photo by Julie Skarratt
Described as “exciting…combining boom-crash orchestration with woozy portamenti and jazz elegance” by The New York Times, and “a force to be reckoned with” by Observer, the music of Australian composer Jack Frerer (b. 1995) has been commissioned and performed by the New York City Ballet, the Albany, Nashville, Sarasota and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras, the Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra, Musica Viva Australia, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the wind ensembles of UT Austin, UNT, Michigan and Cornell, among others. Jack is the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Morton Gould Composers Award from ASCAP, the Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composers Award, and the Brian Israel Prize from the Society for New Music. He was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, and Composer-in-Residence with the Arapahoe Philharmonic.
Recent and upcoming projects include Standard Deviation for the New York City Ballet and choreographer Alysa Pires, a new work for violinist Johan Dalene for Musica Viva Australia, and Simon Says, a Trombone Concerto for Greg Spiridopoulos and the Albany Symphony Orchestra.
As an orchestrator & arranger, Jack has created arrangements for WQXR, Nu Deco Ensemble, the American Composers Orchestra, the Cape Town Philharmonic, the Albany Symphony, drummer Marcus Gilmore, baritone Will Liverman, and guitarist Yvette Young, among others. Recent film and production credits include the score for dance film Virtuality for BalletX, and the short film Always Summer directed by Alexa Eve. Jack served as recording engineer for the album Cityscapes by Shouthouse, released by New Amsterdam Records in 2019, and produced The Roof, a series of collaborative films and performances featuring New York City-based choreographers and performers.
Jack currently resides in New York City and serves on the composition faculty of Rutgers University, having previously been on the faculties of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and the Juilliard School Pre-College. Jack holds degrees from The Juilliard School and Yale School of Music where he studied with John Corigliano, Chris Theofanidis, David Lang, Aaron Jay Kernis and Martin Bresnick.