While pursuing graduate studies at Eastman, Freeman began his conducting career as the music director of the Opera Theatre of Rochester for six years.
Concurrently to his time with the Chicago Sinfonietta, he held the post of music director and chief conductor of the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in Prague since 1996.
This series garnered a lot of attention on the Columbia Records label during the 1970s, and has since been re-released as a Sony Classical boxed set of ten CDs, published in 2019.
[4] Paul Freeman died on July 21, 2015, at the age of 79 in Victoria, British Columbia, due to recent health issues and some long-term "physical challenges".
Both his wife Cornelia and son Douglas were at his side when he died, and they planned a private ceremony in Canada along with a public memorial service in Chicago in September 2015.