Draft:Adam de la Cour

Adam de la Cour (b.1979) is a British composer, performer and filmmaker.

Biography
De la Cour was born in Maidstone, Kent. He studied composition at the University of Southampton with the composer Michael Finnissy.

Style
His work often features elements of Absurdism, satire and dark humour. It has taken the form of short film, video, concert music, studio recordings, radio plays, music with film, and installations.

Music
De la Cour’s music encompasses multiple genres such as experimental, free improvisation, contemporary classical, jazz, and heavy metal. His music has been performed internationally at festivals such as MATA Festival, Bergen International Festival , Melbourne Festival , Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival , and London Contemporary Music Festival. It has been broadcast on BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 3, ABC Classic FM (Australia), and Resonance FM.

Notable Works
He is the creator of BBC Radio 3’s first-ever commissioned Christmas panto, Oh, Bobby!, which was performed as a live radio-play at BBC Maida Vale Studios in December 2023. A version was then broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of The New Music Show. It was described in The Telegraph as:"“...weird, baffling, almost unlistenable - and therefore exactly the sort of thing that late-night Radio 3 ought to be doing”"He was one of only three composers to be commissioned to write a new work for the MATA festival, New York in 2015, for which he submitted Corporate Talent Factor’s Next Top Idol!, a satirical work for jazz/rock trio and video.

de la Cour has written multiple piano works for many prominent contemporary classical pianists including Mark Knoop, Ian pace, and Zubin Kanga. The works commissioned by Kanga include the Transplant the Movie! series, which incorporates live musical performance and film. It has been described in The Wire magazine as:"'...a bizarre and often hilarious fusion of music...with the aesthetics of cult, psychotronic cinema.'"

Graphic scores
De la Cour’s early work displays a keen interest in Graphic notation. Key works include The Real Imaginary Framed Existence of Ringhead and Loon, which takes the form of a 60 page comic book score, and Three Boxes and a Cube, which consists of three collapsible steel box structures and a solid brass cube. The structures are engraved with frame notated directions influenced by character and camera movement from within various cinematic works, including Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Started Small and Jacques Tati’ s Playtime.

Both pieces were exhibited as part of a solo show at the Centre for Recent Drawing in 2007. Three Boxes and a Cube is displayed online as part of the British Music Collection at Google Arts & Culture.

Performance
De la cour performs as a vocalist and guitarist. He has performed and premiered works by composers such as Michael Finnissy, Chris Newman , Matthew Shlomowitz , Alwynne Pritchard , Claudia Molitor , Neil Luck , and Trond Reinholdsten. He has performed the vocalist role of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire with the Austrian Ensemble Reconsil at The Arnold Schoenberg Centre in Vienna in 2012. They also toured the work, performing it in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Ensembles
Ensembles de la Cour has performed with include ARCO, Schopenhauer, Ensemble Plus-Minus, The London Sinfonietta and Arn & Hammer (a duo with the composer Neil Luck). Arn & Hammer performed at the 2018 Latitude Festival on the BBC Introducing stage. Their set involves spoken Arnold Schwarzenegger trivia, alongside live carpentry.

Film & Video
His short films have screened at festivals such as London Short Film Festival, Go Short , Supernormal and Antimatter [media art], and at venues such as Regent Street Cinema.

Adult Swim
His short films Puzzl (2018) and Dentata Solutions (2019) are featured on Adult Swim UK’s YouTube channel and he was commissioned to create the film In House for Adult Swim’s ADULT SWIM SMALLS: VOLUME FIVE - Year in Review (2021).

Collaboration
He has collaborated with a variety of creative practitioners, including the Scottish artist Bruce McLean on the film Drumstick, which was first screened at the Ikon gallery, Birmingham in 2012. He has collaborated with the English composer Michael Finnissy on the two-part piano & film work Hammerklavier, the first part of which had its premiere at London Contemporary Music Festival in 2019. The work is notable for being Finnissy's first direct collaboration with a filmmaker in the creation of an original work.

He has formed a longstanding artistic relationship with composer Neil Luck, collaborating on multiple projects and co-founding the artist cooperative and net-label, squib-box, along with the composer Federico Reuben. Their collaborations have ventured into a diverse array of territories, including a unique rendition of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate.