Keeley: Music for Art and Tom

Rob Keeley was born in Bridgend in 1960. He studied with Oliver Knussen at the Royal College of Music, Magdalen College Oxford under Bernard Rose, and later with Robert Saxton.

As a pianist Keeley has premiered works by, among others, Harrison Birtwistle, Michael Finnissy, Jonathan Cole, Richard Emsley and Nicola Moro.

He is currently Senior Lecturer in Composition at King's College, London.

Keeley's music is jazz tinged with elements of Satie and Poulenc.

Bayan Northcott writes ... Rob Keeley is both a ‘natural’ as a composer, and a bit of an enigma. While his music always unfolds lucidly, often engagingly, it resists easy categorization – at least accordingly to current critical notions. Apparently untouched by avantgarderie, minimalism or post-modern poly-stylistics, it might seem to fall into a traditionalist slot or even be mistaken as academic. Yet his music sounds singularly undriven by theory or the fi ndings of analysis; nor will one so easily discover textbook sonata or fugal procedures in his works. More frequently he generates his forms by flexible refrain-and-chorus procedures, and sometimes, the illusion of traditional thematicism from variable ostinato or change-ringing permutations – suggesting his omnivorous ear has absorbed more ‘advanced’ techniques, from Ligeti, perhaps, or Birtwistle, but in his own way.