Composer Information: Fred Thomas

Fred Thomas studied at the Royal Academy of Music and is one of London’s most soughtafter multi-instrumentalists and composer/arranger/producers. A member of the F-IRE Collective, he recently embarked on a trilogy of J.S. Bach recordings to be released on ECM, The Silent Howl and Odradek Records. The first is a forthcoming ECM record as a trio with Aisha Orazbayeva and Lucy Railton that plays Thomas’s transcriptions of Bach’s Chorale Preludes, the scores of which are published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen. ‘Electrofeit‘, is a solo organ record and features the multi-tracking of fugues inspired by the work of historian Hayden White; and ‘Dance Suites’, a solo piano record, was released in December 2017 on Odradek Records.

Other projects include The Beguilers, a sextet that interprets Thomas’s song settings of poetry; his Polyphonic Jazz Band, a quintet with Martin Speake that explores improvised polyphony; an on-going recording of contemporary interpretations of the medieval Chantilly Codex; a duo with his violinist father Peter Thomas; and a Richard Wagner tribute band with French pianist Benoît Delbecq.

Fred Thomas has appeared or collaborated with a wide variety of artists, including Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Jordi Savall, Trilok Gurtu, Jarvis Cocker, Ethan Iverson, Tamara Stefanovich, Jeanne Added, Olivia Chaney, Lisa Knapp, Mor Karbasi, Basquiat Strings, Kadialy Kouyate, Leo Abrahams, Alice Zawadzki, Liam Noble, CBSO, Elysian Quartet, Jason Yarde, Maurizio Ravalico,
Julian Siege, The Magic Lantern, Alex Bonney, Seb Rochford and Oren Marshall, as well as record labels Harmonica Mundi and Realworld. He works with The National Theatre and has toured worldwide as musical director with Shakespeare’s Globe. He is guest lecturer at at Trinity Laban, Academy of Performing Arts (Prague) and Chichester University, and as a producer has
recorded albums for many artists in Europe. His most recent compositions, for voice, string quartet and percussion, were commissioned by BitterSuite and Phaedra Ensemble and are being performed internationally and at the Royal Opera House, London.

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