About Phil
Composer Phil Fried is a 2008 McKnight Foundation Fellow.
Phil Fried, Minnesota composer/performer and 2008-09 McKnight Artist Fellow, was part of the exciting free jazz scene in the 1970’s as a founding member of the New York City Artists Collective at 501 Canal Street. There he met and then performed with Tom Bruno, Ellen Christi, and Ray Anderson and others. This experience was crucial to his musical development as it placed musical and harmonic freedom above all. Music was all about listening, feeling, and reacting. Tonality then seemed to be without a context and out of place. Improvisational composition also seemed untenable at the time, and this is what lead Phil to compose serial (notated) music and also to perform completely improvised performances.
Besides his membership in the Music and Art and the Queens College Jazz bands, Phil’s first professional jazz experience was performing with Ray Nance and Brooks Kerr. Of course Phil also performed bass and lead guitar with many rock bands. After a hiatus to study performance and composition he returned to composer/performing. Phil’s studies include: a B.M in string bass performance with Julius Levine and composition with: Henry Weinberg, Hugo Weisgall, George Perle, Ralph Shapey and Brian Ferneyhough. He also studied with Luigi Nono at Centre Acanthes in Avignon France.
Fried has performed solo at Roulette in NY, Baltimore at the Livewire Festival, and Chicago at the International Society of Improvising Musicians convention, and all over the mid-western states. As classical composer he has received a centennial commission from the Minnesota orchestra for Episodes, and a commission, Itty Bitty Symphony, for the new music ensemble Zeitgeist for their 30th Anniversary concert and recording. One of his piano works, I remember the 60’s..or was it the 70’s,? is featured on a recent Innova label release, Melville’s Dozen,” by New Zealand pianist Nikki Melville. Phil is an active “blogger” on http://philipfried.blogspot.com/ and http://philsothermusicalpage.blogspot.com/ where he recaps his comments from newmusicbox.org. Phil Fried has maintained a free music composition lesson page since 1999 which can now be found on http://Philfried.com/compositionlessons. Log in as a “Guest.”
For my personal services; performances, teaching, demonstrations, etc. fees are negotiable, but will always fall under the guidelines of the American Composers Forum.
Contact Phil Fried at Phil@Philfried.com – or my old email philmusic@aol.com, and we will discuss what you would like.
To purchase sheet music, pdf files, midi practice tracks, or mp3’s use the shop page.
There are discounts for song sets and multiple purchases. I can change the key of a work for an additional charge.
