedly seemed deeply frightening to the budding cellist, but that was also part of the attraction. Ten years later, with two solo records behind him, Cora honed the solo to a deft balancing act of risk and intention which has been burned into the memory of audiences all over North America, Europe and Japan.
Meanwhile, Cora was no stranger to collaboration: CURLEW was reviving itself as a performing and touring band; NIMAL, with Momo Rossel, was born; a duo with Hans Reichel was not only a meeting of strings but a meeting of daxophone and daxello; the collective FRAME (with E. Sharp, N. Rothenberg and P. Hollinger) toured what was then called the Soviet Union; and THIRD PERSON was born from live collaborations with percussionist Samm Bennett. This trio, with the third position constantly shifting, documented a year of live concerts at the Knitting Factory with their first CD, The Bends. Third persons have included Butch Morris, Mark Ribot, Zeena Parkins, Kazutoki Umezu and Steve Lacy.
In 1990 Tom took a week-long pause from a European tour to rehearse and play two concerts as a guest with the veteran Dutch band, THE EX. Though the two had been longtime mutual admirers, little did they know at this first meeting that they were to be hurled directly into some years of intense collaboration together; collaboration in the truest sense. Now, six years, two CDs and nearly a hundred concerts later, their resolve continues.
The Dutch connection also meant a two month residency at STEIM, the electro-acoustic research center in Amsterdam where Tom tailored a live sampling and triggering system to his ìfour-limbed approach,î which was unveiled with a 25 concert solo tour in the Fall of '92. Though most visible as a performer in recent years, Cora has been equally occupied in less nomadic activities: composition commissions from Guy Klucevsek and Ralph Records; film music for the National Film Board of Canada; music for the video The Misfits, a documentary of 30 years of the Fluxus movement; a Bessie award-winning composition for longtime collaborator choreographer Donna Uchizono; a NewYork Foundation for the Arts Fellowship; and a solo cello film score for Dziga Vertov's, Man With the Movie Camera, commissioned by the American Museum of the Moving Image. This turned into more than 30 live performances in Europe (late '94/early '95), with solo cello in front of Vertov's ìcity symphony.î Cora was recently awarded a Meet the Composer Commissioning Grant to realize an ensemble score for Man with the Movie Camera. It will be performed live with the film at several North American venues in the Spring of '96.
Most recently there is ROOF, the meeting place of Tom Cora, Phil Minton, Luc Ex and Michael Vatcher. It's not just a collective, but a band whose highly articulate improvisational spirit serves tightly rehearsed compositions. The membersí widely differing backgrounds belie a pointed empathy as often at the service of the subversion of expectations as in the affirmation and joy of collective music making. Their first CD, The Untraceable Cigar, has just been released on RedNote (Amsterdam).
And last, but not least, Tom finds himself once again collaborating with Skeleton Crew on Etymology, a sound sample library on CD-ROM. This license-free CD-ROM contains the sonic sounds and wire manipulation techniques of Fred Frith and Tom Cora. In the AIFF format, Etymology is designed for musicians and sound designers who use digital audio workstations on the Mac O/S platform. Sound designer, Thomas Dimuzio is producing Etymology for Rarefaction.
1996
ETYMOLOGY, by Skeleton Crew ({Fred Frith, Tom Cora} CD-ROM sound library) Rarefaction, San Francisco
THE UNTRACEABLE CIGAR, by Roof (Tom Cora, Luc Ex, Phil Minton, Michael Vatcher), RedNote, Amsterdam.
TESTAMENT: A CONDUCTION COLLECTION, by Butch Morris, New World Records, NYC.
1995
LUCKY WATER, by Third Person (Tom Cora, Samm Bennett &Kazutoki Umezu),KnitFact, NYC.
FIRST DESERTER, by Kazutoki Umezu, Offnote CD, Tokyo.
1994
THE MISFITS, video documentary on the Fluxus Movement by Lars Movin, music by TC, Denmark.
CYBERBAND, by TC, Richard Teitelbaum, Fred Frith, Carlos Zingaro, George Lewis and Michel Weisvis;
Moers Music, Germany.
1993
AND THE WEATHERMEN SHRUGGED THEIR SHOULDERS, The Ex+Tom Cora, RecDEc/EX,
Zurich/Amsterdam.
A BEAUTIFUL WESTERN SADDLE, by Curlew with Amy Denio, songs to lyrics by Paul Haines,
Cuneiform Rune 50,USA.
1992
DIFFERENTLY DESPERATE, The Hat Shoes (Catherine Jauniaux, Bill Gillonis, Charles Hayward, Tom Cora), RecDec 41,Zurich.
1991
GUMPTION IN LIMBO, Solo Cello ,Sound Aspects, SAS,CD042, Germany.
SCRABBLING AT THE LOCK, TheEx+Tom Cora, RecDec 39/EX 051D,Zurich/Amsterdam.
BEE, by Curlew (George Cartwright, Tom Cora, Anne Rupel, Pippin Barnett & Davey Williams),
Cuneiform Rune 27CD.
THE BENDS, by Third Person (Tom Cora and Samm Bennett with eight different third persons),
live at the Knitting Factory, KnitFact, NYC.
1990
VOIX DE SURFACE, by Nimal (Momo Rossel, TC, Pippin Barnett, Bradko Bibic & Jean-Vin Huguenin),
RecDec 31, Zurich.
1988
LIVE IN BERLIN, by Curlew,Cunieform Records, USA.
BEETS, contribution (RECOLLECTION BRUISE) to compilation by TC, Ralph Records, San Francisco.
1987
NIMAL, by Momo Rossel, produced by TC, RecRec19, Zurich.
LIVE AT THE WESTERN FRONT, solo cello, No Man's Land, Germany.
1986
THE COUNTRY OF BLINDS, by Skeleton Crew, (Cora, Frith and Parkins), Rift/RecRec 011, NYC/Zurich.
NORTH AMERICA, by Curlew, Moer's Music, Germany.
1984
LEARN TO TALK, by Skeleton Crew (Frith and Cora), Rift/RecRec 08, NYC/Zurich.
1983
LSD C&W, by Eugene Chadbourne, Fundamental, USA.
1982
CARGO CULT REVIVAL, by TC and David Moss, Rift 05, NYC.
1981
ARCHERY, by John Zorn, Parachute 017/018, NYC.
1980
CURLEW, by George Cartwright, Tom Cora and Bill Laswell, Landslide 1004, Atlanta.
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL, by E. Chadbourne, Parachute 010,NYC.
ENVIORNMENT FOR SEXTET, by John Zorn, Eugene Chadbourne, Polly Bradfield, Tom Cora, Toshinori Kondo and Andrea Centazzo, Ictus 0018, Italy.
Thomas Dimuzio
BIOGRAPHY: THOMAS DIMUZIO
Thomas Dimuzio, composer and multi-instrumentalist, has been producing and
performing original electronic music for more than a decade. As a solo artist
his work has been released internationally by RRRecords, ReR Megacorp, Odd Size
Records, Ponk Records, Cuneiform and other indpendent labels. As a collaborator
Dimuzio has worked with Chris Cutler, Tom Cora, 5uu's, C.W. Vrtacek,
ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Due Process, Don Ritter, Paul Haslinger, Count Zero and
many others. His solo concerts throughout North America and Europe feature
improvisations using his interactive system of samplers and processors, Markoff
Process (RRRecords) documents such performances from New Music America, Sonic
Disturbance Festival, Eventworks and other new music festivals.
As a composer Dimuzio's work has been described as unique and fascinating in
character, unusual soundtracks for the mind which constantly weave an unending
universe. [Incorporating traditional and homemade instruments, found sounds,
household objects, field recordings, , . His work balances sound noise and music
to form a vivid and dynamic sonic universe. Working with moods, qualities and
ideas in evolution, Dimuzio's compositions have a dynamic and engaging quality
which create a journey for the ears.]
Alongside his solo activities, Dimuzio has continued to perform and record in a
variety of contexts, touring as part of the Tom Cora Ensemble, performances and
recordings with Chris Cutler and C. W. Vrtacek, new studio projects with the
5uu's and Due Process, and contributing new works to a number of compilation
projects. Recently Dimuzio produced and edited "Etymology" (Rarefaction), a
sound library created by Fred Frith and Tom Cora and is producing an additional
sound library featuring the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. As a sound designer his
sounds and presets are included in products by Kurzweil, Lexicon, OSC,
Rarefaction and Viscount. Dimuzio has mastered more than 25 titles for release
at his privately owned Gench Studios.
His latest studio release, "Sonicism" (RRRecords), is an ambitious work in two
parts, an aural excursion through dense nuances evolving across layered timbral
planes. Re-releases of "Headlock" (ReR Megacorp) and "Louden" (Odd Size Records)
bring to light the artist's earlier work. Forthcoming releases include "Slew"
(ND), a new solo recording of previously released compilation tracks, work with
the 5uu's on "Crisis in Clay" (ReR Megacorp), a cut on the upcoming ReR
Quarterly (ReR Megacorp), as well as the original musical soundtrack for
"Inside", a film by Lon Teller.
SOLO RECORDINGS Markoff Process CD (RRRecords RRR-CD15, 1994) Remote C45 (1 Zer0 ZER2, 1991) Sone Songs C60 (Realization Recordings RZC-005, 1990) lightswitch C30 (Gench limited edition GCS04, 1990) HEADLOCK LP (Generations Unlimited TDLP01, 1989) 19th Monkey Schism C45 (Gench GCS02, 1989) Flux C45 (Gench GCS02, 1988) Delineation of Perspective C45 (Generations Unlimited TD01, 1988) COLLABORATIONS Preacher in Naked Chase Guilty CD (PONK/ReR PONK15, 1995) with Chris Cutler and C.W. Vrtacek Combine CD (RRRecords RRR-CD20, 1995) with Due Process Hunger's Teeth CD (ReR Megacorp ReR 5uu1, 1994) with 5uu's All Broke Down-Can't Be Fixed C45 (Gench GCS03, 1988) with Patronized Humoplasms VIDEO Synchronous Blast Channels VHS T45 (RRRecords RRR-TV15, 1994) with Don Ritter COMPILATIONS America the Beautiful CDx2 (RRRecords RRR-CD14, 1994) Soundtrack for the End of the World CD (Self Abuse Records SAD-01, 1994) Accidents Have No Holidays C60 (Povertech Industries, 1994) Transforms: The Nerve Events Project CD (Cuneiform, 1993) As Yet Untitled CD (Realization Recordings RZC-001, 1991) Reeling Time At the Path Factory C60 (Xkurshen Sound XK-38, 1989) CD-ROM SOUND LIBRARIES Poke in the Ear with a Sharp Stick Vol. I CD-ROM (OSC, 1991) Poke in the Ear with a Sharp Stick Vol. II CD-ROM (OSC, 1993) Poke in the Ear with a Sharp Stick Vol. III CD-ROM (OSC, 1994) NEW WORKS ON THE HORIZON... Slew CD (ND, early 1996) untitled CDx2 (RRRecords, 1996) 8 Track CD (Odd Size, 1996) HEADLOCK CD (ReR Megacorp, 1996 reissue) with 5uu's untitled CD (ReR Megacorp, 1996) ReR Quarterly CD compilation (ReR Megacorp, 1996)
1957 born at the countryside 1979 move to the big city of Zurich started to studying graphic design at the Artschool of Zurich 1984 finished the Artschool and began working as graphicdesigher for record distribution RecRec: Creating record and CD covers for Debile Menthol, Skeleton Crew, No Secrets in the Family, Fred Frith. Concertposters for Skeleton Crew, Sonic Youth, David Thomas, Residents, Orthotonics, Half Japanes, etc, etc. FOR THE Culturcenter Rote Fabik Zurich: Posters for concert and theatre, layout program. FOR THE Comicmagazin Strapazin: comics, layout and redaktion. AND some movieposters, illustrations, ci and layout for different magazines and newspapers. 1988 3 months in New York, drawing comics 1989 starting with DTP on Macintosh. 1990 start to teaching at the artschool of Zurich, computing and graphicdesign. Moving to Paris for a half year to draw comics 1991 moving to Berlin for a half year, comics plus, still working for RecRec, Comicmagazine Strapazin, illustrations for the graphic magazine, Emigre, the architecturmagazine Hoch Paterre, more CD-covers for Fred Frith, Eugen, Frank und Frei, Karma Club, some posters. 1994 move to Berlin working for the tekknodisco 'Bunker', a comicexhibition for swiss comicsartists, starting to work with the new media web and multimedia.