Jim Aitchison

Jim Aitchison’s practice as a composer engages with a variety of sources, in music, art and literature. To date, his activities are unique in initiating encounters with work by the some of the world's foremost visual artists including Antony Gormley, Doris Salcedo, Peter Randall-Page, Mark Rothko, Anish Kapoor, Richard Deacon and John Hoyland, and he works with leading musicians, concert venues, galleries and academic institutions in the UK and abroad. Recent projects have included a large scale performance event of Memory Field, his work with Antony Gormley, at Kings Place and the Royal Academy of Music, responses performed at the Royal Academy of Arts to Anish Kapoor's remarkable 2009 exhibition, a commission from Tate Modern to create responses to the gallery’s 2008/2009 Rothko exhibition with Michael Thompson, Nicholas Clapton and the Kreutzer Quartet, a project with Retorica and Anna Portisch for SOAS and the embassy of Kazakhstan for the Brunei Gallery (to be released on CD in 2012) and a Henry Moore Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music during which he created responses to sculpture by Doris Salcedo performed by violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern and to sculpture by Antony Gormley performed at the artist’s studio. The composer has also created work for performances at the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth in Dallas, the British Museum, Tate St Ives, the 2D2N Festival in Odessa, The Henry Moore Institute, The Kurmangazy National Conservatoire in Kazakhstan and the NewcastleGateshead Festival of Visual Art.

Projects in 2010/2011 have included commissions from Suzi Digby OBE and her chamber Choir, Voce, for performance at St Paul’s Knightsbridge for Passion Sunday and for the LSO’s principal E Flat clarinet, Chi-Yu Mo for a premiere at the Barbican. The composer also gave presentations about his work at Bristol University and at the Southbank Centre for the 3^rd Ear Symposium, Scene & Heard- Music in a Visual Culture. Projects in development include pieces for pianist Mark Knoop, Apartment House and the Kreutzer Quartet, and a book exploring the composer’s collaborations and interactions with visual artists.

Jim Aitchison is a part time Lecturer in Composition at University College Falmouth (incorporating Dartington College of Arts), a composition mentor for the South West Music School, an advisor to the Vocal Futures Foundation and a full member of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, Performers and Composers Section. The composer trained at Nottingham University, where his Masters Degree earned the University’s Halward Prize in Composition, and then at UCE in Birmingham where he qualified as a teacher. Since 1996 he has worked as a freelance composer and teacher, building long term links with the research department at the Royal Academy of Music. For more information visit www.jimaitchison.com