Joshua Fried emerged from New York's downtown experimental music and East Village performance art scenes of the 1980s.
Fried is known for turning technology on its head, challenging its assumptions, while using machines to accentuate the raw human qualities of live events that are unique to the moment. His work partakes equally of minimalism, the rhythmic experimentation of Nancarrow and his followers, sound collage techniques, performance art and popular dance rhythm.
Fried developed HEADPHONE-DRIVEN PERFORMANCE whereby performers try to imitate vocal sounds that are played over headphones. The performers have never heard these sounds before, and yet they are asked to reproduce the input as it happens--with every word, pitch and expression accurate and no lag time whatever. Fried's headphone-driven pieces include the six-person Headset Sextet, Spell for Opening the Mouth of N with choreographer Douglas Dunn (full-length, cast of 18) and the solo Travelogue, dubbed "a downtown classic...a mind-blowing, Hitchcockian theater piece" by the Village Voice and "a tour de force" by The New York Times.
Fried is also known for the one-human-band RADIO WONDERLAND, for which he uses a vintage steering wheel, old shoes hit with sticks and his own MaxMSP code to turn LIVE commercial radio into recombinant funk. In the last two years RADIO WONDERLAND appearances have included LEMUR’s Tranzducer series, Unisex Salon at The Delancey, Williamsburg’s Black & White Gallery, Galapagos, MonkeyTown, the Splice series, Chashama, HERE, Music With A View at Flea Theater, Minneapolis’ Spark Festival, the Galapagos art jam at BAM café and elsewhere. Fried's recording "Jimmy Because," with guest guitarist Fred Frith, was released by Atlantic Records. He is credited as re-mix producer on dance records by They Might Be Giants, Chaka Khan and Ofra Haza.
Fried is a recipient of a 1994 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Composer's Fellowship, 1995 and 2001 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowships in Emergent Forms and artist residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center. His full-length HEADFONE FOLLIES had a 12-week run at HERE Arts Center with a rotating cast of sixty-four headphone-driven performers. The 30-minute Welcome to the Ice-Box, commissioned by Danish Radio and recorded at Danish Broadcasting Corp. studios, premiered on Danish Radio and at Sound/Gallery--25 loudspeakers permanently installed in Copenhagen's main town square. His work has also been presented at the Israel Festival (Jerusalem), Music Now Prague, the Bang On A Can Festival (Lincoln Center), New Music America, ISCM's World Music Days Warsaw, ICC (Tokyo), Café de la Danse (Paris), Het Apollohuis (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), Podewil (Berlin), The Heidelberg Experimental Music and Literature Festival, Paradiso, Amsterdam, and the Dutch Royal Palace, plus New York City venues such as Merkin Concert Hall, the Knitting Factory, The Kitchen, The Bottom Line, Limelight, Irving Plaza, Here, P.S. 122, Dixon Place and La MaMa Experimental Theater.