Gabriel Jackson (b.1962)

One of Britain's foremost composers, after three years as a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, Gabriel Jackson went on to study composition with Richard Blackford and John Lambert at the Royal College of Music. Particularly acclaimed for his choral works, his liturgical pieces are in the repertoires of most of Britain's cathedral and collegiate choirs and he is a frequent collaborator with the leading professional groups of the world. From 2010-2013 he was Associate Composer to the BBC Singers. In 2014 his hour-long The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, commissioned for the 750th anniversary of Merton College, Oxford, was premiered in its chapel. May 2015 saw the premiere at the Latvian National Opera of Spring Rounds for soprano, choir and orchestra, commissioned by the Riga-based youth choir Kamer for their 25th anniversary. He was recently commissioned by The Marian Consort to write Stabat Mater to mark their 10th anniversary.

"Jackson's choice of poetry proved not just revealing, but at best electrifying. So, too, did his ever-shifting, often delicate, instrumentation - cleverly lucid, fine-lined, quite often scherzoid, indeed mischievous. [...] The World Imagined is a massive musical achievement." - Roderic Dunnett, Church Times, August 2021

"Jackson's selection of texts seems inspired: no matter that the poems are sometimes difficult to understand; the imagery is often rich and pregnant with possibilities. As I hoped would be the case, his music enhances the words and gives them an added dimension." - John Quinn, Seen and Heard International, July 2021

"Interest lies in Jackson's contrasting of musical and philosophical extremes, where the grandeur of the universe, what Leopardi called the "supernal silence" of the sky and its potential for heaven, invokes both awe and the realisation that mans place in this world is as a mere grain of sand." - Rian Evans, The Guardian, July 2021