Eleventh Hour

Fred Frith is known mostly as an improvising solo guitarist, and for his work with groundbreaking avant-garde ensembles like Henry Cow and Massacre. But during the latter part of his career he really developed his compositional chops and wrote for a variety of ensembles. This program focuses on works written for string quartet (performed by the highly-regarded Arditti Quartet). The music is challenging but not forbidding; there’s a darkness here that is somewhat at odds with the puckish humor one normally associates with Frith’s music, though a certain lightheartedness emerges at times as well.