BM DePaul University
DM Northwestern University
Courses Taught
Composition
Introduction to Composition
Analytical Techniques
Musicianship
Classical Music
Romantic Music
Music of the Twentieth Century
Music in the US Since 1900
About
I care if you listen calls the music of Fredrick Gifford (b. 1972) “a world of characters and colors that explode from the stage.” His works explore different kinds of openness to create pieces that are never the same twice. They have been heard in concerts and radio broadcasts in Europe, Asia and the Americas, performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Kairos Quartett, Tony Arnold, Ensemble Dal Niente, Winston Choi, Ensemble 61, Jesse Langen, New York New Music Ensemble, Mabel Kwan, James Fusik and Sérgio Carolino, among others. Festival appearances include Resonant Bodies, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea (Mexico), Darmstadt Ferienkurse, June in Buffalo, soundSCAPE (Italy), Omaha Under the Radar, ANODE and the Aspen Music Festival.
Commissions, grants and support for performances of his music have come from institutions and ensembles including: Arts Council of Illinois, Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities, Art Institute of Chicago, Associação Musical Pro-Organo, Chicago Academy for the Arts, the Harris & Wyatt Funds, the Juilliard School, Spektral Quartet, and the Unfamiliar Music Series. Current projects include the ongoing “mobile” series with new works for harp and guitar (2015), bass flute and electronics (2016); the new series of works after Marcel Duchamp: from respirateur (the next installment, Graft Blossom for clavichord, toy piano and electronics, will be premiered in January 2016 by Mabel Kwan), and the 100 Not-songs for JOHN CAGE, a collaboration with soprano Tony Arnold and video artist Ross Karre. His music has been recorded on the Numérica label (2012) and by Hasco Duo (2015).
Since 1997, Gifford has lectured in music (composition, analysis, musicianship, history), serving on the faculties of the Schools of Music at DePaul and Northwestern Universities in the United States as well as the Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espectáculo in Porto, Portugal. He has been involved in the field of musical recordings since 2001, both as a performer, recording with the Amnon Wolman Ensemble on Centaur Records and as a musical producer, overseeing many world-premiere recordings of music spanning the Renaissance to the present.