Carrie Frey
Carrie Frey is in demand across the United States and Europe as a violist, teacher, composer, and improviser. Known as “one of the finest interpreters of contemporary music in New York” (Bandcamp Best Contemporary Classical), she has premiered over 300 works by composers including Wadada Leo Smith, Hannah Kendall, Matthew Aucoin, Paul Pinto, Shelley Washington, George Lewis, inti figgis-vizueta, Kate Soper, Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, Mark Applebaum and Peter Eötvös.
Frey is the violist of the Rhythm Method, “a group of individuals with distinct compositional voices and a collective vision for the future of the string quartet” (I Care If You Listen) with a decade of national and international credits, including a recurring residency at the Lake George Music Festival and a spotlight at the Lucerne Festival. A passionate chamber musician, Carrie has performed for over ten years as a founding member of string trio Chartreuse, commissioning works from composers in Iceland, Canada, Norway, and across the U.S. As the violist of Desdemona she was selected for Banff’s Evolution Quartet program, performed with Lyra Pramuk at MoMA PS1, and toured the States. Frey improvises as a member of Simone Baron’s genre-bending Arco Belo ensemble, which has surprised and delighted audiences at the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center and Brevard Music Center. Additionally, Frey appears regularly with New York’s most notable contemporary ensembles, including Wet Ink Large Ensemble, AMOC*, Talea, Wavefield, S.E.M., Cantata Profana, Argento, Heartbeat Opera, Signal, Contemporaneous, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. In the above contexts Frey has offered master classes, composer readings, and educational workshops at dozens of institutions including New York University, Boston Conservatory, Columbia, Brown, Harvard, Indiana University, Eastern Carolina University, and Oberlin Conservatory.
Frey’s 2023 debut solo release, Seagrass, “conjures an inviting warmth that leaves her virtuosity on the margins, placing the focus on her humanity” (Bandcamp Daily). Her portrait album, Seaglass (Gold Bolus, 2025), features The Rhythm Method in performances of Frey’s four string quartets to date. She additionally appears on numerous acclaimed music releases with labels including Etymology Classics, New Focus, Naxos, Carrier, Kairos, and Motema. She can be heard on principal viola in Marin Alsop’s Naxos recording with Britten Pears Orchestra; her debut sonata album, The Grey Light of Day (2016), featured works by Edvard Grieg and David Wurts with pianist Robert Fleitz.
Principal viola credits include Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, and American Composers Orchestra (including in premieres of works at Carnegie Hall). With the LFCO, she performed at the KKL Lucerne and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and collaborated with Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Other international credits include Pharos Contemporary Music Festival (Cyprus), Grafenegg Academy (Austria), Time of Music (Finland), Britten-Pears (UK), recitals in Riga (Latvia), Oslo, Hamar, and Tromsø (Norway), Vancouver New Music Festival (Canada); and Pacific Music Festival (Japan). Closer to home, Frey has been invited at Ojai, Bang on a Can Long Play Festival, Time:Spans, the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and MATA.
Frey’s compositions, described as “an agonizingly beautiful meditation on the Romantic style” (I Care if You Listen) and “the work of an intelligent composer who not only knows her craft, but the ways to exploit her expert knowledge of the possibilities of the instruments to great advantage” (New York Concert Review), have been performed by the Rhythm Method, RE:duo, Arco Belo, Adrianne Munden-Dixon, Leah Asher, and Kal Sugatski.
Carrie is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory (B.M.) the Manhattan School of Music Contemporary Performance Program (M.M.), and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (D.M.A.). Her mentors throughout her studies have included Kathryn Dey, Peter Slowik, Nadia Sirota, Danielle Farina, and Daniel Phillips. She lives in Brooklyn.