Julian Anderson was born in London in 1967 and studied composition with John Lambert, Alexander Goehr and Tristan Murail. His first acknowledged work, Diptych (1990) for orchestra, won the 1992 Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Young Composers and was subsequently nominated as the BBC entry in the 1996 International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. His two commissions for the London Sinfonietta, Khorovod (1994) and Alhambra Fantasy (2000), have been widely performed by leading ensembles across Europe and the USA. His other most played works include the orchestral BBC Proms commission The Stations of the Sun (1998) which has been performed by both the Boston Symphony and Cleveland Orchestras, and the chamber work Poetry Nearing Silence (1997) a commission from the Nash Ensemble.

From 1996 to 2001 he was Composer in Residence with the chamber orchestra Sinfonia 21. Between 1999-2005 he was Composer in Association with the CBSO, and he has completed three orchestral works for them: Imagin’d Corners (2002) a piece for five horns and orchestra, Symphony, which was premiered in December 2003 and was winner of the British Composer Award (2004), and Eden, written for the opening concert of the Cheltenham Festival 2005. He also wrote Book of Hours (2005), a piece for ensemble and electronics for the BCMG, and Four American Choruses for the CBSO Chorus.

He was Head of Composition at the Royal College of Music until 2005, and is now Professor of Composition at Harvard University. In October 2002 was appointed Artistic Director of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s ‘Music of Today’ series. Throughout the 2002/3 season he was ‘Composer in Focus’ with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He is the Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel Lewis Young Composer Fellow for 2005-7.

June 2005

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