Biography

“The furious panache of the LCO’s performance, expertly channelled by the conductor Hugh Brunt, was overwhelming” The Times

Hugh Brunt is co-Artistic Director and co-Principal Conductor of the London Contemporary Orchestra, winners at the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards. Since 2008, he has led the LCO in innovative programmes at UK and European venues and festivals including the Roundhouse, Barbican, Royal Opera House, Open’er Festival (Poland), Royal Festival Hall, Victoria Hall (Geneva), Tate Modern, Latitude Festival, and live on BBC Radio 3 at the BBC Proms.

Recent and upcoming engagements include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Metropole Orkest, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Orchestra of Opera North, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon and San Francisco Symphony. He has conducted numerous premieres by leading young composers Francisco Coll, Shiva Feshareki, Martin Suckling, Gabriel Prokofiev, Emily Hall, Valgeir Sigurðsson and Edmund Finnis.

He conducted the string and choir arrangements on Radiohead’s album A Moon Shaped Pool. A collaborator of composer and guitarist Jonny Greenwood, he has featured as conductor and/or arranger on his scores for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza, Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, and Pablo Larraín’s Spencer. With the LCO he has premiered seven short works by Greenwood, and conducted the first live screening of the Academy Award-winning There Will Be Blood. He conducted the world premiere of Greenwood’s violin concerto, Horror vacaui, at the BBC Proms 2019 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He has also worked extensively with Thom Yorke, conducting and orchestrating his first feature film score, Suspiria (directed by Luca Guadagnino), Yorke’s latest solo album, Anima, produced by Nigel Godrich, and conducting the strings on The Smile’s A Light for Attracting Attention.

Other collaborative work includes Mica Levi, Nicholas Britell, Bryce Dessner (The Two Popes), Actress (co-writing tracks on LAGEOS), Bat For Lashes, Foals, Matthew Herbert (A Fantastic Woman, The Wonder), Jed Kurzel (Macbeth, Alien: Covenant), and Hildur Guðnadóttir. In 2021 he collaborated with writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Stanley Donwood, composing the score for the audiobook Ness, published by Penguin.

He studied at New College, Oxford, where he held a choral scholarship, and at the Lucerne Festival Academy under Heinz Holliger.

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