 Frey has also been called "a raconteur, a young Oscar Levant" by American writer and Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor, "his generation's Noël Coward", and that "he seems like a classic character from the golden age of the Broadway musical".In recent years, he has taken to playing his solo recitals with a lamp next to or on the piano providing the only stage light (and often the only lighting in the concert hall as well), and an oriental rug underneath the instrument to "create an intimacy between my audience and the music, as if everyone were in my living room listening together".A resident of Berlin, Germany, Frey has been frequently invited by the city's diplomatic community to perform for heads of state including President Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama, and former German chancellors Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder, among others.