Friends & Enemies of New Music was formed in 1989 by six composers: Tom Cipullo, Nancy Gunn, John Link, Cynthia Miller, Gregory W. Pinney, and Ben Yarmolinsky, and continued by Cipullo, Link, and Yarmolinsky.

For twenty two years Friends & Enemies put on a series of new music concerts in New York City featuring their own music and the music of emerging and established composers in a wide variety of different styles. More than 640 pieces by 241 composers, including 174 world premieres, were presented at venues in New York City. Friends & Enemies concerts were known for unusual stylistic juxtapositions (Paul Bowles and Karlheinz Stockhausen; Elliott Carter and Ned Rorem) and for what the New York Times called "lots of disputatious energy among the composers and a great sense of wrangling over what music is and where it should go."

Beginning in 1990 the group held an annual composition competition which attracted entries from around the world. Each year the winning work or works were performed on the Friends & Enemies season finale concert. A list of the winners can be found here.

F&E's Collaborations series led to concerts with the Talujon Percussion Quartet, pianist Barry David Salwen, the Viennese composers group Projekt Uraufführung, London's Fibonacci Sequence, the New York new music group Flexible Music, and a joint concert by the French ensemble Accroche Note and New York's Open End.