Julian Anderson Biography
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Julian Anderson was born in London in 1967. He was eleven when he started composing. He later studied with John Lambert, first privately, and then after winning a Foundation Scholarship, at the Royal College of Music. There he won most of the major composition prizes and obtained First Class Honours in the London University BMus Degree. He also studied privately in Paris with Tristan Murail and later in Cambridge with Alexander Goehr on a doctoral thesis. Anderson's musical education was completed by several years' attendance at the Dartington International Summer School; at the Contemporary Composition Course at the Britten-Pears School in 1992; and at the Tanglewood Summer School in 1993, where he was Benjamin Britten Memorial Fellow. At both of the latter he greatly profited from the advice and guidance of Oliver Knussen, who has since been a great champion of his music.
The first of Anderson's works to attract attention was his Diptych, comprising the two orchestral pieces Parades and Pavillons en l'Air, which won the 1992 Royal Philharmonic Society's Prize for Young Composers. Following its first complete performance at the BBC's `Talking Music' festival at the Barbican in 1995, by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Oliver Knussen, it was nominated as the BBC's contribution at the 1996 International Rostrum of Composers in Paris, and selected for broadcast by all the radio stations present.
In 1994 he produced both Tiramisù, (for the 1994 Musica series at the ICA, London) and Khorovod (commissioned by the London Sinfonietta). Khorovod has since become Anderson's most widely played piece, receiving eighteen performances within as many months of its premiere. It was featured at the 1995 Ars Musica Festival in Brussels, the BBC Promenade Concerts, the Herrenhausen Festival, Hanover (London Sinfonietta), two Dutch tours by the Schoenberg Ensemble under Reinbert de Leeuw, the Ensemble On-Line at the 1996 ISCM `Offene Regionen' concerts in Vienna, and performances at IRCAM in Paris, at the Concertgebouw as part of the 1996 Holland Festival, at the Tanglewood New Music Festival, the 1996 Warsaw Autumn Festival, the 1998 ISCM World Music Days in Manchester, the Time of Music festival in Finland, and at the Juilliard School in New York.
A second London Sinfonietta commission, Alhambra Fantasy, premiered in 2000, is already looking set to repeat this success having received performances by the London Sinfonietta (London and Paris), Beethoven Acadmie (Antwerp), Avanti Chamber Orchestra (Porvoo, Finland), Ensemble Kontrapunkte (Wien Modern), and with is scheduled for performances in the USA, Switzerland, Holland, France, Germany and Austria.
The mid-90s also saw the emergence of a number of instrumental and vocal works, such as The Bearded Lady, (commissioned by Nicholas Daniel); 1995, The Colour of Pomegranates (for alto flute and piano, a commission for the 1995 Park Lane Group Concerts), the Emily Dickinson song-cycle I'm Nobody, who are you? (commissioned for William Dazeley to sing at the 1995 Cheltenham Festival); and two Piano Etudes, written for a Composer Portrait concert at the 1996 Aldeburgh festival.
An abiding interest in dance has prompted several works for ballet, the first was the eighteen-minute Three Parts off the Ground, commissioned in 1995 by the London Musici for the choreography of Sara Matthews. Next came Towards Poetry (a version of the earlier Poetry nearing Silence, a Nash Ensemble commission) which was commissioned by Mark Baldwin for a Royal Ballet tour in 1999. This led in to another ballet for Mark Baldwin and his company in February 2001: The Bird Sings with its Fingers.
From October 1997 until September 2000 Anderson was Composer in Residence to Sinfonia 21, for whom he produced several works as well as the Baldwin ballet. Sinfonia 21, under the baton of Martyn Brabbins have performed many other of Anderson's works - most recently Shir Hashirim, which was premièred at the 2000 Cheltenham Festival.
Anderson's first BBC commission, The Crazed Moon, was premièred at the 1997 Cheltenham Festival by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Tadaaki Otaka and later toured with Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Spain. But his chief project for 1997 was another BBC commission, The Stations of the Sun, a work for large orchestra premièred at the 1998 Promenade Concerts to great acclaim by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis. It has now been performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony and the Finnish Radio Philharmonic, as well as being chosen for the 2000 ISCM for performance in Luxembourg.
Anderson is now in great demand for commissions and his music receives consistent critical acclaim - reflected by the Times leader (in May 1996) which said that he "comprehensively banishes sterile, cerebral modernism in favour of a style which connects directly with grateful audiences." Constant and Kit Lambert Fellow (from 1994 to 1996) at the Royal College of Music, he now holds the Sir Gordon Palmer Fellowship and is Head of Composition. Active as a broadcaster and writer on music, Anderson has contributed articles to The Musical Times, Tempo and The Independent.
In January 2001 he was appointed Composer-in-Association to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for a three-year period. During his time with the CBSO he will compose a number of works for the orchestra, including one for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. The first of these (Imagin'd Corners) was premièred in March 2002, in Symphony Hall, Birmingham.
