Alastair White - Several Panels For String Quartet

Workshop performance video

The pieces explores the relationship between development and contingency, and, in doing so, tries to imagine new forms of logic and subjectivity: composed from a paradox of integrity and non-relation.

Composer: Alastair White

Composer photo
Photo of Alastair White
Biography

Alastair White (b.1988) is a Scottish composer and writer. His work is characterised by a lyrical complexity which draws influence from technology, science, politics and materialism, and has been described as “spellbinding” (Boulezian), "perfect" (Vogue Italia), “excellent” (BBC Music Magazine), “virtuosic” (Winnipeg Free Press), "deftly manic" (American Record Guide) "passionately atonal" (Gramophone) and "the height of compositional magnificence" (Fanfare). Recent projects include the fashion-opera cycle of WEAR, ROBE, WOAD and RUNE ("a whole exciting new genre of art" - BBC Radio 3); a string quartet for the Altius Quartet’s album Quadrants Vol. 3 (Navona Records); the documentary opera A Boat in an Endless Blue Sea; and The Drowning Shore, a Scots-Yiddish cantata. Full-length studio recordings of ROBE and WOAD were released by Métier Records in 2021

Shortlisted twice for a Scottish Award for New Music (in 2019 and 2020) and a Creative Edinburgh Award (2019), Alastair has created work for the opera festivals Tête-a-Tête and Opera in the City, the international poetry festival STanza, The Scottish School of Contemporary Dance and The Scottish Poetry Library. His music is supported by Help Musicians UK, The Hinrichsen Foundation, The RVW Trust, The Marchus Trust, The Hope Scott Trust, The Sarah Caple Scholarship, and The Royal Musical Association.

Alastair was a founding member of the Edinburgh-based bands White Heath (Electric Honey) and Blank Comrade (Red Wharf). He is a PhD candidate (supervised by Roger Redgate and Lauren Redhead) and associate lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Workshop

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