Some composers astonish musicians by brilliantly defining new compositional problems. Others zap the audience with displays of raw emotion. For a composer to do both at the same time is a rare epiphany, a sign that he or she has received gifts from two of the gods at once. [On Headset Sextet] (read the entire review)
–Kyle Gann, VILLAGE VOICE

A wild sonic ride. [On Headset Sextet]
–Josef Woodard, LOS ANGELES TIMES

Fried's fried mass media manages the impossible feat of making music ironic and messages melodic. [On Radio Wonderland]
–A.D. Amorosi, PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER

Phrases that popped out like memories of a dream. [On Headset Sextet] (read the entire review)
–Ann Powers, NEW YORK TIMES

Travelogue was a tour de force.
–Jack Anderson, NEW YORK TIMES

When the pine tree beside me began to whistle and moan with the products of Joshua Fried's fecund musical imagination, nearby toddlers grew wide-eyed. [On "One Midsummer's Night"]
–Elizabeth Zimmer, VILLAGE VOICE

...wonderful, wheezing throbs of an industrial beast breathing its last. [on Camden]
–Chiori Santiago, HIGH PERFORMANCE

Ein Virtuose des Mischpults, ein Zauberer der Multiplay-Machine...Das Ganze ist äußerst fantasievoll, vital, bunt, feurig, witzig und vor allem: rhythmisch.
A virtuoso of the mixer, a magician of the multitrack...the show is full of fantasy, vitality, color, fire, wit and above all: rhythm.
–Matthias Roth, Matthias Schubert, RHEIN-NECKAR-ZEITUNG

Travelogue...has become a downtown classic...a horrific, Hitchcockian, mind-blowing theater piece.
–Kyle Gann, VILLAGE VOICE

He precisely reverses the intended purpose of recording equipment in an instrument that is truly revealed when it is played live...exposing these new technologies by turning them inside out.
–Jeremy Wolff, NEW YORK PRESS

Ravel Variation was a minimalist dream.
–David Raphael Israel, EAR

Toe-tapping and brain-tickling, as well as authentically fresh, challenging and musical. [on Shoe Music]
–Carle VP Groome, EAR

One of the most inventive performance-artist-type composers is Joshua Fried...a rock-influenced postconceptualist with a steady stream of startling ideas. (Kyle Gann)
–Schirmer Books' American Music in the Twentieth Century