Brian Inglis

Brian Andrew Inglis’ music has been described as extraordinary, powerful, moving and passionate. His output ranges from unaccompanied solos to orchestral works and opera, also taking in multimedia and pop. Alongside virtuoso showpieces like Sailing to Byzantium for recorder, he is equally at home with commissions for amateur choirs (Without Loss, Verbum bonum et suave, After-Thought). His music combines experimental elements with eclectic historical, geographical and genre influences. Enduring threads which weave through his music are mystical texts and themes; process and intuition; movement and stasis; polystylism and postmodernism; and different approaches to notation, including graphic scores. Significant examples of the latter are the cadenza of 2013’s Concerto for Piano Solo (homage à Alkan) and ‘Water & Stone’ from Four Pieces for Toy Piano (2018). Polystylism is evident in 2017’s Piano Trio, of which seenandheard-international wrote: ‘there proved to be plenty of “passion” in the work, generated by the rapid-fire juxtapositions, alternations and altercations… as well as contrasts between syncopated propulsion, rhythmic hyper-tension and disturbing dissipation of movement. And strikingly in 1993’s Recorder Concerto, which blokfluitist magazine hailed as ‘a remarkable piece’ in 2017.

Brian is a Scottish-Irish composer born in Münster, Germany. He studied music at the University of Durham and composition at City University, London – an MA was awarded in 1993 (along with the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers’ Prize), and a PhD (supported by a British Academy major scholarship) in 1999. Teachers include John Casken, Roger Redgate, Simon Holt and Rhian Samuel. Following a period living in Wales (1997-99), he has lived in London since 2000.

Brian first came to attention as a composer when his Responsory – a setting of words by Hildegard of Bingen – was performed at the 1992 Huddersfield Festival. Many other Hildegard-inspired works have followed, including an opera on her life (1997). Further operas are the radical The Song of Margery Kempe for solo unaccompanied voice, premiered by Loré Lixenberg at the Tête-à-Tête opera festival in 2008/9; and The Break-Up, a six-word operatic miniature written for the Warehouse Ensemble, performed at the same festival in 2011.

Another early interest was the poetry of the First World War, exemplified by Three War Songs (taken up by Roderick Williams and Jeremy Huw Williams). These interests fuse in the oratorio Visions of Sorrow and Joy (1998) – a commission from Bath Choral Society sponsored by Making Music’s pilot ‘Adopt a Composer’ scheme.

Further significant commissions include Jubilee Prayer for the Millennium celebrations in Wales – ‘a highpoint of the service’ (Cytûn). Burmese Pictures, whose ‘pleasantly tropical luxuriance’ was praised by Ivan Hewett (Daily Telegraph) was commissioned for Consortium 5. It has toured venues and festivals (Deal, Truck, Spitalfields) throughout the UK and was released on the Nonclassical record label in 2011. Highbury Fields, a cantata for chorus and orchestra written in collaboration with lyricist Charles Hart (The Phantom of the Opera, Bend it like Beckham), was commissioned by Islington Choral Society. Four Pieces for toy piano was commissioned by Kate Ryder. Her recording of ‘Laugh’ (with a recited text by Derek Shiel) was released by Nonclassical in 2020, and pieces have been played many times by both Kate and Brian himself, the latter at the Music as Play festival in Como, Italy in 2019, the 3^rd Toy Music Festival in Seoul, South Korea in 2022, and the Supernormal festival in 2025. Brian’s music has been heard at many other festivals, including Sonorities, Belfast; the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music; and the International Review of Composers, Belgrade. It was been broadcast across Europe.

Brian’s debut solo album Living Stones (Sargasso) was released in 2017. British Music wrote: ‘The concerto for piano solo (homage to Alkan) [demands] a virtuoso performer and in Gabriel Keen it certainly gets that…. The music is very modern and very much the composer’s own. It would certainly be of interest for aspiring young pianists hoping to expand their abilities’. The spectacular Toccata finale won Brian the Prix du Public in Isis Larrere’s performance at Brussels’ Festival Osmose in 2024.

2024 saw Brian’s second portrait album, To Byzantium and beyond for recorder and electronics, released on the Austrian KAIROS label to great acclaim. Andrew Plant found it ‘quite gripping…. clear references to Tibetan chant, a minimal use of percussive effects, and further examples of stylised imitative birdsong that are regularly employed with this most suitable of instruments. Inglis displays much ingenuity in finding aural equivalents from his slender resources to mirror the literary stimuli of Yeats and Eliot…. heartily recommended to those with open ears who are interested in learning what this frequently maligned instrument can do in the hands of two dazzling players.’

Having taught at Trinity Laban and the RCM, Brian is currently Acting Head of the School of Arts at Middlesex University, London (see https://www.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-directory/dr-brian-inglis/). Also a musicologist, he researches broadly in the areas of genre, identity and spirituality; topics which also feature in his music. He has written for both academic publishers (Routledge, Cambridge Scholars, Peter Lang, Revista Vórtex, Religions Journal and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association) and general ones (BBC publications, The Recorder Magazine, Maestro and Clarinet & Saxophone Magazine).