Howard Fredrics
I was born in New York City into a theatrical family and grew up in the Bronx and Long Island. My father was a magician and my mother worked as secretary to film director, Otto Preminger. My aunt was a singer with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra. My cousin was world champion boxer and actor, Jack “Kid” Berg. I studied piano, acted in local plays, and accompanied my father’s magic shows, while working as keyboardist with local bands.
My undergraduate studies were in Composition and TIMARA (Technology in Music and Related Arts) at Oberlin Conservatory, where my principal teacher was Richard Hoffmann. I interned in NYC with composers, Richard Peaslee, Elodie Lauten, Mikael Rouse, Jacob Druckman and Suzanne Ciani. It was Peaslee who provided my first opportunity to work on sound and music for theatre. After graduating, Peaslee hired me as orchestrator and copyist, and introduced me to composer, Stanley Silverman, whom I similarly assisted.
I moved to Austin, TX in 1987 to pursue graduate studies, where my teachers included Russell Pinkston, Karl Korte and Donald Grantham. My most important influence, however, came from visits by Swedish text-sound composers, Lars-Gunnar Bodin and Rolf Enström. While in grad school, I freelanced as composer and sound designer for theatre, film and TV, establishing myself as resident composer with Capitol City Playhouse and developing a collaboration with director, Jessica Kubzansky.
During 1991-2, I was Visiting Professor of Computer Music at Oberlin, where I taught interdisciplinary courses designed to encourage students working in various media to developed a shared vocabulary for collaboration.
Between 1992-3, I worked, with the support of a Fulbright Grant, at the Swedish National Electronic Music Studios and Royal College of Music in Stockholm. By this point, my creative focus had shifted towards the composition of text-sound and other musical-poetic settings, mostly employing texts by American poet, Charles Bukowski.
While living and working in London between 2002-10, I composed a multimedia opera, The Whitechapel Whirlwind, based on the life of “Kid” Berg, combining musicalized interviews, sounds of boxing matches, as well as video and still images.
Since returning to the US in 2010, I’ve designed sound for a number of plays and films, whereby my approach has mirrored my approach to composing, involving the shaping and development of multi-channel sound materials in a structured fashion, employing such techniques as foreshadowing and motivic development, with the goal of eliciting strong emotions.
Additional Audio
