Andrew Toovey

’Toovey’s music is unapologetically complex, though personal and powerful too. ’

The Times

Andrew Toovey was born in London in 1962, and studied composition with Jonathan Harvey, Michael Finnissy and briefly with Morton Feldman. He has won a series of prestigious composition prizes including the Tippett Prize, Terra Nova Prize, the Bernard Shore Viola Composition Award and an RVW Trust Award.

Toovey was associate composer for the Young Concert Artists Trust (YCAT) from 1993-5 and has been the artistic director of the new music ensemble IXION since 1987. He was composer-in-residence at the Banff Centre, Canada for four successive years with his two operas and music theatre works. Two CDs of his music were released on the Largo label in 1998.

He has worked extensively on education projects for English National Opera and the South Bank Centre among others.  He has been composer-in-residence at Opera Factory and the South Bank Summer School.  Toovey’s works have been performed worldwide and have been featured at many prestigious festivals.    

Toovey’s work embraces a huge diversity of influences, from musical extremes such as Feldman and Finnissy, or the poetry of Artaud, Cummings and Rilke, to a passion for 20th century art - especially that by Bacon, Beuys, Davies, Hayter, Klee, Miro, Newman, Rauschenberg, Riley, Rothko and many more.

Toovey’s recent commissions have included Music for the Painter Jack Smith (Brighton Festival) and Self portrait as a Tiger! (Ensemble Reconsil Wien). He was recently commissioned by the BBC to write a viola concerto for the William Primrose festival in Scotland (2004), also an orchestral suite based on music from his first opera UBU and a large orchestral work.