David Horne

David Horne (born 12 December 1970) is a Scottish composer, pianist, and teacher.

A resident composer with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic for four years, he has been awarded several commissions. His works have been performed by international calibre artists.

As an award-winning pianist, he has performed with leading British orchestras.

He was born in Tillicoultry, near Stirling, in 1970. His father played piano (non-professionally) and he started learning the piano at the age of seven. Early in his life his family moved to Norway, his mother's native country. Aged eleven, he went to St Mary's Music School in Edinburgh to study piano with Audrey Innes and composition with Geoffrey King. In 1989 he moved to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis Institute, where he studied with Ned Rorem. He moved on to Harvard University, where he obtained a PhD in 1999 and became a visiting lecturer, still in his 20s. He has since returned to the United Kingdom and lives in Manchester, where he is Professor of Music and Head of Graduate School at the Royal Northern College of Music. In 2004 he led the New Music/New Media course for the Britten-Pears School. In 2006/07, he was visiting professor at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya.

He was composer in residence with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic from 2000 to 2004.

As a pianist, he received the piano section BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 1988.

He has performed as soloist with orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

He has appeared at The Proms, making his debut in 1990 performing Prokofiev's Third Concerto and has been featured several times as a composer.

Horne composes concertos, orchestral, ensemble and chamber music, operas, and songs.

He received the Yorkshire Arts Association Young Composers' Competition at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival for his composition Splintered Unisons, which was performed by the Prometheus Ensemble.[citation needed ]

In 1994 he was awarded the inaugural Stephen Oliver Prize, which was worth £10,000 and given to a young composer for a new work of comic opera, for his opera Travellers. During 1997 and 1998 the Stephen Oliver Trust worked with the 1998 BOC Covent Garden Festival to achieve the performance of the winning opera (and that of the 1996 winner), and Travellers was brought to the stage in June 1998, as part of the 1998 Covent Garden Festival.

He has received commissions for compositions by soloists such as percussionist Evelyn Glennie (Reaching Out and Ignition), violist Nobuko Imai (Stilled Voices), and pianist Boris Berezovsky (Liszt), as well as a Koussevitzky Commission in 1995. He was shortlisted for the vocal category of the 2007 British Composer Awards for his work Life's Splinters.[citation needed ]

His opera Friend of the People was premiered at the Scottish Opera in November 1999.[citation needed ]

His works have been performed by groups such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Nash Ensemble, the London Sinfonietta, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the California EAR Unit, the Ensemble für neue Musik Zürich, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Nieuw Ensemble, Ensemble Moderne, and string quartets Mendelssohn Quartet, Yggdrasil Quartet, Daedalus Quartet and Brentano Quartet.

He is published by Boosey and Hawkes and his music has been recorded on BMG and NMC.[citation needed ]