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Richard Blackford (born 13 January 1954 in London, England) is an English composer.
| This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(February 2013) |
Richard Blackford (born 13 January 1954 in London, England) is an English composer.
Richard Blackford PhD studied composition with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music and conducting with Norman Del Mar. He was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship and the Tagore Gold Medal. He spent a number of years as Hans Werner Henze's assistant in Italy on a Leverhulme scholarship, where he received his first commissions while immersed in the European avant-garde.
He returned to London in 1977 to turn his sights to the dramatic potential of music, combining teaching at LAMDA with commissions for theatre scores along with concert commissions. After becoming first Composer in Residence at Balliol College, Oxford, he was commissioned to write the opera Metamorphoses for the Centenary of the Royal College of Music. Further collaborations with Ted Hughes and Tony Harrison led to international film and theatre projects, including The Prince's Play and Fram at the Royal National Theatre. In all he has composed four operas, two musicals, much concert music and the scores to over two hundred films, being nominated for an Emmy Award in 2001 for Outstanding Achievement In Music.
The mid-1990s saw a renewed focus on lyrical and dramatic works for the concert hall, notably Mirror of Perfection and Voices of Exile, both subjects of television documentaries. 2011 saw the premiere of Not In Our Time, a 55-minute choral and orchestral work commissioned to mark the Centenary of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and for performance on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, conducted by Gavin Carr. It was subsequently performed in Chicago and Bremen to standing ovations.
In 2014, Blackford collaborated with wild soundscape recordist Bernie Krause to compose The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony. The work combines the traditional sounds of the orchestra with recordings of gibbons, humpback whales, Pacific tree frogs, mountain gorillas, beavers and the musician wren. The piece was premiered on the 12 July 2014 at the Cheltenham Festival with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Martyn Brabbins, then given at the Aberystwyth MusicFest and Birmingham Town Hall by the LSSO. Nimbus Records and Nimbus Music Publishing released the CD and score respectively.
In 2015 Richard was awarded Die Goldene Deutschland for services to music in Germany alongside Plácido Domingo and Diana Damrau. 2017 saw the premiere of his concertante work for violin and orchestra 'Niobe', commissioned by the Czech Philharmonic and recorded with soloist Tamsin Waley-Cohen for Signum Classics. The Czech Philharmonic also recorded Kalon for string quartet and string orchestra, a Cheltenham Festival commission in association with BBC Radio 3 for the 2018 Cheltenham Festival with the BBC NOW conducted by Martyn Brabbins. 2018 also saw the premiere of his string quartet Seven Hokusai Miniatures, commissioned by the Aberystwyth MusicFest for the Solem Quartet. 'Pietà', his third commission from the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, conducted by Gavin Carr, was premiered in 2019 and won the Ivor Novello Award in the Choral Category 2020.In 2023 he was awarded Best Creator Award for his cantata Babel by Making Music, the National Federation of Music Societies. In 2024 Blackford received an Ivor Novello Award nomination at The Ivors Classical Awards for Songs of Nadia Anjuman. [1]
Blackford is President of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, a Trustee of The Bach Choir and a Trustee of Lyrita Nimbus Arts. He is published by Novello and Nimbus Publishing. In January 2019 he was awarded the Degree of Doctor Of Philosophy by the University of Bristol.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.
Colin Matthews, OBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. Noted for his large-scale orchestral compositions, Matthews is also a prolific arranger of other composer's music, including works by Berlioz, Britten, Dowland, Mahler, Purcell and Schubert. Other arrangements include orchestrations of all Debussy's 24 Préludes, both books of Debussy's Images, and two movements—Oiseaux tristes and La vallée des cloches—from Ravel's Miroirs. Having received a doctorate from University of Sussex on the works of Mahler, from 1964–1975 Matthews worked with his brother David Matthews and musicologist Deryck Cooke on completing a performance version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.
Dame Judith Weir is a British composer. She served as Master of the King's Music from 2014 to 2024. Appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir was the first woman to hold this office.
Geoffrey Alan Burgon was an English composer best known for his television and film scores. Among his most recognisable works are Monty Python's Life of Brian for film, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Brideshead Revisited for television, the latter two earning Ivor Novello Awards in 1979 and 1981 respectively. He also won BAFTAs for his themes for the remake of The Forsyte Saga and Longitude.
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Simon Holt is an English composer.
David Blake is an English composer and founder member of the Department of Music at the University of York.
Brett Dean is an Australian composer, violist and conductor.
John Pickard is a British classical composer.
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Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music.
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Daniel Fardon is a British composer of contemporary classical music.
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