Full Biography
Joseph Phibbs studied at The Purcell School, King's College London, and Cornell University, and his teachers have included Param Vir, Sir Harrison Birtwistle. and Steven Stucky. His works have been performed by leading ensembles in the UK and beyond including the London Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra (Washington). Much of his output has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and he has received commissions from the Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, and Bath festivals. He has also written for the theatre, scoring for a number of productions at the Wolsey Theatre (Ipswich), Sadlers Wells, Setagaya Theatre (Tokyo), and The Globe.
Large-scale works include In Camera (BBC SO/Slatkin), Lumina (BBC SO/Slatkin, 2003 Last Night of the Proms), Tenebrae (St Albans Bach Choir/Andrew Lucas), Shruti (LSO/Petrenko), Rainland (in collaboration with Stephen Plaice), and The Spiralling Night, premiered by NYWE under Phillip Scott at the 2007 WASBE conference. His largest chamber work to date, The Canticle of the Rose, was premiered at Wigmore Hall by Lisa Milne and the Belcea Quartet, and shortlisted for the 2006 RPS Chamber Music Prize. Other chamber works include FLEX (a joint RPS/BBC commission, written for the 2007 City of London Festival), Personnages for Nicholas Daniel, Arc de Soleil for clarinet and piano, premiered by Sarah Williamson at Wigmore Hall in 2008, and The Silence at the Song’s End, a song cycle for soprano and string quartet based on poems by Nicholas Heiney, written for the 2008 Burnham Market Festival.
Commissions for 2009 include a clarinet concerto for Sarah Williamson and the Orchestra of the Swan, a work for the English Piano Trio’s 20th Anniversary Concert, a development commission for a chamber opera (Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre), and a setting of Psalm 98 for choir and orchestra, commissioned by the Bachakademie Stuttgart to mark the Mendelssohn bicentenary. A work combining school choirs with the Britten-Pears Chamber Choir has been commissioned for performance at Snape Maltings in the autumn of 2010, and he will be Composer-in-Residence at the Presteigne Festival in 2011, for which he is writing a new work for strings. Plans are currently underway to write a percussion concerto for Dame Evelyn Glennie for 2011-12, as well as a songcycle for James Bowman and Andrew Plant.
Since 2003 Phibbs has combined his composing career with the editing and promoting of Britten's music, and he is a director of the Britten Estate.
His works are published by Faber Music, Oxford University Press, and BMIC (British Music Information Centre), and he is represented by David Wordsworth.
