About
Nathan Friedman is a researcher, composer, and performer from British Columbia, Canada, currently pursuing a PhD in the History and Theory of Music at the University of Chicago. His research and creative practice are intertwined in their examination of the developments and contradictions of Western music of the past 150 years. Recent conference papers include “‘The Nationalists Wish We Didn’t Exist’: Utopia and Diasporism in Songs by Geoff Berner and Daniel Kahn” at the 2023 Farbindungen Yiddish Studies Conference, and “Xenakis’s Philosophy of Music, Stochastics, and the Postmodern Sublime” at Meta-Xenakis Global Symposium, 2022. He holds a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Nathan’s works have been performed by the HATCH Ensemble, Continuum Contemporary Music, Tsilumos Ensemble, Bassinova Quartet, Erik Abbink, Mark MacGregor, among others, and have been featured at several music festivals in Ontario and British Columbia, as well as at MusMat Conference in Brazil. He was a founding member of the Victoria Composers Collective, and a long-time member of A Place to Listen Ensemble. He is also an active performer on clarinets, voice, and piano in classical, new music, improvisation, and klezmer contexts.