Kevin Volans has been called “one of the planet’s most distinctive and unpredictable voices”, (KYLE GANN – VILLAGE VOICE).
Born in South Africa he studied Music at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and in Cologne, with Karlheinz Stockhausen, later becoming his teaching assistant. In the mid-‘70s his work became associated with the “Neue Einfachheit” (New Simplicity) – the beginnings of post-modernism in music. In 1979, following field recording trips to Africa, he embarked on a series of pieces based on African compositional techniques which quickly established Volans as a unique voice on the European new music circuit. In 1986 a collaboration with the Kronos Quartet produced White Man Sleeps (1986), Hunting: Gathering (1987) and The Songlines (1988), were all written for them, and given performances in festivals ranging performed in festivals such as Salzburg, Montreal, Berliner Festwoche, Tokyo Inkspot, The Kronos discs, White Man Sleeps and Pieces of Africa broke all records for string quartet disc sales – the latter was number one on the US Classical and world music charts for 26 weeks, outselling all but Pavarotti. In the 1990’s Volans gave increasing attention to writing for dance, collaborating with Siobhan Davies, Jonathan Burrows, Shobana Jeyasingh in Britain as well as other companies around the world. In 1999 the South Bank hosted a fiftieth birthday celebration of his work in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Recent commissions include a Concerto for Double Orchestra for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, an orchestral work, Strip-Weave, for the Ulster Orchestra, a Piano Trio for the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, a Trumpet and String Quartet for the Tromp Muziek Bïenniale a string quartet for the Norwegian quartet, Cikada, commissioned by Up North Festival in Dublin and a work for percussion for the Norwegian group Sisu.
John Allison wrote in The Times: “When it comes to composers, only a few today could be called true originals, and Kevin Volans is one of them”.
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