Andrew Friedman is a San Francisco-based clarinetist and educator devoted to performing music new and old, large and small. His freelance credits include symphony, ballet, and opera institutions around the Bay Area and was a substitute clarinetist with the Auburn Symphony Orchestra and served as principal clarinet of the Seattle Wind Symphony for their 2014-2015 season.

 

As an orchestral performer, he has collaborated with conductors including Gerard Schwarz, Alan Piersen, Carl St. Clair, and Edwin Outwater, and has been featured as a soloist with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music New Music Ensemble and the University of Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra. Recorded appearances include a special broadcast of NPR’s From The Top celebrating the Conservatory’s centennial anniversary and the soundtrack to Christopher Coppola’s 2017 feature film "Torch".

 

Aside from his performing activities, Friedman teaches students in clarinet and saxophone around the Bay Area and has served as a coach for the Oakland Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Puget Sound Youth Wind Ensemble. He presented a paper on the mid-century African-American composer William Levi Dawson at the 2014 meeting of the American Musicological Society, Pacific Northwest Chapter, and was a panelist at the 2014 Race and Pedagogy National Conference, speaking about classroom conditions involving discussions of non-white, non-canonical composers.

 

Friedman is also an active composer with a catalogue of works for a variety of wind and brass instruments; his most recent work, "Open" for unaccompanied clarinet, was premiered in recital at the California State University Fullerton in April 2019. Friedman graduated with honors from the University of Puget Sound with degrees in Music Performance and English and holds an MM from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; his teachers included Carey Bell, Dr. Kelly Burke, and Jennifer Nelson. He trained as a clarinet fellow at the Round Top Festival Institute and as a young performing artist for two summers at the Eastern Music Festival.