Born in Montréal in 1970, Paul Frehner completed his Doctorate in music in 2004 at McGill University where he studied composition with Denys Bouliane. During his Master’s degree at McGill, completed in 1998, he studied composition with Brian Cherney and orchestration with Bengt Hambraeus.
Mr. Frehner’s works have been played in Canada and abroad by professional soloists, ensembles and orchestras including, among others, Almeida Opera, the Esprit Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonia, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, the North Holland Philharmonic Orchestra, the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, pianist André Ristic, the Ensemble Contemporaine de Montréal and the Quasar Saxophone Quartet.
In 2001, Frehner was commissioned by the Genesis Foundation to compose Sirius on Earth, a one hundred-minute opera based on a libretto by Angela Murphy. Co-produced by Almeida Opera and Aldeburgh Productions, Sirius on Earth was premiered in the 2003 Almeida Opera Festival in London, England. It was subsequently toured to Aldeburgh where it opened the 2003 Proms season in Snape Maltings concert hall.
Frehner has received numerous awards and mentions both in Canada and on the international scene. Notable among these was the First Prize in the Prague Philharmonia’s Symphony of the Third Millennium Composition Competition for his orchestral work, Elixirs. It received its world premiere on January 1, 2001, by the Prague Philharmonia in the Rudolfinum and was subsequently broadcast on Czech National Radio and Television. In 2000 he won First Prize in the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra’s International Composition Competition for Overture 2000, a work for large orchestra. It was premiered January 1, 2000 in the Berlin Konzerthaus by the JMWO.
Frehner’s recently completed compositions include: Sanctuary, a twenty-five minute orchestral work commissioned by the Esprit Orchestra; Tightrope, a concerto for three accordions and orchestra and Lila, a work for two spatially-separated chamber orchestras commissioned by the Ensemble contemporaine de Montréal and Bit 20 (Norway).
Currently Paul Frehner is the Composer in Residence at the Chapelle historique du Bon Pasteur in Montréal.
Paul Frehner’s music has been performed and broadcast in Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Holland, the Czech Republic, Malaysia and Japan.