Joshua Fried

"One of the most inventive performance-artist- type composers is Joshua Fried...a rock-influenced postconceptualist with a steady stream of startling ideas. " —American Music in the Twentieth Century. by Kyle Gann. New York : Schirmer Books 1997 ISBN 002864655X. "The lounge was doing the Limbo and nobody wanted to stop because too much of a good thing like Joshua's goodfoot Muzak is never enough." —Craig Lee, LA Weekly

Machines allow the exaltation of unrepeatable moments--taken by intention or by chance. For chance methods (live radio, headphone-driven performance) I am entirely indebted to John Cage. Cage challenged us to open our ears so wide that the wild universe of all sound is heard as music. Yet I try for something far less adventurous perhaps: I take any sound and tame it, narrowing it down to match the width of our ears as they are right now. So I treat on-the-fly material as simply as I can: framing, reshuffling, repeating, transposing.

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