Harry Freedman

Who was Harry Freedman?

Harry Freedman, OC was a Canadian composer, english hornist, and music educator of Polish birth. He wrote a significant amount of symphonic works, including several film scores, and also composed a substantial amount of chamber music. He also composed music for six ballets, an opera, some incidental music for the theatre, and a few vocal art songs and choral works. He was awarded a Juno Award in 1996 for his symphonic work Touchings, which was recorded by the Esprit Orchestra on the Nexus label. He won the 1998 composition prize at the International Rostrum of Composers for Borealis, a symphonic work co-commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Soundstreams Canada, and CBC Radio. In 2002 the Canadian Music Centre released a commercial recording dedicated to his music, Canadian Composers Portraits: Harry Freedman.

At the age of three, Freedman immigrated with his family from Poland to Canada where the family settled in Medicine Hat, Alberta. His father worked in the fur trade. At the age of 9, Freedman and his family relocated to Winnipeg where he enrolled at the Winnipeg School of Art at the age of 13 to study the art of painting.