Composers' Workshop - Julian Anderson

Julian Anderson was born in London in 1967.  His teachers have included John Lambert, Alexander Goehr and Tristan Murail.  Since score Diptych won an RPS Prize in 1990, he has continued to attract the attention of the musical community as composer, enabler and academic.  He has been composer in residence to Sinfonia 21, the CBSO, the Cleveland Orchestra, and currently the London Philharmonic Orchestra.  Between 2002 and 2010 he directed the Philharmonia's Music of Today series. As composer, he has received commissions from such bodies as the BBC, the Nash Ensemble, the Cheltenham Festival, the London Sinfonietta, and the Asko Ensemble. He wrote the opening work, Alleluia, for London's recently refurbished Southbank Centre and his piece Book of Hours, for ensemble and electronics, won the 2006 RPS Award for Large Scale Composition. The NMC recording of the same work won the 2007 Gramophone Award. 

Anderson’s Four American Choruses (2003) were premiered by the Groot Omroepkoor at the Concertgebouw and Bell Mass (2010), was premiered by the Choir of Westminster Abbey, London, to great acclaim. In 2011 Bell Mass won a BASCA award in the liturgical category, and the same year Anderson’s orchestral odyssey Fantasias won the BASCA award for orchestral music. His most recent work, The Discovery of Heaven, a co-commission by the New York Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, attracted significant critical attention with press praising Anderson’s vivid, gripping music and comparing him to a modern-day Debussy.