O'Regan's compositions incorporate the influence of Renaissance vocal writing, the music of North Africa, British rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s, jazz and Minimalist music. His music is often rhythmically complex and employs varying approaches to tonality.
Life and work
1978–2001: Beginnings, early education, and influences
Following completion of his undergraduate studies in 1999, he began serving as the classical recordings reviewer for The Observer newspaper, a position he held until 2003.[7] At the same time he also worked for JPMorgan Chase, the investment bank.[8][9] He completed his postgraduate studies under the direction of Robin Holloway at Cambridge, where he was appointed Composer in Residence at Corpus Christi College in 2000 and formally began his career as a composer,[10] with his first published works appearing in 2001 on the Finnish Sulasol imprint.[11]
2002–2011: Early compositional career
2002 marked two important London premieres: those of Clichés with the London Sinfonietta and The Pure Good of Theory with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.[5] In 2004, O'Regan moved to New York City to take up the Chester Schirmer Fulbright Fellowship at Columbia University and subsequently a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard. During this period, his composition Sainte won the Vocal category of the 2005 British Composer Awards[12] and his debut disc, VOICES was released on the Collegium label.[13]
Beginning in 2007, O'Regan began dividing his time between the UK and the US when he was appointed Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, a position he held until 2009.[8] During his tenure at Cambridge, his composition Threshold of Night won the Liturgical category of the 2007 British Composer Awards[14] and Scattered Rhymes, his first CD on the Harmonia Mundi label, performed by the Orlando Consort and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Paul Hillier, was released in 2008.
O'Regan's second disc on the Harmonia Mundi label, Threshold of Night, appeared in late 2008 and awakened a wider interest in his work, demonstrated by the CD garnering two GRAMMY Award nominations in 2009: Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance.[15] After this, he increased his output as a music commentator in print[16] and on air, especially on BBC Radio 3[17][18] and BBC Radio 4.[19] This aspect of his career broadened with the broadcasting in 2010 on BBC Radio 4 of Composing New York, a documentary written and presented by O'Regan.[20][21][22] In the same year, he was appointed to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as a Director's Visitor and made his BBC Proms debut with Latent Manifest performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. O'Regan's third album on the Harmonia Mundi label, Acallam na Senórach: an Irish Colloquy (based on the 12th century Middle Irish narrative of the same name) was released in October 2011.
2011–2022: Major stage works - Heart of Darkness, Mata Hari, and The Phoenix
O'Regan's first full-length ballet score (Mata Hari, based on the life of Margaretha Zelle MacLeod), commissioned by the Dutch National Ballet with choreography by Ted Brandsen, opened on 6 February 2016 in Amsterdam.[27] On 30 September 2016 Mata Hari was released in DVD and Blu-ray formats by EuroArts, distributed by Warner Classics; the ballet will be revived for a further run in October, 2017.[28][29]
In February 2017, O'Regan's first album of orchestral music, A Celestial Map of the Sky, performed by The Hallé under the direction of Sir Mark Elder and Jamie Phillips, was released on the NMC label.[30] The album entered the British Official Charts at number seven in the Specialist Classical Chart and number 18 in the Classical Artist Albums Chart.[31][32] In the same year he was elected both to an Honorary Fellowship of Pembroke College, Oxford, and to the board of Yaddo.[33][34]
In 2019, O'Regan's opera The Phoenix with a libretto by John Caird was premiered at the Houston Grand Opera. The story was derived from the life of Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte. Patrick Summers conducted the opera with Thomas Hampson and Luca Pisaroni playing Da Ponte at different stages of his life. The designs were by David Farley with lighting by Michael Clarke and choreography by Tim Claydon.[35] He was subsequently appointed Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra's first-ever Composer-in-Residence from the 2021/2022 season onward.[36]
From 2011 to 2022, O'Regan composed several pieces influenced by his North African heritage, which included his first collaborations with both the Dutch National Ballet and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which would eventually culminate in a triptych of orchestral works: Raï (2011), Chaâbi (2012) and Trances (2022).[37][38] His output also began to form the focus of festivals such as the 2014 Vale of Glamorgan Festival[39] and New Music for New Age from The Washington Chorus.[40]
2023-present: The Coronation of Charles III and the Yaddo Artist Medal
In 2023, O'Regan was one of five composers asked to write a new piece for the coronation service of Charles III and Camilla in Westminster Abbey. The king commissioned O’Regan having heard his music at Lincoln Cathedral in 2006.[41] His setting of the Agnus Dei, Coronation Agnus Dei, was performed during the Eucharist.[42] O'Regan said of the piece, "I wanted to explore influences from my own varied heritages within the context of the Agnus Dei in the British choral tradition: a unison melody is slowly fragmented to create myriad timbres, much as one might hear in some Arab or Irish traditional music. This melodic shifting is also reminiscent of 'phase music', strongly connected with San Francisco, where I wrote this work. Finally, there is an alternating verse anthem structure: a nod to Orlando Gibbons, who became Organist of Westminster Abbey exactly 400 years ago."[41]
In June, 2024 O'Regan was announced as a recipient of the Yaddo Artist Medal, which "recognizes individuals who exemplify a level of achievement and commitment to their art that reflects the tradition of excellence that has always been a hallmark of the Yaddo residency program, as well as celebrating those who have been supportive and understand the sense of community that it has long promoted among artists."[43]
Music
Style
O'Regan's music is mostly written in tonal, extended-tonal and modal languages (or a combination of all three), often with complicated rhythmic effects and dense textural variation.[44][45][46][47]
Influences
In various radio and print interviews, O'Regan has stated that he "came to music quite late", mentioning the age of 13 as when he first was able to read music, and has listed five primary influences on his work:[1][4][7][48][49]
Renaissance vocal writing: from some of the repertoire performed by the college choirs at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge where he was educated, although O'Regan describes himself as being "a pretty bad singer".
The music of North Africa: from his own maternal heritage and time spent in Algeria and Morocco during his youth.
An article in The Irish Times on 23 November 2010 suggested that O'Regan is also interested in his Irish heritage. Published on the occasion of the first performance of Acallam na Senórach (a setting of The Middle Irish narrative of the same name), the article stated that Sir William Rowan Hamilton is a direct ancestor of O'Regan (his great-great-great-grandfather), whose middle name is Hamilton.[1]
Critical reception
His 2006 debut disc, VOICES (Collegium Records COL CD 130), recorded by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, heralded O'Regan as "one of the most original and eloquent of young British composers" (The Observer, London),[50] "breathing new life into the idiom" (The Daily Telegraph, London).[51] International Record Review declared the recording "a committed, persuasive and highly accomplished performance of an exceptional composing voice of our time",[52] while BBC Music Magazine gave the disc a double five-star rating.[53]
Scattered Rhymes (2008), O'Regan's first disc from Harmonia Mundi, was described as "a stunning recording" (BBC Radio 3 CD Review),[54] "exquisite and delicate" (The Washington Post),[55] "a fascinating disc" (The Daily Telegraph, London)[56] and "typically unfaultable" (BBC Music Magazine).[57] After the June 2006 premiere of the eponymous work at the Spitalfields Festival, Geoff Brown, in The Times (London), described "O'Regan's gift for lyric flight [as] boundless. You might have to reach back to Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music, or even Tallis, to find another British vocal work so exultant."[58]
The 2008 release of Threshold of Night marked O'Regan's international breakthrough. The disc debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard chart[59] and garnered two GRAMMY nominations[15] in 2009 before going on to receive wide critical attention.[60]
The 2010 BBC Proms premiere of Latent Manifest[61] performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Andrew Litton, was widely reviewed in London: "[a] personal canvas, taking us a long way from a literal reworking into the realms of evanescent fantasy, with delicately evocative results" (The Guardian, London),[62] "a beguiling response to response itself – a mirage of intimations and allusions to [O'Regan's] own experience of hearing Bach's third solo Violin Sonata" (The Times, London),[63] "a gracefully-controlled meditation on a single Bach phrase" (The Independent, London).[64][65]
The premiere production of O'Regan's first opera, Heart of Darkness (2011), opened to numerous reviews, both in print an online. Anna Picard described the opera as an "audacious, handsome debut"[66] in The Independent on Sunday and Stephen Pritchard, in The Observer, explained that "the brilliance of [the] opera lies in its ability to convey all that horror without the compulsion to show it – the ultimate psychodrama – and to employ music of startling beauty to tell such a brutal tale". Pritchard also described the music as "a score of concise originality".[67] For a full account of the critical response to the opera, see Heart of Darkness (opera).
The 2017 release of A Celestial Map of the Sky, O'Regan's first orchestral album, was also widely reviewed: "Luminous beauty ... glows with jewel-like warmth" (The Observer);[68] "This is a good sampling that shows the range of O'Regan's work ... these would seem pieces that are soon to enter a great many orchestral and choral repertories. Highly recommended." (AllMusic);[69] "A splendid and highly recommended programme of music." (Composition Today)[70]
O'Regan was included in The Washington Post's annual list of "composers, performers and artists hitting their stride with work that resonates with the right now" for 2022.[71]
The 2023 premiere of O'Regan's Coronation Agnus Dei for the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla in Westminster Abbey was mentioned in several accounts of the event: "An ethereal and exquisitely worked setting, worthy to stand alongside O taste and see, the communion anthem composed by Vaughan Williams for the 1953 Coronation." (Gramophone);[72] "But of the new compositions, only the unfurling melodic lines and understated beauty of Tarik O’Regan’s Agnus Dei exceeded the blandly forgettable." (The Guardian);[73] "The last of the new pieces, Tarik O'Regan’s setting of the Greek prayer the Agnus Dei, was the most successful. It had the reflective note tinged with the diverse musical influences that the King was hoping for, but it was rooted in something simple anyone could register immediately – a melodic phrase with a modal tinge that could have been Arab or eastern European." (The Telegraph);[74] "I loved Tarik O’Regan’s Agnus Dei – bringing a welcome degree of aural mysticism into the service." (The Times, London)[75]
The Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla
Peter Holder (organ), Choirs of Westminster Abbey and His Majesty’s Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, choristers from Methodist College Belfast and Truro Cathedral Choir, and an octet from the Monteverdi Choir (Andrew Nethsingha)
Coronation Agnus Dei
Decca 4859080
May 2023
The Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla: The Service
Peter Holder (organ), Choirs of Westminster Abbey and His Majesty’s Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, choristers from Methodist College Belfast and Truro Cathedral Choir, and an octet from the Monteverdi Choir (Andrew Nethsingha)
Two Emily Dickinson Settings: Had I Not Seen the Sun / I Had No Time to Hate; The Ecstasies Above; Threshold of Night; Tal vez tenemos tiempo; Care Charminge Sleepe; Triptych
Three Motets from Sequence for St Wulfstan: Beatus auctor sæculi / O vera digna hostia / Tu claustra stripe regia; Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis: Variations for Choir; Two Upper Voice Settings: Bring rest sweet dreaming child / Columba aspexit; Dorchester Canticles: Cantate Domino / Deus Misereatur; Four Mixed Voice Settings: Gratias tibi / Ave Maria / Care Charminge Sleepe / Locus iste; Colimaçon for organ.
Collegium COLCD130
November 2005
New French Song
Alison Smart (soprano), Katharine Durran (piano)
Sainte
Metier MSVCD92100
September 2005
St John the Baptist
The Choir of St John's College, Oxford (Ryan Wigglesworth)
De Sancto Ioanne Baptista
Cantoris CRCD6080
February 2005
Love and Honour
The Choir of Queens' College, Cambridge (Samuel Hayes)
Cantate Domino; Tu claustra stirpe regia
Guild GMCD7287
March 2004
Carmina Saeculi
The Elisabeth Singers, Hiroshima, Japan (Timo Nuoranne)
