Mark-Anthony Turnage facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Mark-Anthony Turnage
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Turnage speaks at the 2014 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music
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| Born | 10 June 1960 Corringham, Essex, England
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Mark-Anthony Turnage (born 10 June 1960) is an English composer who writes modern classical music. He is known for his unique style, which often mixes classical sounds with jazz music.
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About Mark-Anthony Turnage
Mark-Anthony Turnage was born in Corringham, Essex, England, on 10 June 1960. He was the oldest of three children. His parents loved classical music, which helped him discover his passion early on.
He started composing his own music when he was just nine years old. By the age of fourteen, he was already studying music at the junior section of the Royal College of Music. He learned from famous composers like Oliver Knussen and Gunther Schuller.
Turnage has also been greatly influenced by jazz, especially by the music of Miles Davis. He has even written pieces that feature jazz musicians like John Scofield and Peter Erskine.
His Music and Works
Mark-Anthony Turnage has created many different types of music. He has written pieces for large orchestras and smaller groups of instruments (called chamber music). He has also written three full-length operas.
One of his famous operas is Greek, which was first performed in 1988. Another opera, The Silver Tassie, premiered in 2000.
Operas for Families
Turnage also wrote an opera for family audiences called Coraline. This opera is based on the popular fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman. It was performed by The Royal Opera in London in 2018. His operas have been performed in many cities around the world, including New York, Zurich, and Lille.
Other Important Works
Some of his other well-known pieces include:
- Three Screaming Popes – inspired by paintings from Francis Bacon.
- Your Rockaby – a concerto for saxophone and orchestra. A concerto is a piece of music where one instrument plays a solo with an orchestra.
- Yet Another Set To – a concerto for trombone and orchestra.
- From the Wreckage – a concerto for trumpet and orchestra.
More recently, Turnage composed an orchestral work called Remembering. This piece was conducted by the famous Simon Rattle in 2017. He also wrote Shadow Walker, a double violin concerto, and Testament, which uses Ukrainian texts. He has written songs for many celebrated singers, including Sarah Connolly.
Music for Ballet
Turnage's music has also been used for ballet performances. His work Blood on the Floor was choreographed for the Paris Opera Ballet in 2011. He also created the music for Undance and Trespass, which were performed by The Royal Ballet. In 2017, he composed the score for Strapless.
Composer in Residence
Turnage has held important positions with several famous orchestras:
- He was the first Radcliffe Composer in Association with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 1989 to 1993.
- From 2000 to 2003, he was the first Associate Composer for the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
- He was Composer in Residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 2005 to 2010.
- He also shared the role of co-composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2006 to 2010.
In 2005, he became a Research Fellow in Composition at the Royal College of Music. For his great contributions to music, he was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2015. This is a special honor given by the British monarch.
Personal Life
Mark-Anthony Turnage's partner is Rachael Hewer, a director who started the Virtual Opera Project (VOPERA) in 2020.
In January 2025, Turnage was a guest on the BBC Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs. On the show, he talked about his favorite songs and how he volunteers at a food bank. He also mentioned working on music projects with people in prison.
List of Works
Opera
| Title | Genre | Premiere | Theatre |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greek | opera | 17 June 1988 | Munich Biennale |
| Twice Through the Heart | dramatic scena | 16 June 1997 | Aldeburgh Festival |
| Country of the Blind | chamber opera | 16 June 1997 | Aldeburgh Festival |
| The Silver Tassie | opera | 16 February 2000 | English National Opera |
| Anna Nicole | opera | 17 February 2011 | Royal Opera House, London |
| Coraline | opera | 27 March 2018 | Barbican Centre, London |
| Festen | opera | 11 February 2025 | Royal Opera House, London |
Ballet
- From All Sides (2005–06)
- L'Anatomie De La Sensation (2011)
- Undance (2011)
- Trespass (2012)
- Strapless (2016 revised 2017)
Orchestral Music
- Night Dances (1981)
- Three Screaming Popes (1988–89)
- Some Days (1989), song cycle
- Momentum (1990–1991)
- Drowned Out (1992–1993)
- Your Rockaby (1992–93)
- Dispelling the Fears (1993–1994, rev. 1995)
- Scorched (1996–2001)
- Still Sleeping (1997)
- Evening Songs (1998)
- Silent Cities (1998)
- About Time (1999–2000)
- Another Set To (1999–2000)
- A Quick Blast (2000)
- Dark Crossing (2000)
- Etudes and Elegies (2000–2002)
- Four-Horned Fandango (2000)
- On Opened Ground (2000–2001)
- Uninterrupted Sorrow (2000–2001)
- Fractured Lines (2001)
- When I Woke (2001)
- A Quiet Life (2002)
- A Man Descending (2003)
- Riffs and Refrains (2003)
- Scherzoid (2003–04)
- A Soothing Interlude (2004)
- From the Wreckage (2004)
- Yet Another Set To (2004)
- Ceres (2005)
- Hidden Love Song (2005)
- Juno (2005)
- Lullaby for Hans (2005)
- Three Asteroids (2005)
- The Torino Scale (2005)
- From All Sides (2005–06)
- A Prayer Out of Stillness (2007)
- Chicago Remains (2007)
- Five Views of a Mouth (2007)
- Mambo, Blues and Tarantella (2007)
- Texan Tenebrae (2009)
- Hammered Out (2010)
- Cello Concerto (2010)
- Speranza (2011–12)
- Canon Fever (2012)
- Frieze (2013)
- Erskine (2013)
- Passchendaele (2013)
- Piano Concerto (2013)
- Dialogue (2014)
- Håkan (2014)
- Martland Memorial (2014–15)
- Remembering (2016)
- Shadow Walker (2017)
- Symphonic Movements (2017)
- Towards Alba (2017–18)
- Time Flies (2019)
- Go For It (2019)
- Last Song for Olly (reduced version) (2018 arr.2020)
- Up for Grabs (2020)
- Cortege for Bernard Haitink (2021)
Choral Music
- The Game Is Over (2001–2002)
- A Relic of Memory (2003)
- Calmo (2003)
- Two Fanfares and a Lament (2003)
- Christmas Night (2006)
- Claremont Carol (2006)
- Miserere Nobis (2006)
- At Sixes and Sevens (2012)
- Hibiki (2014)
- Sing Out Loud (2017)
Chamber Music
- On All Fours (1985)
- Sarabande (1986)
- Release (1987)
- Kai (1989–1990)
- Three Farewells (1989–1990)
- Set To (1992–1993)
- This Silence (1992–1993)
- Blood on the Floor (1993–1996)
- Barrie's Deviant Fantasy (1995)
- Bass Invention (1999–2000)
- Cantilena (2001)
- Snapshots (2002)
- Crying Out Loud (2003)
- A Short Procession (2003)
- Eulogy (2003)
- No Let Up (2003)
- Three Trios (2003–05)
- Carnac (2004)
- A Few Serenades (2004)
- A Slow Pavane (2004–2005)
- A Fast Stomp (2005)
- Bleak Moments (2005)
- Fanfare (from all sides) (2006)
- Returning (2006)
- Tango (2007)
- Out of Black Dust (2007–08)
- Four Chants (2008)
- Twisted Blues with Twisted Ballad (2008)
- Grazioso! (2009)
- Five Processionals (2009)
- Hilary's Hoedown (2009)
- GG (2010)
- Three for Two (2010)
- Amelia's March (2010)
- Silem (2010)
- Undance (2011)
- Johnston (2011)
- Falling Apart (2012)
- Contusion (2013)
- Run Riot (2013)
- Power Play (2014)
- Maya (2014)
- Duetti d'Amore (2015)
- Shroud (2016)
- Seven Pint-Sized Pieces (2016)
- Prussian Blue (2016)
- Cleethorpes Chorale (2017)
- Massarosa (2018)
- Nocturne (2018)
- Romanian Rhapsody (2018)
- Lament (2018–19)
- A Furious Fanfare (2019)
- Winter's Edge (2019)
- Chorale (2020)
- Split Apart (2020)
- Uli (2021)
Vocal Music
- Lament for a Hanging Man (1983)
- Some Days (1989)
- Greek Suite (1989)
- The Torn Fields (2000–2002)
- When I Woke (2001)
- Two Baudelaire Songs (2003–04)
- About Water (2006)
- A Constant Obsession (2007)
- Bellamy (2008)
- In The Bleak Mid-Winter (arr. 2010)
- Testament (2017)
- Refugee (2018)
- Black Milk (2019)
- Owl Songs (2019)
- Without Ceremony (2019)
- Of Nature's Light (2020)
- Silenced (2020)
- Songs of Sleep and Regret (2020)
Solo Instrumental Music
- True Life Stories (1995–1999), for piano
- An Aria (with Dancing) (2004), for trumpet
- Ah, Quegli Occhi! (2006), for soprano saxophone
- Air with Variations (2007), for guitar
- Cradle Song (2009), for clarinet
- Milo (2009), for cello
- Leap (2010), for clarinet
- Four Meditations (2018), for harp
- On Marylebone Road (2019) for piano
Images for kids
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A robot for kids.
See also
In Spanish: Mark-Anthony Turnage para niños
