Joel Phillip Friedman

Joel has always been drawn to a diverse range of musical activities. He grew
up playing trumpet and electric bass in jazz and rock bands, French horn and
trumpet in orchestras, and performed in musicals.  Not surprisingly, Joel’s natural creative impulse is
to work across genres, and to compose music that is equally informed by his
classical training and his engagement with the vernacular.  His varied portfolio includes work for small
and large ensembles, chorus and voice, musical theater, opera, dance, film,
jazz, and rock.  New collaborations,
teaching activities and projects continually refresh Joel’s thinking and
writing.    

Joel’s music has been
heard in venues from Carnegie Hall (his Viola
Concerto – praised by the New Yorker as “beautiful and intelligent”), the
Kennedy Center, Joe’s
Pub, and the 92nd St. Y, to
theaters Off-Broadway and the London West End (Personals, which he co-authored), and various film festivals (his
film score for a full-length supernatural thriller, Red Ice).

His work has been performed by a range
of gifted artists including
violist Paul Neubauer, soprano Susan Narucki, pianists Alan Feinberg and
Stephen Gosling, cellists Fred Sherry and Joshua Roman, conductors Jorge Mester
and Angel Gil-Ordóñez, the Adorno
and New York Chamber Ensembles, the New Jersey Chamber Music Society, actor
Jason Alexander, choreographer Sally Hess, and the casts of theater productions
by director John Greenleaf (as part of the NEA Shakespeare in American Communities Program). 

Current projects spotlight the range of Joel’s work:
commissions for string orchestra from the San Jose Chamber Orchestra/Takoma
Ensemble/SONYC, Meditations a new
work for chorus and solo cello from Georgetown University, and the Irving M.
Klein International String Competition; Fallings, an experimental
chamber music theater piece; and The Emily Songs his recent
electro-acoustic rock settings of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. His new
orchestration of Elastic Band was
commissioned by the New Orchestra of Washington (Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, conductor) and will be premiered and recorded this
fall.

Mirroring his diverse compositional projects, Joel teaches a
range of university courses in composition, theory/analysis, and history, and
has originated courses on The Beatles, History of Rock and Jazz, and Musical
Theater. He is Visiting Associate Professor at Georgetown University and has
been on faculty at Swarthmore College, as well as Notre Dame de Namur, Santa
Clara, Stanford (Continuing Studies), and Seton Hall Universities. He is a
sought after speaker on music hosting Symphonic Explorations for the
Baltimore Symphony/Levine Music.

His works are recorded on the Jay, Crystal, and Americus
labels, and published by Samuel French and Grey Bird Music.  He now lives in Washington DC with his wife
Jenny Bilfield, their daughter Hallie, parrots extraordinaire Percy and
Heathcliff, and Sugar Lucille (Dog Of Wonder).  For more information see www.joelfriedman.com