Brian Phraner:  

At the age of 18, I bought a Hagstrom electric bass and started teaching myself to play it. I did this by learning all the bass parts in my Yes album collection. It was difficult for the first 3 months with no amplifier, but I found I could press the head of my bass against the wall of my mother's apartment and get a pretty good tone. It quickly became apparent that playing and writing music was to be my destiny and that I'd better buy an amp quick. I began writing music as soon as I started playing it, so I taught myself to play other instruments that I could write with such as the acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, drums and singing. In college I played bass in the Skagit Valley Jazz Ensemble with a couple of members of my first original progrock band called Medusa. After Medusa I became a studio and live sound engineer while continuing to write music solo or with a close group of collaborators. In the early 1990's I co-founded the progressive rock group Phreeworld. The band released two CD's (Boost the Signal, 1994; Crossing the Sound, 1998) disbanding in 2002 after a 10 year run. I started writing music for orchestra in 2002 starting with ¿Symphony No. 1, Vociferous Th...Expand for more