He has collaborated with numerous musicians, including Robert Wyatt, Derek Bailey, the Residents, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Mike Patton, Lars Hollmer, Bill Laswell, Iva Bittová, Jad Fair, Kramer, the ARTE Quartett, and Bob Ostertag.

[5][6][7] In 2010 Frith received an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England, in recognition of his contribution to music.

[2] Frith started violin lessons at the age of five and became a member of his school orchestra, but at 13 switched to guitar after watching a group imitating a popular instrumental band at the time, the Shadows.

In the early 1970s Fred's grey Morris Minor sported the band's heraldic logo, much to the amusement of boys at the grammar school in York where his father was headmaster.

In November 1973, Frith (and other members of Henry Cow) participated in a live-in-the-studio performance of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells for the BBC.

Frith and Chris Cutler favoured song-oriented material, while Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper wanted purely instrumental compositions.

As a compromise, Frith and Cutler agreed, early in 1978, to release the songs already created on their own album, Hopes and Fears, under the name Art Bears (with Dagmar Krause).

The Art Bears trio continued purely as a studio group until 1981, releasing two more albums, Winter Songs in 1979 and The World as It Is Today in 1981.

During this time Frith also released Gravity (1980), his second solo album, recorded at Norrgården Nyvla in Uppsala, Sweden with Swedish group Samla Mammas Manna, and at the Catch-a-Buzz studio in Rockville, Maryland with United States band The Muffins.

"[14] Frith met and began recording with a number of musicians and groups, including Henry Kaiser (With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

), Bob Ostertag (Getting a Head, Voice of America), Tom Cora, Eugene Chadbourne, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, the Residents, Material, the Golden Palominos, and Curlew.

A high energy experimental rock band, they toured the United States and Europe in 1980 and 1981, and released one album, Killing Time (1981), recorded at Martin Bisi's later-to-be historic studio in Brooklyn.

Frith formed Keep the Dog in 1989, a sextet and review band for performing selections of his extensive repertoire of compositions from the previous 15 years.

Their guitar music, varying from "tuneful and pretty, to noisy, aggressive and quite challenging",[16] appears on two albums, Ayaya Moses (1997) and Upbeat (1999), both on Lussier's own Ambiances Magnétiques label.

The ex-Henry Cow members have always maintained close contact with each other and Frith still collaborates with many of them, including Chris Cutler and Tim Hodgkinson.

[17][18] In 1995, Frith moved to Stuttgart in Germany to live with his wife, German photographer Heike Liss, and their children Finn and Lucia.

[21] In March 1997 Frith formed the electro-acoustic improvisation and experimental trio Maybe Monday with saxophonist Larry Ochs from Rova Saxophone Quartet and koto player Miya Masaoka.

In March 2008, Frith formed Cosa Brava, an experimental rock and improvisation quintet with Zeena Parkins from Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog, Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and the Norman Conquest.

[33] Frith has also collaborated with a number of prominent musicians, including Robert Wyatt,[14] Derek Bailey,[34] Lol Coxhill,[35] Lars Hollmer,[36] and the Scottish deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie.

It was filmed in Japan, Europe, and the United States, and also features musicians René Lussier, Iva Bittová, Tom Cora, Tim Hodgkinson, Bob Ostertag, and John Zorn.

[39] In the early- to mid-1980s, after Henry Cow had split up and Frith had moved to New York City, he was married to Tina Curran, a musician and artist.

[41][42] Fred Frith has used a number of different guitars, including homemade instruments, over the years, depending on the type of music he is playing.

"[12] The possibilities offered by homemade instruments prompted Frith to start creating his own guitars, basically slabs of wood on which he mounted a pickup, a bridge, and strings stretched over metal screws.

"The basic design of the instrument is supposed to be as rudimentary and flexible as possible," Frith said, "so I can use an electric drill to bore holes into the body of it to achieve certain sounds ...

He would drop objects, like ball bearings, dried beans, and rice on the strings while stroking, scraping, and hitting them with whatever was on hand.