Lewis Coenen-Rowe

As a composer I am interested by issues of perception and communication in contemporary classical music, such as how music can experiment while simultaneously recognising the limitations of hearing and cognition that music psychology has elucidated. In particular I am concerned by how to achieve music with immediate impact without sacrificing depth or complexity of meaning. This has lead me to adopt musical techniques influenced by semiotics, gesture, physicality and multi-media theory, among others. As part of this emphasis I am interested in exploring the ways that classical music can relate to a wider context by engaging with socio-political issues in a serious and through-going manner. 

I was born in Liverpool in 1993. My early musical experiences were as a performer, primarily as a pianist (but also playing the trumpet and singing) and my earliest compositions were all music that I could play myself. My compositional studies have taken place over the course of a BA at University College Oxford and an MSt at St Hilda's College Oxford, before moving to King's College in 2015. 

I have worked with the Oxford Philomusica, the BBC Singers, the Cavaleri Quartet, the New Music Players, ANIMA ensemble, Richare Casey, Jonathan Powell and Mark Simpson as well as many student musicians. While at Oxford I founded the RendezVous concert series for the performance of new music by student composers and was involved in the foundation of Spectra Ensemble, a group devoted to multimedia work from the 20th and 21st centuries.