Biography

American-Finnish composer Alex Freeman (b.1972) has established himself among the foremost composers of choral music in Finland. A dedicated citizen of his musical community, a teacher, and a choral singer himself, he composes music that reflects an appreciation for a wide range of aesthetics and a passion for communicating with listeners and performers. In his choral works, in particular, we find music that aims to be sonorous, melodic, and resonant, but is always crafted to carefully avoid the cliches that can burden conventional tonality.

His instrumental works run the gamut: a cantata with orchestra based on poetry of Whitman; a significant body of solo piano works that reveal deep roots in everything from austere absolute music to soaring elegaic rhetoric (see Albany Records, Inner Voice); his chamber work Blueshift (Navona Records), which is a kind of paean to Reich and Adams in miniature; open-ended modular works, like various iterations of his Slow All Clocks for electronic media, solo clarinet, and mixed choirs of kanteles; and, recently, some new directions in microtonal music.

Under the Arching Heavens: A Requiem, was a finalist for the 2018 Teosto Prize. His most recent large-scale work for a cappella choir, Cathedral of Spring, was the centerpiece of the 2019 YLE (Finnish National Radio) Album of the Year, recorded by Somnium Ensemble for their 10th anniversary.

Freeman grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, where, as a youth, he was fortunate to have a youth orchestra to play in, a jazz band (conducted by the legendary Paul Jeffrey), a range of church and choral music experiences, and very supportive parents to nurture his interests in music. His trombone teacher, Bruce Reinoso, was also a composer and student of the renowned American composer Robert Ward, perhaps best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning opera, The Crucible. Ward was still teaching nearby at Duke University at the time and generously agreed to teach the young composer in his last year and a half of high school. Freeman left North Carolina in 1990 to study at the Eastman School of music, where he studied composition with Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, Joseph Schwantner, and David Liptak. There, in addition to his studies as a composer, he was an avid conductor of the music of his fellow composers. He then went to Boston to study with Lukas Foss and got his Master's at Boston University, spending two summers teaching young composers at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute with Charles Fussell and Richard Cornell, both of whom he also studied composition with during those years. In 1998 he moved to NewYork to begin his doctoral studies at the Juilliard School, studying with Christopher Rouse. The focus of his doctoral document, The First Movement of Sibelius's Fourth Symphony: Sketch Study and Style Analysis, along with a life-long fascination with Sibelius’s music, led him to Finland. The recipient of a Fulbright Full Fellowship, he moved to Helsinki in 2001 to research Sibelius's sketches and study composition with Eero Hämeenniemi at the Sibelius Academy. He was also a student of Jouni Kaipainen and Magnus Lindberg in several Suvisoitto summer workshops. Those summers in Porvoo alongside some of Finland’s brightest and most talented composers and musicians were profound musical experiences at the end of the student phase of his career (2004-7).

As Assistant Professor of Music in Composition at Carleton College, in Northfield, Minnesota, he divided his time between life in Finland and life in Minnesota for seven years (2007-2014). He currently lives full time in Espoo, Finland with his wife, Aino Launis, and their two children, Armas and Auvo.

Alex Freeman’s works are published by Fennica Gehrman and Sulasol.