Kevin Volans has been described as “one of the planet’s most distinctive and unpredictable voices”
[Kyle Gann – Village Voice 1998]. He was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 1949. After completing a
B Mus at the Univeristy of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg he went on to study in Cologne, principally with
Karlheinz Stockhausen, later becoming his teaching assistant. In the mid-70’s his work became associated
with the “Neue Einfachheit” (New Simplicity) – the beginnings of post-modernism in music.
In 1979 following several field recording trips to Africa, he embarked on a series of pieces based on
African compositional techniques which quickly established Volans as a distinctive voice on the European
new music circuit. In 1986 Kevin Volans began a productive collaboration with the Kronos Quartet. White Man
Sleeps for string quartet (1986), Hunting: Gathering (1987) and The Songlines (1988) were all written for them,
and given performances in festivals ranging from the Salzburg Festival to the Montreal Jazz Festival, Berliner
Festwoche, Tokyo Inkspot, Adelaide Festival, Next Wave Festival (New York) and New Music America, bringing his
work to a very wide audience. The Kronos discs, White Man Sleeps and Pieces of Africa broke all records for string
quartet disc sales – the latter was number one on the US Classical and world music charts for 26 weeks, outselling
all but Pavarotti.
In the 1990’s Volans gave increasing attention to writing for dance, collaborating with Siobhan Davies,
Jonathan Burrows, Shobana Jeyasingh in Britain as well as numerous other companies around the world. In
1999 the South bank hosted a fifieth birthday celebration of his work in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
John Allison wrote in The Times :”When it comes to composers, only a few today could be called true
originals, and Kevin Volans is one of them.”
Latterly, he has turned his attention to writing for orchestra and as well as collaborating with visual artists.
Recent commissions include a piano concerto for Marc-Andre Hamelin, a trio concerto for the Storioni Trio, new
string quartets for the Smith and Vanburgh quartets and a chamber piece for the Crash ensemble. Future projects
include a triple ensemble piece for exhibitions of the artist, Juergen Partenheimer’s work at the IKON Gallery,
Birmingham, and the Deutsches Kunstmuseum.