Freddie Meyers

Freddie Meyers is a composer whose musical language explores the ever-shifting notion of time in musical creation. Freddie is the musical director of Bandwidth, an internet-based ensemble that is dedicated to exploring the implications of latency on performance practice. Bandwidth’s repertoire is diverse, performing music from the middle-ages to the present day and considers the way that online communication can connect people from around the world.     

Freddie’s music has been performed in the UK on BBC Radio 3 and by several professional ensembles including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, and Oxford Philharmonic. He has also received premieres abroad in Palestine, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. In November 2017, Freddie conducted the premiere of his first opera A Sketch of Slow Time. The 90-minute, one-act work, traces the affair of Mathilde Schönberg (wife of the composer Arnold Schönberg) with the artist Richard Gerstl and the tragic events that unfold.

The visual arts have played a substantial inspiration for much of Freddie’s recent work. Atlas for large symphony orchestra (premiered, September 2019), imagined music as sonic sculpture rotating around the mythological titan Atlas, viewing him from different angles and perspectives. Since 2018, Freddie’s music has developed alongside visual art as part a growing collaboration with artist Rachel Gadsden. The duo has now created several performance pieces that combine live painting and music. These works become a fusion of both mediums, co-mingling sight with music and sound with space. Three of these pieces, All at Sea, Ships of the Desert, and Displaced Voices, were created in as part of Narrative of Displacement, a University of Birmingham-led project, working with refugees from both Syria and Iraq. These pieces were scored for a mix of western and Arabic instruments and included London-based Syrian Oud player Rihab Azar and Syrian percussionist Jamal Al-Sakka. Rachel and Freddie also form part of the Deluge Collective, a multi-practice, international group, that explores the way that different mediums (art, music, and poetry) can interact and function together. The collective exhibited a digital exhibition with BayArt, Cardiff in May 2021.

Freddie gained a distinction in an MMus in Composition from the Royal Academy of Music in 2020 and completed a BA (Hons.) in music (2015-2018) from St Hilda’s College, Oxford. From September 2021, Freddie will be composer-in-residence at Eton College.