© Johan Persson
Born: 1971
Brief Biography: Joby Talbot’s compositional aesthetic threads through his classical and concert works; scores for film and television; and collaborations with major contemporary choreographers, as well as with internationally acclaimed pop musicians.
Talbot has composed widely for major orchestras, soloists and vocal groups. He has collaborated twice with British chamber choir Tenebrae, for whom he wrote Path of Miracles and employed in his electro-acoustic dance score for choreographer Wayne McGregor's Genus. Further choral commissions include Ave Verum Corpus for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival and the madrigal The Wishing Tree for BBC Proms, performed by The King's Singers. The instrumental Sneaker Wave was also commissioned by the BBC Proms for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Other works for large ensembles have included the trumpet concerto Desolation Wilderness for Alison Balsom and the RLPO; Tide Harmonic, a collaboration with choreographer Carolyn Carlson and the Orchestre National de Lille, soon to be released on Signum Classics; and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Talbot's score to the full-length 2011 ballet by Christopher Wheeldon, a co-commission between The Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada. In 2004 he was appointed Classic FM's inaugural Composer-in-Residence.
Talbot's music has appealed to some of Europe's leading choreographers, including Royal Ballet resident choreographer Wayne McGregor, with whom he has collaborated on Genus (co-written with LA musician Deru) for the Paris Opera Ballet; Entity for Random Dance; and on Chroma for the Royal Ballet. This latter work is choreographed to Talbot's arrangements of songs by The White Stripes from the album Aluminium, conceived by XL Recordings founder Richard Russell. Talbot had previously collaborated with Christopher Wheeldon and Morphoses on Fool's Paradise, choreographed to his work The Dying Swan.
In his work for film and television, Talbot graduated from scoring silent films such as Hitchcock's The Lodger for the BFI, to writing the themes and scores for British comedy series The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville, as well as scoring feature films The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Son of Rambow, Penelope, Franklyn, Burke and Hare and Is Anybody There?
In 2011 Talbot will begin a number of projects across concert and screen platforms, including a work based on the Purcell Chaconne, commissioned by the BBC for their 2011 Proms season and to be performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
For a complete biography, click here.
Key Works:
- The Lodger
(1999; music to silent film)
- Similarities Between Diverse Things
(2002; chamber ensemble)
- String Quartet No 2
(2002; String quartet)
- Sneaker Wave
(2004; orchestra)
- Path of Miracles (2005; choir)
- Desolation Wilderness (2006; trumpet, orchestra)
- Eau (2008; concertante 2 perc, 2 pianos, harp, orchestra)
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2011; ballet)
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Career Highlights:
- 1992-4 private study with Brian Elias
- 1994-5 studies at Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Simon Bainbridge and Robert Saxton
- 2002 The Dying Swan plus other chamber music released on CD by Sanctuary
- 2004 BBC Prom commission to write Sneaker Wave for BBC National Orchestra of Wales
- 2007 Chroma for Wayne McGregor and the Royal Ballet, London
- 2008 Composer-in-Residence with the Australian Youth Orchestra
- 2008 premiere of Eau
- 2011 premiere of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at Royal Opera House, London and Canadian National Ballet
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Critical Acclaim: [On Sneaker Wave] The orchestration is delicate and effective…the climax – the arrival of the sneaker wave itself, punched home by the entry of the Albert Hall organ – is suitably cataclysmic. — Andrew Clements, The Guardian
[On Similarities Between Diverse Things] What immediately impressed me about these pieces was Talbot’s control, the economy and restraint of his writing. The materials and processes he uses are generally simple and transparent, but effective. The results are frequently moving, and often beautiful. — Barry Witherden, Gramophone
Joby Talbot’s ambitious a capella “Path of Miracles” is little short of a musical miracle itself. — Nick Breckenfield, www.classicalsource.com
Full Biography:
Joby Talbot's compositional aesthetic threads through his classical and concert works; scores for film and television; and collaborations with major contemporary choreographers, as well as internationally acclaimed pop musicians.
Talbot studied composition privately with Brian Dennis and Brian Elias, prior to receiving tuition from Simon Bainbridge at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. A 1997 commission from the BBC Philharmonic resulted inLuminescence for string orchestra, quickly followed by the percussion and chamber ensemble piece Incandescence, initially written for the Brunel Ensemble and toured in 1999 by Evelyn Glennie and the London Sinfonietta, for whom Talbot went on to write Minus 1500 in 2001. Talbot's first work for the BBC Proms was 2002's à cappella The Wishing Tree, for The Kings' Singers, whilst a subsequent Proms work, Sneaker Wave, premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 2004.
In the same year, Talbot was named Classic FM's first Composer In Residence, a project that culminated in the 2005 release of the album Once Around the Sun. Also in 2005, Nigel Short's exceptional choral ensemble Tenebrae premieredPath Of Miracles, another à cappella work of four movements, which describes the ancient Christian pilgrimage across northern Spain from Roncesvalles to Santiago de Compostela. In 2006, Talbot completed the trumpet concertoDesolation Wilderness for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Turku Philharmonic orchestras, conducted by JoAnn Falletta and performed by acclaimed soloist Alison Balsom. The piece received its North American premiere, by former Chicago Symphony principal Craig Morris, in August 2009 at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.
Works for smaller ensembles have included Blue Cell for the Apollo Sax Quartet;Mandala for six harps; Motion Detector for cellist Maya Beiser; and Manual Override for the T'ang Quartet.
The latter two pieces, along with a further two of Talbot's, were chosen by Royal Ballet resident choreographer Wayne McGregor for his 2008 work Entity with Random Dance, of which there have been over 85 performances worldwide. Talbot and McGregor had collaborated previously on Chroma for the Royal Ballet, which garnered the South Bank Show Award for Dance and an Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production; and, in the same year, on Genus for the Paris Opera Ballet, for which Talbot produced an electro-acoustic score in collaboration with LA electronic music producer Deru.
For a third 2008 dance collaboration, with Carolyn Carlson and the Orchestra National de Lille, Talbot wrote the full-length Tide Harmonic. In 2007 and 2008, Talbot's The Dying Swan was choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon forFool's Paradise and performed by Wheeldon's company Morphoses at Sadler's Wells and NY City Center in successive seasons. In 2011, Wheeldon and Talbot premiered their full-length ballet of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland for The National Ballet of Canada and The Royal Ballet, the score for which was the first of its kind to be commissioned by the latter in 20 years.
Talbot's work for film and television began in 1998 with his theme and score for British comedy series The League of Gentlemen, for which he was awarded the Royal Television Society Award for Best Title Music. In 2005 he scored the feature-length The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, as well as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy directed by Garth Jennings, with whom he subsequently worked on the 2008 film Son of Rambow. Other recent film scores include Penelope, Franklyn and Is Anybody There?
Commissions from the British Film Institute, for silent films The Lodger (1999), premiered at the Edinburgh Festival, and The Dying Swan (2001) have been widely performed and adapted to other purposes.
As an arranger, Talbot has worked with numerous contemporary pop musicians, including Paul McCartney, Tom Jones, Air, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Neil Hannon and The Divine Comedy, Travis, and Ute Lemper, and with record producer Nigel Godrich. Talbot himself acted as producer as well as arranger on the XL Recordings album Aluminium, a limited-edition collection of songs by The White Stripes, arranged by Talbot for chamber orchestra. Talbot has also composed works for band, including 2003's The Watchers, written for his group Billiardman and incorporating electro-acoustic instrumentals alongside speech samples. In 2011 Talbot will begin a number of projects across concert and screen platforms, including a work based on the Purcell Chaconne, commissioned by the BBC for their 2011 Proms season and to be performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
External Websites
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