Susan Frykberg

COMPOSER · SOUND ARTIST · SOUND RESEARCHER

Susan, who is smiling, has blonde hair just below her ears. She is wearing a black blouse, a black and green scarf around her neck, and red framed glasses.

BIOGRAPHY

Susan Frykberg is a citizen of New Zealand and Canada. She is a composer, sound artist and sound researcher. Her faith is very important to her and she practices her Catholicism through actions in social justice, studies in mysticism and work in interfaith, meditation and chant, as well as more traditionally through mass and private devotions.

As a composer, sound artist and sound researcher she has composed over 75 works, especially electronic but also acoustic compositions, and has received awards and commissions via the Canada Council for the Arts; The Ontario Arts Council; New Zealand Arts Council; RMIT Sound Art Collection and Experimenta, Melbourne. She is a founding member of both the CEC (Canadian Electroacoustic Community) and the WFAE (World Forum of Acoustic Ecology). She spent twelve years teaching Acoustic Ecology for Simon Fraser University in Canada, in distance education as well as face-to-face and also wrote a university text: Dimensions of Acoustic Communication. Since 2010, Susan has been a juror for JTTP, a competition for emerging electroacoustic composers in Canada. Key recent achievements include Honourable Mention IAWM (International Alliance of Women Musicians), search for New Music Competition, Anderson Category, 2014. Sound Artist residency for five-months at the Sarjeant Art Gallery, Whanganui, New Zealand, 2016/17. Chief composer for A Drone Opera, which has had many versions since the original in 2015 including a short film, (Sydney International Film Festival, 2019) and an installation, (Carriageworks, Sydney, 2019).
Her music has been recorded on a CD with earsay.com.

Susan’s faith-based activities have included work as a lay-leader for priestless parishes in the Diocese of Palmerston North, New Zealand;  working with the homeless and marginalised with Urban Seed in Melbourne; in Pastoral Care with Mercy Health, and currently with L’Arche Melbourne. She has also been very active in the Carmelite Centre in Middle Park, Melbourne, leading a spiritual reading group for several years and also a contemporary free-chanting group, which unfortunately can no longer run due to COVID. She has been on the Diocesan interfaith committee and is currently on the executive of the CCJ.

Susan is a PhD candidate at Monash University in the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, researching on spirituality and electronic music and composing new spiritual electronic works. Other education includes MA, Electroacoustic composition with Barry Truax, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada;  BTheo: Otago University, New Zealand and a BA, Classics: Otago University, New Zealand.

More about Susan can be found here: https://sounz.org.nz/contributors/1043