Tectonics 2026 Artist Profile

Christopher Fox is a composer who also writes about new music. He was born in York, in the north of England, in 1955 and studied music at the universities of Liverpool, Southampton and York. At the heart of his work are close collaborations with the musicians and ensembles who regularly perform his music, including the conductor Ilan Volkov, pianists John Snijders and Kate Ledger, cellist Anton Lukoszevieze, accordionist Lore Amenabar Larrañaga, soprano Elizabeth Hilliard and the ensembles Apartment House and EXAUDI, all of whom have also recorded his music, with portrait albums on Ergodos, Hat Hut, Kairos, Divine Art and NMC. In 2015 his work for orchestra and improvising musicians, Topophony, premiered at Tectonics and has subsequently been recorded on a Hat Hut CD and performed in Athens, Cologne, Frankfurt, Tel Aviv and Vienna.

Christopher Fox’s writings on music have also been published widely, in the journals Contact, Contemporary Music Review, The Guardian, Musical Times and Tempo (which he has edited since 2015). A book on his music, Perspectives on the music of Christopher Fox: Straight lines in broken times (edited by Rose Dodd), was published in 2017 by Routledge. He was a member of the composition faculty at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für neue Musik from 1984 to 1994, returning again in 2014, and was a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm in 1987. He is an Honorary Professor of Music at the University of York, Visiting Professor at the University of Huddersfield and Emeritus Professor at Brunel University London. In 2021 he was elected as a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.