This weekend, the Mizzou New Music Initiative will welcome composer Don Freund to campus for a four-day residency.
A professor of composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music since 1992, Freund (pictured) is an internationally recognized composer whose works range from solo, chamber, and orchestral music to pieces involving live performances with electronic instruments; music for dance; and large theater works.
He has been described as “a composer thoughtful in approach and imaginative in style” (The Washington Post), whose music is “exciting, amusing, disturbing, beautiful, and always fascinating” (Music and Musicians/London ).
Freund also has a personal connection to the University of Missouri, because in addition to being an esteemed composer and educator, he’s also the father of Mizzou’s Stefan Freund, professor of composition and artistic director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative.
An alumnus of the Eastman School of Music, where he earned a masters degree and a doctorate, Don Freund is the recipient of numerous awards and commissions, including two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim fellowship. He has served as guest composer at many universities and music festivals, and presented master classes in the US, Europe, Asia, and South America.
Before joining the faculty at the Jacobs School, from 1972 to 1992 he was chairman of the composition department at Memphis State University, where he founded the university’s annual new music festival and programmed nearly 1,000 new American works. Also active as pianist and conductor, Freund been involved in those capacities in the performance of some 200 new pieces, usually in collaboration with the composer.
During his visit to Columbia, Freund will coach the Mizzou New Music Ensemble and give individual lessons to several student composers. He’ll also give a public presentation of his works, and talk about one of his favorite composers in a lecture titled “Composition Lessons with J.S. Bach.”
Freund’s residency also will include public performances of two of his works. The Columbia Civic Orchestra, conducted by Stefan Freund, will perform Don Freund’s “Preludes for Orchestra” as part of their concert on Sunday, February 26 at the Missouri Theatre, a performance that also will feature the premiere of Mizzou composer Henry Breneman Stewart’s new piano concerto.
Then on Monday, February 27, the Mizzou New Music Ensemble’s concert at Whitmore Recital Hall will include Freund’s 2013 composition “Mixed Blood.”
For more about Don Freund, read the interview with him published in 2015 in the Society of Composers newsletter, and listen to his music on his SoundCloud page and on the Jacobs School of Music site.