Coronation Commission for alumnus Tarik O'Regan by King Charles III
Alumnus and former Composer-in-Residence Tarik O'Regan (m1999) has written an original composition for the Coronation of Their Majesties The King and The Queen Consort at Westminster Abbey on Saturday 6 May 2023 at Westminster Cathedral.
His Majesty commissioned Tarik, whose music he remembered having heard at Lincoln Cathedral in 2006. Such was the impact of the work that The King commissioned O’Regan to write the ‘Agnus Dei’ for a reflective moment during the Coronation Service.
Tarik O’Regan said: “I wanted to explore influences from my own varied heritages within the context of the Agnus Dei in the British choral tradition: a unison melody is slowly fragmented to create myriad timbres, much as one might hear in some Arab or Irish traditional music. This melodic shifting is also reminiscent of 'phase music', strongly connected with San Francisco, where I wrote this work. Finally, there is an alternating verse anthem structure: a nod to Orlando Gibbons, who became Organist of Westminster Abbey exactly 400 years ago.”
About Tarik O'Regan
Tarik Hamilton O'Regan is a London-born composer based in San Francisco. In recent years much of his work has investigated and been influenced by his dual Arab and Irish heritages. He is currently Composer-in-Residence with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, where he is also overseeing an ambitious new commissioning initiative.
“One of the leading composers of his generation” (Gramophone) who is writing “music of startling beauty” (The Observer), Tarik was born in in 1978. He grew up predominantly in Croydon, South London, spending some of his childhood in Morocco, where his mother was born, and in Algeria. Following the completion of his undergraduate studies at Oxford, he came to Corpus for postgraduate studies in composition under the direction of Robin Holloway. In 2000 he was appointed Composer-in-Residence at Corpus and formally began his career as a composer.
Tarik has worked with a wide variety of ensembles and organizations; these include the Dutch National Ballet, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Sydney Dance Company, BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Opera House in London.
His output, recognised with two British Composer Awards, two GRAMMY nominations (including Best Classical Album) and two Ivors, has been recorded on over 40 albums.
Tarik has been has been appointed to the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship at Columbia University; a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard; and positions at Trinity and Corpus Christi Colleges in Cambridge, Yale, Stanford, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has served on the composition faculty of Rutgers University, and as Senior Advisor to the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. A frequent television and radio broadcaster, he has written and presented two documentaries for BBC Radio 4: Composing LA and Composing New York.
