La musique de Laurence Osborn a été interprétée par des ensembles renommés, notamment le London Philharmonic Orchestra, le City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, l’Ensemble Modern, le Riot Ensemble et le Manchester Collective.
Sa musique a été programmée dans tout le Royaume-Uni dans des lieux tels que le Royal Festival Hall, le Wigmore Hall et le Symphony Hall Birmingham, ainsi que dans de grands festivals internationaux, notamment le Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, le Festival Présences (Paris) et le November Music Festival (Den Bosch).
Le cycle de chansons Essential Relaxing Classical Hits de Laurence Osborn a été nominé pour un Ivor Novello Award en 2021. Il a également été lauréat du Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize en 2017.
Laurence a récemment terminé un doctorat en composition supervisé par Sir George Benjamin au Kings College de Londres, soutenu par une bourse complète de l’AHRC.
Les projets à venir incluent une journée de concerts de portraits au Wigmore Hall le 25 novembre 2023, avec Mahan Esfahani, The Britten Sinfonia et Marian Consort.
In recent pieces, I have returned again and again to the idea of compromised or tainted subjectivity. I am especially interested in emulating voices which are simultaneously human and mechanical, like the sound of HAL 3000 as he pleads for his life in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the voices of rappers like Future and Travis Scott, or the sound of the harpsichord, whose sound is inseparable from the mechanical means of its production.
While I was writing Coin Op Automata, my partner told me about how her mother used to take her to a museum in Covent Garden filled with all sorts of coin operated machines. There was a little mechanical family that slurped spaghetti, a bird that sang with a metal throat, and a little unicyclist who lurched along a wire. I loved the idea of this little ecosystem of coin-operated creatures, trapped in their own mechanical vignettes.
Coin Op Automata is a series of little mechanical tableaux, grouped into two movements. Musical ideas are shared between tableaux and between movements, sometimes obviously, sometimes less so. The first movement is made from wooden sounds, and is a series of lurching dances. The second movement is more metallic in sonority. It begins with a melody, sung by a mechanical voice, which is passed between instruments, before going somewhere else.