Joshua Fried

Joshua Fried emerged from New York's downtown experimental music and East Village performance art scenes of the 1980s. His full-length HEADFONE FOLLIES completed its 12-week run at HERE Arts Center in 2001 with a rotating cast of sixty-four headphone-driven performers. His collaboration with choreographer Douglas Dunn, Spell for Opening the Mouth of N (featuring eight headphone-driven singer/actors and a dance company of ten), premiered in a sold-out run at The Kitchen, New York, and was one of the highlights of the 1997 Lincoln Center-Out-of-Doors Festival. Fried's 30-minute Welcome to the Ice-Box, commissioned by Danish Radio and recorded at Danish Broadcasting Corp. studios, recently premiered on Danish Radio and at Sound/Gallery--25 loudspeakers permanently installed in Copenhagen's main town square.

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 and the rhythmic experimentation of Nancarrow and his followers, as well as contemporary performance art, dance rhythm and sound processing techniques.

Fried is also known for his invention The Musical Shoes, four ordinary shoes mounted upside-down on stands and plugged into electronics which are activated by striking the shoes.

Fried's 1986 recording "Jimmy Because," with guest guitarist Fred Frith, was released by Atlantic Records. He is re-mix producer on dance records by They Might Be Giants, Chaka Khan and Ofra Haza.

Fried is a recipient of numerous awards including a 1994 NEA Composer's Fellowship, two NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellowships, a 1996 Artist Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como, Italy, and MacDowell, Yaddo and Djerassi Colony Fellowships.

His work has been presented at the Bang On A Can Festival, Music Now Prague, New Music America, Lincoln Center, The Israel Festival (Jerusalem), ICC (Tokyo), John Schaefer's "New Sounds Live" (syndicated on NPR), ISCM's World Music Days Warsaw, Café de la Danse (Paris), Het Apollohuis (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), Podewil (Berlin) and the Dutch Royal Palace, plus New York City venues such as Merkin Concert Hall, the Knitting Factory, The Kitchen, DTW, The Bottom Line, Limelight, Irving Plaza, Danceteria, Here, P.S. 122, Dixon Place and La MaMa Experimental Theater.

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