***1/2 Fred Frith

THE PREVIOUS EVENING

(ReR FFI/ Cuneiform)

Most of Fred Frith's recordings from the last 15 years are improvised. But here Frith the composer/arranger pays homage to John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Earle Brown. These three pieces are mood music, profound in their use of silence and quiet details like the rumblings of prepared piano or the smooth interjections of clarinet and long, sustained bass tones from Frith's guitars.

The writing trundles closer to ambient music than the shorter pieces he's written for TV and the stage in recent years (collected on the recent Eye to Ear on the Tzadik label). Vocal interjections give the Cage piece human warmth and a dash of humor -- qualities always present in Frith's best work. But the tribute to Brown is the most delicate and colorful. Guitar, probing piano melodies, woodwinds, violin, chattering percussion, vocal interjections, and early-morning bird calls establish a running conversation -- which builds to lively rhythmic crescendos -- that presents music as a language so universal it crosses even the division of species. (Write to Cuneiform at Box 8427, Silver Spring, Maryland 20907).

-- Ted Drozdowski