Graham Fitkin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Graham Fitkin (born 19 April 1963) is a British composer.

Fitkin was born in West Cornwall, where he lives today. He attended the University of Nottingham, after which he studied with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam. His first ensemble, the Nanquidno group, consisted of four pianists. A talented pianist himself, he has written much music for the instrument.

Fitkin's music has been referred to as 'post-minimalist', but as usual such labels fail to capture his style. His works are unashamedly tonal, but often feature a complexity which, far from being off-putting, makes his music immediately enjoyable to listen to.

An early ‘Composer for Dance Award’ in 1990 led to a new work for David Massingham Dance. Ever since then Graham has worked frequently with choreographers around the world with recent performances being given by Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, Wayne MacGregor's Random Dance, Pacific Northwest Ballet, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Bi-Ma, Sidonie Rochon, Munich Ballet and National Ballet of Portugal. He won the International Grand Prix Music for Dance Video Award in 1994.

Graham has collaborated with many of today's foremost performers of new music including the Nederlands Blazersensemble, Will Gregory, Apollo Saxophone Quartet, Smith Quartet, Piano Circus, Ensemble Bash, Combustion Chamber, Elysian Quartet and the London Chamber Orchestra.

Between 1994 and 1996 Graham was resident composer with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra producing five new works. Since then several new works have been commissioned and composed for orchestra, performances include those by the Halle, BBC Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony, RSNO, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Bournemouth Symphony, Ulster, Nederlands Radio Orchestra etc. He has conducted orchestras in venues from Lincoln Center to South Bank to Aula Magna.

Performing has always been an important aspect of his work. KAPLAN (based on the fictitious character in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest) used video and live webcams on the musicians to focus on notions of mistaken identity and toured the UK, Japan and Holland in 2005. The more recent STILL WARM for multiple electronically manipulated harps toured UK in 2007 with visuals by Marc Silver and Nick Corrigan. Concerned with the juxtaposition of opposites, this placed early gaelic plucked instruments into new contexts with digitlia and live visuals and is touring Italy in November this year.

Over the past 10 years Graham has directed educational and community projects including 3 UK PRS Composer in Education residencies, 9 regional community projects, university seminars, masterclasses and directed workshops in UK, Japan, Italy and Soweto.

Recent works include Graham’s Double Concerto for two Pianos and Orchestra - CIRCUIT, commissioned by the BBC and featuring soloists Kathyrn Stott and Noriko Ogawa. This has just been recorded in Japan with Tokyo Symphony Orchestra for BIS records.

Other recent collaborations include LENS a piano trio commissioned by the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, a BBC commission for the Duke Quartet - PAWN, a solo for the new organ at Birmingham Symphony Hall and new interactive work GEOGRAPHY - a multi location work for computers and video.

Graham’s work has been released on CD by Decca’s Argo label, Factory Classical, Sanctuary’s Black Box and many others but more recently on his own label GFR.

2008 sees the beginning of multi-media collaboration with The Wilson Sisters and Wayne MacGregor. There are new commissions for London Chamber Orchestra, Fibonnacci Sequence, BBC Concert Orchestra.

His many other works include The Cone Gatherers (1987), Fervent (1992-4) and Piano Pieces 93 (1993) for solo piano, the orchestral pieces Cud (1988), Length (1994), Bebeto (1995), Henry (1995) and Metal (1995), Flak (1989) for two pianos/eight hands, Slow (1990) for string quartet and two keyboards, Hook (1991) for percussion quartet, Granite (1995) for piano and orchestra, the ensemble pieces Ironic (1997), Bed (1998) and Beethoven 7 (2000), and Skirting (2001) for solo guitar.