Garrett Frees

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Garrett Frees is a composer, saxophonist, flutist, clarinetist, and pianist. He first started playing piano in the beginning of elementary school. Shortly after that, he started playing saxophone, doubling on flute and clarinet studying jazz, classical, and popular music. He studied Jazz Saxophone Performance at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston graduating in May 2023. During those four years he was a member of New England Conservatory’s Jazz Honors Ensemble in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 academic years. Although Garrett studied in Boston, he has performed regularly in the Chicagoland area since the beginning of high school. He has performed at venues such as Andy’s Jazz Club, and the Jazz Showcase, and events including the 2020 Chicago Jazz Festival. In 2020 Garrett received a National YoungArts Honorable Mention. Garrett is passionate about the traditions that today’s music comes from. All music is interconnected from the same roots, and as a teacher he wants to help his students celebrate this. Since each student is unique and has their own tastes, he uses their interests as a jumping-off point to demonstrate these foundational roots. Learning about music is endless. Although Garrett graduated from a music conservatory, he still is a student of music studying and learning something new each day. He has been so fortunate to have received knowledge from his teachers and believes it is incredibly important to share what he has learned.

“A musician that recently has inspired me is Roscoe Mitchell. The way he organizes different textures of sound and silence has really changed the way I think about music. I find it incredibly inspiring how he is able to take elements from funk, jazz, classical, rock, and many other genres to create different possibilities in music.”