Performer Biography

Alexander Fried

Alexander Fried started taking violin lessons at age four with Alexander Kalman. When he was 10 years old, he performed the Bach Double Concerto with Tamsen Beseke and the West Coast Chamber Orchestra.  Alex has won numerous awards from competitions including the ASTA Greater LA area division, Classics Alive, International Encore Chamber Competition, and YMF. After winning the SYMF competition in 2015, Alexander performed solo with YOLA, received the David Weiss Honor Scholarship, and received a certificate of Congressional Recognition in 2016.  He also has performed in the West Coast Symphony, the Porta Caeli Chamber group, performed with Sean Chen, for the City of Hope, and has done outreach concerts in Las Vegas. In 2018, Alex won Colburn’s Concerto competition and was selected to play the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Colburn Youth Orchestra in 2019, where he also held the position of Concertmaster.         

                Alex Studied Violin Repertoire for a number of years with Varty Manouelian at Colburn Community School of Performing Arts, where he is an Honors Scholarship recipient and studied music theory with Kathy Sawada. He is a winner of the Mondavi National competition, a finalist in the Spotlight competition, and received Honorable Mention from the Youngarts foundation in 2019. He was also invited to participate at an Honor Performance Series of 2020 at Carnegie Hall. He has performed for LACMA’s Sundays Live radio broadcast with fellow Colburn students. Additionally, he has been featured in both the CASA magazine and ASTA magazine. He was also the first violinist of the Colburn Honors String Quartet, currently coached by Jonah Sirota.

                During the summers, Alexander has attended Center Stage Strings, the Beverly Hills International Music Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Montecito International Music Festival, Masterworks Festival, the Philadelphia International Music Festival, and Keshet Eilon. At festivals such as these, he has taken masterclasses with Andres Cardenes, Cho Liang Lin, Oleh Krysa, and Martin Beaver.

                Alexander is currently a senior studying at CIM with Professor and Dr. Kaler. He loves his three cats, and likes to mess around on the piano and guitar in his free time.