Oscar Ridout

Biography

Oscar is a composer based in London. His music engages the personal encounter between performer and composer through the medium of the score, inserting passages of a spontaneous or improvisatory nature in order to confound or contort linear temporal logics. Through his work he aims to explore senses of space and movement through space, creating a music that engenders a virtual architecture; this has been unpacked most fully in the hour-long work for four violins and four percussionists with dance and video sun sun moon moon (2021-2) and in the upcoming serenade 2, commissioned by the ensemble standard issue for performance in June 2024. He frequently engages with poetry as a starting-point for the imagery or atmosphere of a piece; the work un paraje de sal, rocas y pájaros bajo la ley del mediodía absorto for flutes and trumpets, alongside the upcoming pieces ​​escritura de fuego sobre el jade for bass clarinet and son llamas los ojos y son llamas lo que miran for double bass ensemble, form part of a longer-term project working with the book-length poem Piedra del Sol by Octavio Paz.

 

Oscar studied at the universities of Cambridge (under Christian Mason) and York (Martin Suckling) and at the Royal College of Music (Simon Holt, Kenneth Hesketh). He was Chair of York's Chimera Ensemble. He is also a sommelier, and has interests in design, food and visual art.

 

 

N.B. You are welcome to play my music, but please get in touch with me so I know about it!

 

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photo: Elinor Blair

London
United Kingdom