Lecturer in Music, Director of Postgraduate Research PhD (York).
Tom is a composer whose music is performed throughout the UK and in Europe. Performers with whom he has worked include Jane Chapman, Melanie Pappenheim, the Delta Saxophone Quartet, Notes Inégales, the Fidelio Trio, the Endymion Ensemble, the New Music Players, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic. His output is notable for its diversity of medium, technique and aesthetic; it includes music for both amateurs and professionals, draws influences from post-war modernism, through European post-miminalism to non-Western music, and embraces both ‘fixed’ and open notions of the musical work.
Tom has worked on a number of large-scale collaborative projects. Black Maria, by acclaimed children’s author Diana Wynne Jones, was created with choreographer Susan Crow and screenwriter Zara Waldeback and premiered at the Lilian Baylis Theatre, Sadlers Wells. The same year (2007) he composed the one-woman show Catching the Sun with the playwright Stephanie McKnight. Other collaborations with writers include The Cathedral on the Marshes (2010-12, with Sarah Diamond) commissioned by the Crossness Engines Trust and funded by the PRSF, the RVW Trust, the Britten-Pears Foundation and Arts Council England, Opened Spaces (with Jim Morris) released on the CD Songs Now (Meridian Records) in 2012, and Do the Right Thing (with Bridget Minamore) premiered at the Linbury Theatre in 2012 as part of the Royal Opera House’s ‘Exposure’ series.
In his recent instrumental music Tom has been experimenting with notational approaches that open up broader avenuesfor performer creativity and bring a more collaborative approach to the composer/performer relationship. Albumleaves (2013) for the Ligeti Quartet and trumpeter Simon Desbruslais (scheduled for release on Signum Classics in 2015) and his work in progress for Trio Aporia (Stephen Preston, flute, Richard Boothby, viola da gamba and Jane Chapman, harpsichord) utilise indeterminacy and open form to confer on the performers greater responsibility for determining the configuration and overall sound of a piece in performance.
Tom studied composition with George Nicholson before reading music at York University, remaining to pursue a DPhil with Roger Marsh. He studied with Vinko Globokar at Dartington Summer School and with Magnus Lindberg, Colin Matthews and Oliver Knussen at the Britten-Pears School. He attended the prestigious InternationalCourse for Professional Choreographers and Composers at Bretton Hall working with, amongst others, Kenneth Tharp and WayneMacGregor. In 2011 Tom was selected for VOX3, part of the opera development programme at the ROH, where he worked with Dominic Muldowney and John Lloyd-Davies.
Web: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/schoolofarts/people/complete_staff_list/tom_armstrong/ (2015)