Jeremy Thurlow

Jeremy Thurlow is a unique voice in today’s musical scene: restless, lyrical, powerful, with deep roots in the ancient but very much of today. Described by Henri Dutilleux as ‘extremely seductive… with real freshness, lightness, and innovative élan’, his music draws inspiration from the rhythms of the sea, from biological processes, and engages with writers ranging from Keats to Woolf, Hildegard to John Burnside and Yves Bonnefoy.  He studied with Alexander Goehr and Peter Wiegold.  His music has been performed by the BBC Philharmonic, the Fitzwilliam, Kreutzer and Alinea Quartets, the Aronowitz Ensemble, Endymion, the BBC Singers, Sequenza (New York), AChrome (Italy), Norbotten Kammerorkest (Sweden), and he has enjoyed inspiring collaborations with Peter Sheppard Skaerved, Matthew Schellhorn, Alec Frank-Gemmill, Tabea Debus, Abigail Dolan, Poppy Beddoe, Michael Downes and Joely Koos among many others.

He has written concertos for piano, trumpet, flute, horn, cello, bassoon and natural horn, and the premiere of his orchestral Search Engines was conducted by Sir James Macmillan.  His Light – dark – sea  is a reflection on the historic Orfordness Lighthouse, recently abandoned to the waves, and on the changing relationship between humankind and our natural environment.  His fascination with the sea can also be heard in his second string quartet, Sea-cradling, written for the Schubert Ensemble, and in Slow tide for two pianos and percussion.  His vocal music includes a song-cycle on poems of John Burnside, A world in scent and touch, his Unbidden visions, inspired by a fixation that took hold of John Keats, an oratorio on the transcendent experiences of Hildegard of Bingen, Earthquake in the soul, and a setting of Virginia Woolf, whose writing also inspired his third string quartet, Memory is the seamstress. 

He is currently completing a full-length opera based on Dina Nayeri’s award-winning The ungrateful refugee, which will receive its premiere in the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, in June 2027.

He has published studies of French composers Henri Dutilleux and Olivier Messiaen, and broadcasts on a range of twentieth-century music on BBC Radio 3 as well as lecturing and teaching at the University of Cambridge; he also performs as a pianist, especially in chamber music. Jeremy is Professor of Composition and Fellow at Robinson College, University of Cambridge, and has held Fellowships at the Bogliasco Foundation, Millay Arts and the Dora Maar Foundation.