Composers
Joby Talbot
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Born: 1971
Brief Biography: Following the success of his first major orchestral work Luminescence, premiered by the BBC Philharmonic, Joby Talbot has gone on to receive numerous commissions from organisations such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and the BBC Proms. Unrestricted by genre, Talbot has a high profile as a film and TV composer. Screen credits include cult television comedy series ‘The League of Gentlemen’, two silent films for the British Film Institute – Hitchcock’s ‘The Lodger’ and Evgeny Bauer’s ‘The Dying Swan’ – and ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ and ‘Son of Rambow’ with director Garth Jennings.
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)
| 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
- 2009 commission for an evening length work from the Royal Ballet, London
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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 in Luminescence 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 a 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 premiered Path Of Miracles, another a 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 concerto Desolation 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 has 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 for Fool’s Paradise and performed by Wheeldon's company Morphoses at Sadler’s Wells and NY City Center in successive seasons. Talbot is now working with Wheeldon on a full-length ballet for The Royal Ballet, to be premiered in 2011; and with Sadler’s Wells on a major collaboration for the stage, to be premiered in 2012.
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.
© Chester Music 2010
External Websites
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