“contrasting gestures, driven through by a powerful sense of drama and structure”. The Times
“Delicately spun melodies dissolved into bursts of aggression…. gritty, soulful…” The Strad
“stylistic impressions created with delicacy and sensitivity” Musical Opinion
“Philip Venables’ Fight music … was brutally effective” The Times
Philip Venables’ music has been performed and broadcast internationally. His Piano Studies won first prize in the International Composition Competition ‘From Romanticism to Contemporary” in Bucharest in June 2009. Arc, for the BBC Philharmonic, received a special mention at the 2006 British Academy Composer Awards and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. He had his Wigmore Hall debut the same year with the premiere of his complete String Quartet by the Duke Quartet. This piece has been performed more than a dozen times by four different quartets and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and ABC Australian radio. In 2006 Philip was asked to write Praecentio, a prelude to Mozart’s Requiem for the Canterbury Cathedral celebrations of Mozart’s 250th Anniversary, performed by Southbank Sinfonia and Nicholas Cleobury.
In the last 2 years Philip’s commissions have included Ensemble 10-10 of the RLPO (ANIMA), Endymion (Fight music), Bregenz Festival in Austria for Ensemble LUX (In America et ego), the BBC Singers for SPNM (Thalidomide), the BBC Symphony Orchestra for SPNM (Ora) and the Black Dyke Brass Band for the Deal Festival (Lullaby, for solo Euphoniumist David Thornton and Brass Band). Other works have been written for and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, the BBC Singers, the Canterbury Sounds New Festivals, Rambert Dance Company, the Cheltenham International Music Festival, the QuantumLoop Animated Film Festival and the Spitalfields Festival.
Philip has also worked on many projects with amateur and young musicians, including the Royal National Theatre’s Street Genius project, several CoMA ensembles, the South London Jazz Orchestra and the 2004 Cage: UnCaged festival at the Barbican Centre, and the Sound Census project with Endymion. For September 2009 he has been invited to create an installation performance of Music for Amplified Toy Pianos by John Cage at Kings Place in London.
Philip was born in Chester, UK, in 1979. He went to Jesus College, Cambridge, to read Natural Sciences, but then went on to complete a Masters at the Royal Academy of Music, studying with Philip Cashian, where he was awarded the DipRAM diploma and the Manson Fellowship in Composition, amongst other prizes in composition.
Currently projects include The Schmürz, his first opera, a commission from Wigmore Hall, a violin concerto, a new work for EXAUDI and Endymion for the Southbank Centre and Sound Scotland, and a new work for the Phoenix Piano Trio. Philip is gathering ideas and collaborators for music & video installation mini-operas.
