Jonathan Woolgar draws from a wide range of musical experience to create work that is communicative without compromise. His music explores the lines between musical eloquence and ineloquence, and between the fragmentary and the symphonic, with a focus on the physical, human dimensions of live performance on acoustic instruments.
Woolgar has been commissioned by Héloïse Werner, the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Society, and his music has been performed at the Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Cheltenham Music Festival and Basilica San Marco, Venice, as well as in Armenia, Sweden, New Zealand and several times on BBC Radio 3.
Currently based in London, Woolgar is originally from Pontefract in West Yorkshire. He won a scholarship to attend Chetham’s School of Music as a sixth-former, studying composition with Jeremy Pike and Gavin Wayte. He then read music at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he was taught by Giles Swayne, before going on to study with David Sawer, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Oliver Knussen at the Royal Academy of Music. He subsequently obtained a PhD from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, supervised by Julian Anderson.