On February 24, Oscar Bettison’s I Am a Garden Adorned receives its world premiere with new music ensemble loadbang at The Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, followed by a performance in Albuquerque the next day. Commissioned by the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the work is written for a mixed ensemble of baritone, bass clarinet, trumpet, and trombone, plus electronics. The concerts are presented by Chatter, whose mission is to promote contemporary repertoire and the use of unusual instrumentation.

This season, composer Oscar Bettison collaborates on new music projects with Asko|Schönberg as the ensemble’s composer in residence.
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Bettison’s work will also include a 10-day research residency at GRASpunt Amsterdam, to experiment with various aspects of composition with students, musicians, creators, and technicians over the course of two weeks. Bettison will also serve as a guest lecturer at Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag, where he will lead masterclasses and teach private lessons.

Oscar Bettison componist
Asko|Schönberg speelt de eerste opera van Oscar Bettison. Daarin zitten twee vrouwen opgesloten in een kamer. Ze maken fantastische reizen, met een kleurencatalogus als gids.

Oscar Bettison’s first opera, The Light of Lesser Days, is premiered by Asko|Schönberg and singers Katrien Baerts and Barbara Kozelj at the Gaudeamus Muziekweek in Utrecht on September 9.

La Arqueología del Neón, Oscar Bettison’s striking new work for ensemble, receives its live world premiere with the Talea Ensemble at the TIME:SPANS Festival on August 23 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music.

His music, though palpable, has a quality of the unknowable. In part that has to do with how little of it is available on commercial recordings (the best listening source is his website) and so it arrives still unexpected. In the main though, as Thursday night’s Composer Portraits concert at Miller Theatre showed, it’s not just because of his decidedly analog way of thinking, but also because he embraces the essential, un-hackable mystery of finding something in the imagination and working it into shape.

This season Miller Theatre celebrates the 20th Anniversary of Composer Portraits. Writer Lara Pellegrinelli has been commissioned to create a snapshot of each composer in words through an exploration of their experiences of community, viewed through the prism of new music.

New review of the recent Musikfabrik disc featuring my "Livre des Sauvages" + Ferneyhough & Winkler.

Miller Theatre’s Composer Portrait series showcases Oscar Bettison’s dark and idiosyncratic musical style on February 20. Alarm Will Sound and Alan Pierson perform Livre des Sauvages and Pale Icons of Night, Bettison’s new violin concerto featuring soloist Courtney Orlando.

The liner notes for the album Presence of Absence – Oscar Bettison include a note by Aaron Hostetter on The Ruin, the Anglo-Saxon poem that forms the centrepiece of the entire work, and a Q&A between composer Oscar Bettison and Ensemble Klang’s Pete Harden.

Miller Theatre commissioned writer Lara Pellegrinelli to create the program notes for the 20th year of Composer Portraits as well as a series of Q&As with Executive Director Melissa Smey. Here is the sixth installment, centering around our upcoming Portrait featuring the music of Oscar Bettison.

On April 7, 2017, The Guggenheim Foundation named composer Oscar Bettison as among the 173 scholars, artists, and scientists selected to be 2017 Guggenheim Fellows.

Talea kicks off the 2018-19 season—Our 10th anniversary year—with its opening night as part of TIME:SPANS Festival 2018. The program is a split bill of large ensemble works by Oscar Bettison and Felipe Lara, colleagues at the Peabody Institute of Music. I sat down with Oscar during a break from rehearsal to chat about his life, work, and tonight’s feature: Livre des Sauvages

Peabody composer Oscar Bettison has been named a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow. He was one of 173 fellows selected from an applicant pool of almost 3,000.

I spoke with composer Oscar Bettison about his 65-minute opus, excerpts of which will be performed on Wednesday as part of the SONiC Festival in New York.

Composition faculty member Oscar Bettison won a Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award to write a violin concerto for faculty artist Courtney Orlando and her group Alarm Will Sound!

Composer Oscar Bettison fights the English disease with wrenches, tuning forks, and dangerous beauty.

I've moved around a lot. I was born in Jersey, UK. My father is from the north of England and my mother is Spanish. I went to the Purcell School in London when I was 10, then to the Royal College for my undergrad and the Guildhall for my masters. After that, I studied in The Hague for three years. Finally, I did my PhD at Princeton University. I'm just about to join the composition faculty at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. Most of the projects that I do take place in The Netherlands or the US, so I end up traveling a fair amount. ...

Oscar Bettison’s O Death as Out-of-Body Experience