James Freeman (born 1939) is Professor Emeritus of Music at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

in Swarthmore, PA. He is also the artistic director and conductor of Philadelphia's renowned contemporary music chamber orchestra and ensemble,

Orchestra 2001 Currently entering its fourth decade, Orchestra 2001 was founded at Swarthmore College, where it was Ensemble-in-Residence for over twenty-five years. In addition to concerts in the Philadelphia area, the ensemble has brought new American music to c ...

, which he founded in 1988. He was trained at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(B.A., M.A., Ph.D), Tanglewood, and Vienna's Akademie für Musik. He counts among his principal teachers pianists

Artur Balsam Artur Balsam (February 8, 1906 – September 1, 1994) was a Polish-born American classical pianist and pedagogue. Biography He was born in Warsaw, Poland, and studied in Łódź, making his debut there at the age of 12 then enrolled at the Berlin ...

and

Paul Badura-Skoda Paul Badura-Skoda (6 October 1927 – 25 September 2019) was an Austrian pianist. Career A student of Edwin Fischer, Badura-Skoda first rose to prominence by winning first prize in the Austrian Music Competition in 1947. In 1949, he perform ...

and his father, double bassist Henry Freeman. As a conductor, he has commissioned and given the first performances of many new works by American composers. In 1990 he was given the first Philadelphia Music Foundation's award for achievement in Classical Music. Other honors include two

Fulbright Fellowships The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

, grants from the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

, the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

, Swarthmore College, the German Government, and Harvard University's Paine Traveling Fellowship. He spent the spring of 1991 at the

Moscow Conservatory The Moscow Conservatory, also officially Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (russian: Московская государственная консерватория им. П. И. Чайковского, link=no) is a musical educational inst ...

as a guest conductor and lecturer on new American music."

External links

James Freeman
on Swarthmore College website Living people American male conductors (music) Place of birth missing (living people) Swarthmore College faculty Harvard University alumni 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 1939 births Academic staff of Moscow Conservatory {{US-academic-stub