Composer Profile: Eugene Friesen

Eugene Friesen and I have a friendship going back to our student days at Cal State Fresno, where we played in a trio together with pianist Sally Christian, and where we shared many youthful musical and life discoveries. We had numerous parallels in our lives. For one thing, we each had parents who valued music and insisted that everyone in our families play instruments. Eugene had wanted to play trombone, but his father, who in his own youth had been blown away hearing Piatigorsky play with the Winnipeg Symphony, chose cello for him. I chose flute. For another, as our careers evolved, we both remained active performers for whom composing became gradually more and more important.

Since cello has long inextricably been a part of Eugene’s identity, I was curious to know if he ever regretted not pursuing trombone. He told me, “Initially, I was more drawn to wind players because they were just better players than my string-playing peers. I even played in our high school jazz band–on cello–because of that. With one important exception, my violinist friend Art Svenson, I didn’t see string players as the kind of people I wanted to play with.” Then in 1970, he and some friends formed a kind of pop-rock-jazz group called the Modern Fur Bearing Orchestra–violin, viola, cello, two trumpets, trombone, bari sax, Hammond organ, electric bass, drums, and lead singer–which defined his idea of what being a string player could be.

Also, at Fresno State, he started to meet “string players who were really cool people.” And then when he spent a year at CSU Northridge, studying with Nathaniel Rosen and meeting the likes of Jennifer Langham and the great Piatigorsky himself, he knew he was in the right world.

He left Los Angeles to study with Aldo Parisot at Yale. Dave and Iola Brubeck were neighbors of Parisot, who also taught their son Matt. Eugene told me, “I was writing for the cello orchestra that we had at Yale, when Dave Brubeck approached me with the idea of arranging his flute and guitar piece for cellos.” Thus, his arrangement of Brubeck’s Tritonis for cello quartet, which will be on our upcoming program. His friendship with the Brubeck family has continued since then.

I asked him about his evolution as a composer, especially as music of other cultures has influenced his own music. He told me that, as always, playing cello was his guide. “For whatever reason, I’ve always felt that cello had great potential to express all kinds of music that we don’t normally associate with it. Thirty years of being on the road with the Paul Winter Consort, of playing with different drummers and soloists from different countries, of playing music from different cultures–I always wanted the cello to be part of it all, even when there was no tradition for it in the music I heard and played.”

Improvisation has been part of his performing life at least since his MFBO days, and in fact, he has recently published a book called Improvisation for Classical Musicians (Berklee Press). But it is also a big part of his compositional process, as he explained to me how he had worked on his new cello quartet.

“I feel that the most authentic music tends to come out of my cello as I play. It’s the most direct conduit of musical creativity for me, with much less cerebral intervention than happens otherwise. It feels like my truest voice when something springs into existence, generated through my cello. It’s like that quality of practicing martial arts, when you have this connection with something, whether beyond or within. Working this way, lightning strikes–not always, but often enough to keep paying attention.”

Eugene’s string octet Under the Sun, which we commissioned and which opened our 20th season, was electrifying, and I, for one, cannot wait to hear how his oneness with the cello manifests itself in The Soul of the White Ant, for–not one, but four–cellos.