- published: 18 Mar 2009
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Bruce Lambourne Fowler (July 10, 1947) is a prominent American trombone player and composer. He notably played trombone on many Frank Zappa records, as well as with Captain Beefheart, and in the Fowler Brothers Band. Currently, he composes and arranges music for movies, and has been the composer, orchestrator, or conductor for many popular films.
Bruce is the son of jazz educator William L. Fowler and the brother of multi-instrumentalist Walt Fowler and bassist Tom Fowler. He is the father of Rhea Fowler, bass guitar player for The Naturals. Bruce Fowler is participating in both The Band From Utopia, the Mar Vista Philharmonic, and Jon Larsen's, Strange News From Mars, both feat. Zappa alumni Tommy Mars, Arthur Barrow, et al. He also recorded albums with Air Pocket, a band including his siblings among others.
Fowler is the recipient of the 2007 Film & TV Music Awards for Best Score Conductor and Best Orchestrator.
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, recording engineer, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; he later switched to electric guitar.
He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with The Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. His lyrics—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.