Garth Knox

Garth Knox, a violist whose work extends across Baroque pieces, traditional folk material, and contemporary classical composition, directs most of his attention toward the last of these fields and actively champions newly created scores. Previously associated with Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble InterContemporain and the Arditti Quartet, he issued his debut solo recording, Works for Solo Viola, in 2000. During the following decade he participated in projects alongside Trio Mediæval and the Saltarello Trio.

Born in Dublin in 1956, Knox grew up in Scotland as the youngest of four children, each of whom performed on string instruments. He trained on viola with Frederick Riddle at London’s Royal College of Music and performed with several local groups that ranged stylistically from Baroque ensembles to contemporary classical formations. From 1983 to 1990 he belonged to Ensemble InterContemporain; he then spent eight years with the Arditti Quartet, during which the group presented and documented music by composers including Cage, Ligeti, and Xenakis.

In 1998 Knox began an independent career. Two years later he released Works for Solo Viola on Disques Montaigne, a program featuring six twentieth-century composers among them Ligeti, Dusapin, and Berio. Further recordings appeared in 2005: a survey of Olga Neuwirth’s music and Gérard Grisey: Les Espaces Acoustiques, the latter recorded with the ASKO Ensemble and WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. In 2008, supported by cellist Agnès Vesterman, he led the ECM album D’Amore, which juxtaposed Baroque and modern repertoire and incorporated one of his own compositions. The following year Mode Records issued Viola Spaces, a collection of original études written for two, three, or four violas.

ECM brought out Saltarello in 2012, an album on which Knox, again joined by Vesterman and percussionist Sylvain Lemêtre, performed Vivaldi’s Concerto for Viola d’Amore in D minor, selections by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, and traditional folk pieces. He joined Trio Mediaeval for the 2015 release Song of Songs. Two years later Tzadik Records presented John Zorn’s Leonard: The Book of Angels, Vol. 30, arranged and performed by Knox together with the Saltarello Trio—Vesterman, Lemêtre, and violist Julia Robert.