Keith Rowe

Keith Rowe (born 1940) is a British improviser and visual artist who was a founding member of AMM in 1965 alongside Cornelius Cardew and Eddie Prévost. He developed a radically non-idiomatic approach to electric guitar — placing the instrument flat on a table and treating it with radio signals, objects, and extended preparations, foregrounding texture and timbre over melody or harmony. His practice has been central to the development of free improvisation and electro-acoustic music in Europe, and his collaborations with Christian Wolff, Taku Sugimoto, and MIMEO place him at the intersection of composition and improvisation.