Lori Freedman

An important figure in Canadian avant-garde music, both in contemporary music and free improvisation, Lori Freedman has been hard at work since the early ‘90s to elevate the bass clarinet to a higher status. She has performed across Canada with orchestras, premiering a number of works written for her. Additionally she has played throughout North-America and Europe as an improviser. She is best known as one half of the avant-garde jazz duo Queen Mab.

Freedman's career started among orchestras, including tenures in the Winnipeg and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s she was already involved in interdisciplinary performances with dancers and visual artists, and experimented with MIDI interfaces and electroacoustics (she can be heard on Daniel Scheidt's 1991 CD Action/Réaction). In 1992 she formed Queen Mab with pianist Marilyn Lerner. A duo of rare beauty, showing an uncanny level of interplay and telepathic understanding, they have appeared in numerous jazz and new music festivals in Canada and recorded two albums, Barbie's Other Shoe (1997) and Close (2000). The pair is also featured as part of the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, one of Freedman's lightest involvements.

In 1998, Freedman received the Freddie Stone Award "for the demonstration of outstanding leadership, integrity and excellence in the area of Contemporary Music and Jazz." A year later she released her first solo CD, Huskless!, a collection of contemporary works for bass clarinet. In 2001 she spent three months in Amsterdam working on compositions with Louis Andriessen and Misha Mengelberg and seized the opportunity to perform with a number of European improvisers, including Maggie Nichols, Luc Houtkamp, Ab Baars, Kaffe Matthews, and Ig Henneman. Back in Canada she moved from the West Coast to Montreal where she befriended the Ambiances Magnétiques community. There she premiered her Lori Freedman Trio (with Nicolas Caloia and Danielle P. Roger) in July 2002 and released her first solo CD as an improviser, À un Moment Donné.