Full Biography
Richard Causton was born in London in 1971 and received his early musical education at the ILEA Centre for Young Musicians. On leaving school he travelled in India, and subsequently studied composition privately with Param Vir. Between 1990 and 1994, he studied at the University of York with Roger Marsh and graduated with first-class honours in 1993, taking his M.A. in Composition the following year. He was a Foundation Scholar at the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with Jeremy Dale Roberts and conducting with Edwin Roxburgh, winning both the Kit and Constant Lambert and Herbert Howells Prizes.
Causton has gone on to win many more awards and competitions following his studies. In May 1997 he was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship in its 150th anniversary year (previous holders have included Turnage, Martland, Butler, Ferneyhough and Sir Arthur Sullivan). As a result of this, he studied electroacoustic composition at the Scuola Civica di Musica, Milan. Phoenix, a work for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, was the winner of the 2006 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber-Scale Composition, and The Persistence of Memory (1995), which was premiered by Oliver Knussen and the London Sinfonietta at the South Bank Centre, won the Third International ‘Nuove Sincronie’ Composition Competition. Seven States of Rain, composed for Darragh Morgan (violin) and Mary Dullea (piano), won the Best Instrumental Work category of the 2004, British Composer Awards. Other distinctions include the SPNM George Butterworth Award for the solo piano work, ‘Non mi comporto male’ (1993), and the first ever Fast Forward composition award for Two Pieces for Two Clarinets (1995).
Causton founded and runs the Royal College of Music Gamelan Programme and has written Concerto for Solo Percussion and Gamelan, which was given its first performance at the Cheltenham Festival in 2001 with Evelyn Glennie as the soloist. His most recent work for gamelan, Chorales was premiered at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge in May 2008.
Causton's works have been widely performed at festivals in the UK and internationally, including the Spitalfields, Aldeburgh, and Cheltenham Festivals, and the Europäischer Musikmonat (Switzerland). Performers have included the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Basel Symphony Orchestra, CBSO, London Sinfonietta, Nash Ensemble, Sinfonia 21, and Ensemble Corrente (of which he is a founding member).
Some of Causton’s most acclaimed works include
Kyrie and Sanctus, an arrangement of two movements from Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame; La Terra Impareggiabile, a song cycle set to poetry by Salvatore Quasimodo; and As Kingfishers Catch Fire, a septet commission for the Britten Sinfonia. Causton's most recent works include Nocturne for 21 Pianos, based on Chopin’s 21 Nocturnes and commissioned by the City of London Festival to mark Chopin’s bicentenary in 2010, and Fantasia and Air, a solo violin work for the Park Lane Group, premiered by Tamsin Waley-Cohen in January 2010 at the Purcell Room in London. Causton's Dark Processional was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta for joint performance with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Based on material from Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, it was premiered by the two ensembles at Kings Place in October 2010. Chamber Symphony was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and premiered in October 2009. The Philharmonia Orchestra gave the London premiere of the work in February 2011 at the Royal Festival Hall in London as part of the Music of Today concert series.
Causton is currently working on a 12-minute concerto for orchestra for the European Union Youth Orchestra to celebrate the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Provisionally entitled Twenty-Seven Heavens, the new piece forms part of the PRS for Music New Music 20*12 project.
