Oscar Bettison's work demonstrates a willingness to work within and outside the confines of concert music. He likes to work with what he calls "cinderella instruments", either by making percussion instruments (in the case of Junk) or by re-imagining other instruments (Krank, Cibola) as well as writing for instruments more common in rock music. More recent pieces have featured some electro-acoustic elements. His recent, evening-long work O Death is concerned with bringing all these strands together.

Oscar Bettison was born in Jersey, UK. After studying in London with Simon Bainbridge and Robert Saxton he went to the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague where he studied with Louis Andriessen and Martijn Padding. He was awarded a fellowship to attend Tanglewood in summer 2001 and holds PhD from Princeton University where his advisor was Steve Mackey. He was a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival in the summer of 2007 and was selected to be a participant in Luca Francesconi's Earlab project in Norway and Italy in the summer of 2008. He is on the composition faculty at the Peabody Conservatory.

He is the recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music Pianist/Composer Commissioning Project (2009) a Jerwood Foundation Award (1998) the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize  (1997) and the first BBC Young Composer of the Year Prize (1993). He was a Naumberg fellow at Princeton University from 2003-2007.

He has received commissions from the BBC (1996), the London Sinfonietta (1997), the New London Children’s Choir (1998) the Oxford Contemporary Music Festival (2001) the Eliza Miller Dance Company (2004) the Orkest De Ereprijs (2004, 2009), Ensemble Klang (2006, 2009), The Roundhouse (2009) and the Bang on a Can All-Stars (2010) as well as receiving commission grants from the Rockefeller New York State Music Fund (2007), the New York State Council on the Arts (2007) F.A.P.K. (The Netherlands, 2007) The Netherlands America Foundation (2006) and the Danspace Project 2006-2007 Commissioning Initiative.

In addition to having works premiered on three continents (Europe, North America and Australia), his work has received press coverage in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia and has been featured on British Radio, BBC Television, Australian Radio and New York Public Radio as well as being profiled in The Times (London). His work Cadence is available on NMC Records.Upcoming projects include a new work for the combined forces of the Percussion Group of The Hague and the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet. A recording of O Death has recently been released by Ensemble Klang.

(Mar 2010)

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