Richard Barrett (composer)

After completing his first bachelor's degree in genetics and microbiology from University College London in 1980[1], he began to study music, taking private lessons with Peter Wiegold, and soon thereafter participating in the 1984 Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik where there were fruitful encounters with Brian Ferneyhough and Hans-Joachim Hespos.

He is equally active in free improvisation, most often in the electronic duo FURT with Paul Obermayer, formed in 1986, but also since 2003 as a member of the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble.

[5] Many of Barrett's works are grouped into series, and have extra-musical associations—particularly with the writers Samuel Beckett and Paul Celan, but also the Chilean painter Roberto Matta, and ideas from physics, mythology, astrology and philosophy (in the texts of DARK MATTER).

Barrett's compositional techniques, which derive equally and indistinguishably from serial, stochastic and intuitive methods, have since the mid-1980s made extensive use of computer programs he has developed himself.

[7] Since 2003 he has been working on an eight-part cycle of compositions collectively entitled resistance & vision and with a projected total duration of over six hours, of which the first (NO), third (cell), fifth (Mesopotamia), sixth (IF), seventh (nacht und träume) and eighth (CONSTRUCTION) have so far been completed (July 2016).