Jason Freeman | Meet The Composer

Jason Freeman Atlanta, Georgia

Glimmer (2004)

10 minutes
1.1.1.1—1.1.1—perc(3)—strings(4.4.3.2.1)
World Premiere: January 21, 2005, American Composers Orchestra

Read about Jason Freeman's further endeavors in audience participation in this blog entry for the New York Times.

Composer Jason Freeman breaks down conventional barriers between composers, performers, and listeners, using cutting-edge technology and unconventional notation to turn audiences and musicians into compositional collaborators and to emphasize the uniqueness and excitement of each live performance.

Freeman’s works have been featured in The New York Times, on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and online at USA Today, Wired, and Billboard, which called Network Auralization for Gnutella (N.A.G.) “an example of the Web’s mind-expanding possibilities.” They have been exhibited and performed at the NTT InterCommunication Center (Tokyo), the Viper Festival (Basel), Donnaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), the Boston CyberArts Festival, the Transmediale Festival (Berlin), 01SJ (San Jose), Filmwinter (Stuttgart), SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles), and the Lincoln Center Festival (New York). His instrumental compositions have been performed by groups ranging from the American Composers Orchestra, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Nieuw Ensemble, and Speculum Musicae to the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the So Percussion Group, and an elementary school band, chorus, and orchestra in Richmond, Virginia. He has received awards and grants from ASCAP, the American Music Center, Meet the Composer, the Yvar Mikhashoff Foundation, and Akademie Schloss Solitude, among others. Freeman has also published articles about his work in Computer Music Journal, Leonardo, Organised Sound, and the Journal of New Music Research.

Recent projects include Flock, an evening-length work for saxophone quartet, dancers, and audience participation commissioned by the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami; and Piano Etudes, a commission for Jenny Lin that combines an open-form musical score with an interactive web site, to be performed this spring at Spivey Hall in Atlanta, at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and at Strathmore.

As a music educator, Freeman has developed innovative projects at all age levels. Disc-o, educational software developed with Douglas Repetto for the JP Morgan Kids Digital Movement at Sound project, teaches middle-school students about sound design, physics, and chaotic systems. The Jungle Book, for elementary school band, chorus, and orchestra, utilized a school residency to solicit and incorporate student ideas into the work. Sound Microscope, web-based audio software, teaches high-school students about timbre and sonic structure. Freeman has had residencies at iSAW (Miami), the Collegiate School (Richmond), and the University of Georgia (Athens), taught workshops to high-school students in Miami, New York City, and Jerusalem, and frequently lectured about his work at universities, conferences, and festivals around the world.

Freeman graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, which also awarded him the Louis Sudler prize, the highest honor to a graduating senior in the arts. He received an M.A. and D.M.A. in composition from Columbia University, studying with Fred Lerdahl, Sebastian Currier, and Joseph Dubiel. He is currently an assistant professor of music at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses to musicians and non-musicians and serves as executive director of Sonic Generator, the university's ensemble-in-residence.

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