Born in Montreal 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.

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 North Holland Philharmonic Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, André Ristic, the ECM and the Quasar Saxophone Quartet.

In 2001, as a finalist in the Genesis Opera Project, Frehner was commissioned by the Genesis Foundation, to compose Sirius on Earth, a 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 at both the national and international level. 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. In January 2003 his work Subliminal Media for chamber orchestra won the Second Prize in the 2003 Winnipeg New Music Festival’s Investor’s Group Composers Competition. This work also received a Special Recommendation in the 2003 Masterprize competition.

Current projects for 2004-2005 include a twenty-five minute work for the Esprit orchestra, a fantasy for three accordions and orchestra for the Windsor Symphony Orchestra and a twentyminute solo piano composition for Brigitte Poulin.

Paul Frehner’s music has been performed and broadcast in Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Holland, the Czech Republic and Japan.

Pill Culture (2000)
for saxophone quartet

The fifteen miniatures of Pill Culture draw their inspiration from the wide variety of remedies, stimulants, sedatives, and mood enhancers that are sold in today's society. The descriptive movements are titled: Percolator (the little stimulant that gets things started), A previous night (a cure for hangovers), For Inner Harmony (for those seeking spiritual calm), Pacemaker (a reflection on a busy life), Pillow (gradual relief from a variety of ailments), Clone (perhaps not as good as the real thing), Tilt a' Whirl (an anti-depressant), Schizisms (a musical multi-vitamin tablet), Rotor (a type of hallucinogen), Placebo, For Outer Harmony (when suffering from great inner turmoil), Twitch (a muscular twitch), Modulator (a magical shape-changing potion), For You, and Tisane-nuits de rêves (...The Journey... inevitably... continues... ). Paul Frehner's composition 'Elixirs' is an orchestral version of Pill Culture.

Pill Culture was premiered by Quasar in 2000 at the Théâtre La Chapelle (Montréal).