Sean Friar’s first musical love was rock and blues piano improvisation, and piano bad-boy Jerry Lee Lewis his first musical idol. While his focus shifted toward classical composition in high school, his music still maintains the raucous energy, accessibility and directness of those early musical influences, now along with a diverse and sophisticated classical sensibility. He thrives on composing for both traditional and nontraditional ensembles – recent projects include works for string quartet, medieval dance band, wind quintet, orchestra, laptop orchestra, and a junk car concerto. He is currently the Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellow in the Ph.D. program in composition at Princeton University, and graduated from summa cum laude from UCLA in 2007 with B.A.’s in Music and Psychology.
His music has been performed throughout the world by such ensembles and performers as the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, So Percussion, Line C3 Percussion, Matmos, NOW Ensemble, Janus, Ensemble Klang, Newspeak, Psappha, Orkest de Ereprijs, TRANSIT, Line C3 Percussion, the Formalist Quartet, the New Millennium Ensemble, New Music Collective, members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and 4-time Grammy-winning percussionist, Glen Velez. Venues featuring his music include Carnegie Hall’s Zankel and Weill Halls, Le Poisson Rouge, GAUDEAMUS New Music Week, Darmstadt Staatstheater, the Kitchen, Galapagos, Peak Performances, REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Los Angeles Convention Center, Composers Inc., the MacArthur Foundation, and the Hawaii Institute of Contemporary Music.
Among his honors are the Aaron Copland Award; a First Music Commission; the Lee Ettelson Composers Award; three ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards; residencies at Copland House and the Apeldoorn, Aspen, Bang on a Can, Bowdoin, and Norfolk music festivals; an NMC New Works Commission; 1st Place in the SCI/ASCAP competition (Regional); and Grand Prize in the PTA Reflections Contest. Recordings of his music can be found on New Amsterdam Records (NOW Ensemble’s, Awake), and on TRANSIT Ensemble’s debut album, TRANSIT EP.
For more information, please visit him at www.seanfriar.com