When Hitchcock objected to the introduction of music during a sequence in 'Lifeboat' (1943) he questioned the logic of having a string section appear in the middle of the ocean. “These people are lost in a lifeboat in the middle of nowhere”, he is reported to have complained. “Where, then, did the orchestra come from?” To which composer Hugo Friedhofer is said to have responded “The same place the camera came from, Mr. Hitchcock.”
Biography
Joseph Phibbs studied at The Purcell School, King's College London, and Cornell University, and his teachers have included Param Vir, Sir Harrison Birtwistle. and Steven Stucky. His works have been performed by leading ensembles in the UK and beyond including the London Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra (Washington). Much of his output has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and he has received commissions from the Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, and Bath festivals. He has also written for the theatre, scoring for a number of productions at the Wolsey Theatre (Ipswich), Sadlers Wells, Setagaya Theatre (Tokyo), and The Globe.
Large-scale works include In Camera,(BBC SO/Slatkin) Lumina (BBC SO/Slatkin, 2003 Last Night of the Proms), Tenebrae (St Albans Bach Choir/Andrew Lucas), Shruti (LSO/Petrenko), Rainland (a dramatic cantata to a libretto by Stephen Plaice), and The Spiralling Night, featured at the 2007 WASBE conference, conducted by Phillip Scott. His largest chamber work to date, The Canticle of the Rose, was premiered at Wigmore Hall by Lisa Milne and the Belcea Quartet, and shortlisted for the 2006 RPS Chamber Music Prize. Other chamber works include FLEX (a joint RPS/BBC commission for the 2007 City of London Festival), Personnages for Nicholas Daniel, Arc de Soleil for clarinet and piano (premiered by Sarah Williamson at Wigmore Hall in 2008), and The Silence at the Song’s End, a song cycle for soprano and string quartet based on poems by Nicholas Heiney. Both Lumina and The Spiralling Night were shortlisted for a British Academy Award, the former in two categories.
Commissions for 2009 have included a clarinet concerto for Sarah Williamson and the Orchestra of the Swan, a work for the English Piano Trio’s 20th Anniversary Concert, and a setting of Psalm 98 for choir and orchestra, commissioned by the Bachakademie Stuttgart to mark the Mendelssohn bicentenary, and performed in Stuttgart and Berlin by RAIS Choir. A work combining school choirs with the Britten-Pears Chamber Choir has been commissioned for performance at Snape Maltings in the autumn of 2010, and he will be featured composer at the Presteigne Festival in 2011, for which he is writing a new work for strings.
Future commissions include a piece for the Exon Singers (2010), a percussion concerto for Evelyn Glennie (Cheltenham Festival, 2011), a work for the Diller-Quaile School of Music (New York, 2012), a development commission for a chamber opera for Covent Garden's Linbury Theatre, and a song cycle for Jeremy Huw Williams (2010). A CD of his choral works, conducted by Matthew Owens, is planned for 2012.
Since 2003 Phibbs has combined his composing career with the editing and promoting of Benjamin Britten's music, and he is a director of the Britten Estate. He is currently a visiting member or staff at the Purcell School, having previously held teaching posts at King's College London, Cornell University, and Wells Cathedral School.
A number of his works are published by Faber Music and Oxford University Press, and he is represented by David Wordsworth.