Jan
12
2007
by Sander R Wolff
The Union
Published sometime in the early 1990’s
He was a founding member of the progressive rock bands Yes and King Crimson. He’s played with Genesis, and has toured or recorded with countless others. But Bill Bruford, drummer extraordinaire, really isn’t interested in recounting past glories, but in devoting his creative energies to his current group, Earthworks.
“[Jazz] is the thrust of my career right now, in that particular direction, ’cause there’s something I think I can do there with electronic percussion particularly. Taking that into jazz and having it taken seriously as a jazz instrument and trying to be creative on the chordal and pitched melody side of the instrument.”
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Jan
12
2007
by Sander R. Wolff
The Long Beach Union Newspaper
Fred Frith is a man whose work is not easily classified. His career as an improviser is only surpassed by his career as an instrumentalist, except for his career as a composer, which may, at this point, have surpassed both.
His work with other groups and artists just adds to the confusion. He’s a fixture in John Zorn‘s Naked City, which is a jazz/be bop/hardcore cut-up band. He’s lent his distinctive guitar playing to The Residents, Brian Eno and The Violent Femmes, to name but a few. His own band, Keep The Dog, began as a retrospective group.
“The group is constantly evolving into things we don’t expect,” Frith said. “In one sense, it’s a traditional group, in as much as it’s like bass, guitar, drums and keyboards, but on top of that, with the accordion, which is very important in the group, we have a quaint, Cajun influence sometimes.
“We went through this business of me writing out all the parts for these old songs from Gravity and Speechless and we’d been performing that, but we don’t do that any more. We’re now concentrating on things I’ve written more recently, especially dance pieces I’ve written for Bebe Miller or old pieces I’ve written with Ferdinand Richard for a record of ours that just came out. We played some gigs in Switzerland a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time I really felt the group was really a band in the sense of something I could write for,” Frith said.
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