Masterclass with Garth Knox
About the Event
Join acclaimed violist and composer Garth Knox for a rare masterclass exploring performance, creativity and musical communication.
One of the most influential violists working today, Garth Knox spent formative years with Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble InterContemporain and the internationally acclaimed Arditti Quartet, collaborating with many of the defining composers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including György Ligeti, Kaija Saariaho and Pierre Boulez.
This session offers a unique opportunity to work with and learn from an artist whose curiosity, imagination and technical mastery have shaped the landscape of contemporary string playing for more than four decades.
Part of Lawrence Power V10LA Day. Click here to book.
Garth Knox
Garth Knox (1956) is at the forefront of the new music scene in several different fields, both as a player and as a composer. Drawing on his vast experience as viola player of the Arditti Quartet (1990–1998) and Ensemble InterContemporain (1983–1990), two of the best-known international contemporary music groups in the world, and his close collaboration with many of the leading composers of today, he has become a unique composer-performer of music in many different styles, ranging from minimalist understatement to the cutting edge of new techniques and new technologies.
More recently, thanks to his interest in the viola d’amore and the medieval fiddle, his repertoire has opened up to the music of the past (medieval, baroque), which he persuasively brings into the present. His Irish roots enable him to dialogue with traditional music without complexes. A natural improviser and an intuitive composer, his music often has elements of innovative instrumental theatre.
Garth Knox’s solo and ensemble pieces have been played all over Europe, the USA and Japan. He has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet (USA), the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the British Film Institute and the Tokyo International Viola Competition (Japan).