Douglas Farrand
b. Nottinghamshire, UK. Now in Newark and Orange, NJ, by way of Cork, Singapore, WNY, and OH
I’m a composer and musician working in experimental music, popular education, and place-based organizing.
I work in Orange, NJ with the University of Orange, a people’s free school and popular education center, and the HUUB, a community campus. From 2013-2019 I taught in and directed Sonic Explorations, a youth music education program in Orange’s east ward.
I’m a founding member of LCollective, a Brooklyn-based experimental music collective with Teodora Stepancic, Assaf Gidron, and Jesse Greenberg, and have worked closely with percussionists Ryan Packard and Christian Smith, filmmakers Kelsey White and Madison Brookshire, flutist and composer Margaux Simmons, poet & composer Porter James, bassist Jeff Weston, cellist and composer Gabriela Areal and others.
I’m grateful to have received a 2025 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Contact: dougfarrand [at] gmail [dot] com
LONG BIO:
Douglas Farrand is a NJ-based composer and musician who works in experimental music, popular education, and place-based organizing. He is concerned with developing practices that invite us to explore our myriad processes of listening and embody a collective investigation of place, community, and personhood. He has 10 years of practice working collaboratively with different creative groups in many contexts including experimental music, youth education, and the application of sound and listening practices to pedagogy and community organizing.
Douglas works in Orange, NJ as the Music City Co-Director with the University of Orange, a people’s free school and popular education center, and as Managing Director of the HUUB, a community campus. Previously he founded and directed Sonic Explorations, a free music education program for young people in Orange’s east ward, where he developed curricula combining Deep Listening and Restoration Urbanism for elementary school students.
As a composer and musician, Douglas is a founding member of LCollective, a Brooklyn-based experimental music collective, alongside Teodora Stepancic, Assaf Gidron, Jesse Greenberg, and Matt Lau. He has worked closely with percussionists Ryan Packard (Stockholm) and Christian Smith (The Hague), filmmakers Madison Brookshire (Los Angeles) and Kelsey White (NYC), composer and flautist Dr. Margaux Simmons (Vermont), bassists Jeff Weston and Rachel Mangold (Pittsburgh), and sound and visual artists Ben Owen (NYC) and Lucía Rodriguez (CDMX).
Douglas Farrand received a 2025 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In 2020 he was an artist-in-residence at the Co-Incidence Festival in Somerville, MA. His music and performances have been included on tape, CD, and digital releases on labels including Motor Image Recordings, Love Records, Another Timbre, and Suppedaneum.
Douglas’s recent performances include Union Docs, SUNY Binghamton, and Lost Bag (Providence RI) as a part of a four city tour with Madison Brookshire and LCollective, annual performances at the Verbatim Text and Sound Expo in the Catskills, the Cleveland Re:Sound Festival, and performances of his long-standing collaboration with Christian Smith, discrete species, at Helicopter Studios in the Hague and Infinity Experimental in Bulgaria.
Douglas has studied trumpet and composition privately with Craig Shepard, composition at Oberlin Conservatory with Josh Levine and Ash Fure, and shorter term but formative studies in music from Chaya Czernowin, Reiko Füting and Michael Pisaro. He was a Next City Vanguard Fellow in 2019 and a participant in the Center for Community Leadership Advanced Organizing Seminar in 2024. He has ongoing, overlapping, and informal studies in urbanism, mindfulness, and place-based organizing via University of Orange faculty including Mindy Fullilove, Robert Sember, Dominic Moulden, Marisela Gomez, Edgar Rivera Colón, Margaux Simmons, and Molly Rose Kaufman.