Jürg Frey (born 15 May 1953) is a Swiss composer and clarinettist. He is a member of the Wandelweiser Group.

Biography

Jürg Frey was born in 1953 in

Aarau Aarau (, ) is a List of towns in Switzerland, town, a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality, and the capital of the northern Swiss Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Aargau. The List of towns in Switzerland, town is also the capital of the dis ...

, Switzerland. He studied clarinet in Concervatoire de Musique de Genève, composition under Urs Peter Schneider in Bern and trained in Basel as a teacher of the Alexander Technique. Frey co-founded the Lenzburg Music Forum, and has been artistic director of the Aarau concert series 'Moments Musicaux' for more than ten years. Frey has been invited to workshops as a visiting composer at the

Universität der Künste Berlin The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research universiti ...

, the

Universität Dortmund TU Dortmund University (german: Technische Universität Dortmund) is a technical university in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with over 35,000 students, and over 6,000 staff including 300 professors, offering around 80 Bachelor's an ...

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and

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. In 1991 he was prize winner at the Boswil International Composition Seminar. Frey has acted as a mentor at recent composer meet composer workshops including fellow

Wandelweiser The Wandelweiser Group is a composition school, collective for composers and performers of contemporary classical music. Inspired by the work of John Cage, the Wandelweiser Group writes experimental music, which is typically of a very quiet nature ...

composers/artists Antoine Beuger,

Emmanuelle Waeckerle Emmanuelle is the lead character in a series of French erotic films based on the main character in the novel ''Emmanuelle'' (1959), created by Emmanuelle Arsan. Character history Emmanuelle appeared as the pen name of Marayat Rollet-Andria ...

Marianne Schuppe Marianne Schuppe (born 12 July 1959) is a vocalist, author, and composer of vocal music. Biography Originally from Germany, Schuppe moved to Switzerland later in life. Schuppe has developed a unique "voice-body-technique" based on the breathing- ...

, and

Joachim Eckl Joachim Eckl (born 11 April 1962 in Haslach an der Mühl); is an Austrian artist, social engineer, patron, project leader, producer in the cultural and art world as well as the chairman of the cultural association heim.art. He is mainly known ...

Music

Jürg Frey’s music is characterized by sparse, quiet, soundscapes. In a review in The Guardian, Frey has been described as a “master of calm instrumental textures… who explores silence as much as sound and writes egoless music that feels as though it’s always existed”. Writing in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'',

Alex Ross Nelson Alexander Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an American comic book writer and artist known primarily for his painted interiors, covers, and design work. He first became known with the 1994 miniseries ''Marvels'', on which he collaborated wi ...

compared Frey’s music to a “Mahler Adagio suspended in zero gravity”.

References

External links

Resource guide to the music of Jürg FreyJürg Frey's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Frey, Jürg Swiss composers Swiss male composers Swiss clarinetists 1953 births Living people People from Aarau 21st-century clarinetists 21st-century male musicians