Don Freund

Who is Don Freund?

Don Freund is an American composer and Professor of Composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. His over 100 performed works, include solo, chamber, and orchestral music, live performance with electronic instruments, large theatre works.

He stud­ied at Duquesne Uni­ver­sity, and earned his grad­u­ate degrees at the East­man School of Music. His com­po­si­tion teach­ers were Joseph Will­cox Jenk­ins, Dar­ius Mil­haud, Ralph Freund, Wayne Bar­low, War­ren Ben­son, and Samuel Adler. From 1972 to 1992 he was chair­man of the Com­po­si­tion Depart­ment at Mem­phis State Uni­ver­sity. As founder and coor­di­na­tor of Mem­phis State University’s Annual New Music Fes­ti­val, he pro­grammed close to a thou­sand new Amer­i­can works; he has been con­duc­tor or pianist in the per­for­mance of some two hun­dred new pieces, usu­ally in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the composer.

Fre­und has received two grants from the National Endow­ment for the Arts, grants from Jacobs School of Music to com­pose the bal­let Madame Bovary and Earth­dance Con­certo. Com­mis­sions includ­ing the Ten­nessee Arts Com­mis­sion with Opera Mem­phis, Ten­nessee Music Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, the Mem­phis City Schools, the Mem­phis in May Inter­na­tional Fes­ti­val, the Verdehr Trio, the Ten­nessee Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, the Pitts­burgh New Music Ensem­ble, the Jubal Trio, Mem­phis Bal­let, the Inter­na­tional Viola Con­gress, the Pas­tiche Ensem­ble, Florida State Uni­ver­sity and Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity, the Rodrigo Riera Inter­na­tional Gui­tar Fes­ti­val, Baldwin-Wallace Con­ser­va­tory, Voces Novae, Robert and Sara LeBien, Ger­man­town Sym­phony Orches­tra, What­com Sym­phony Orches­tra, Ensem­ble Zel­lig, and the Indi­ana Music Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion. Prizes include the Wash­ing­ton Inter­na­tional String Quar­tet Com­po­si­tion Com­pe­ti­tion, the Inter­na­tional Soci­ety for Con­tem­po­rary Music/League of Com­posers Inter­na­tional Piano Music Com­pe­ti­tion, the AGO/ECS Pub­lish­ing Award in Choral Com­po­si­tion, the Rodrigo Riera Inter­na­tional Com­pe­ti­tion for Gui­tar Com­po­si­tion, the Han­son Prize, the McCurdy Award, the Aspen Prize, 25 ASCAP Awards, and a Mac­ge­orge Fel­low­ship from the Uni­ver­sity of Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia. In 2005, Fre­und was also awarded a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship for Romeo and Juliet: A Shake­spear­ian Music-Drama, which was given its pre­miere pro­duc­tion by the Bloom­ing­ton Play­wrights Project in 2008.