Garth Knox

Garth Knox was born in Ireland and spent his childhood in Scotland. After studying viola at the Royal College of Music (RCM), he played with most of London’s leading groups, performing a mixture of repertoires, from baroque to contemporary music.
In 1983, he was invited by Pierre Boulez to become a member of the Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris, which allowed him to undertake extensive work as a soloist and chamber musician, travelling around the world and participating in international festivals.
In 1990, Garth Knox joined the Arditti String Quartet, playing in all the major concert halls of the world, working closely with today’s leading composers and premiering works by figures such as Ligeti, Kurtág, Berio, Xenakis, Lachenmann, Cage, Feldman and Stockhausen (including the famous “Helicopter Quartet”).
Currently, Garth Knox lives in Paris, where he enjoys a full-time solo career, giving recitals, concerts and chamber music concerts throughout Europe, the United States and Japan. He is also an active composer, and his work «Viola Spaces», the first phase of an ongoing series of studies for strings (published in 2010 by Schott), combines a revolutionary innovation in viola technique with a joyful pleasure in the act of making music. The pieces have been adopted and performed by young string musicians around the world.
He is also a pioneer of the viola d’amore, exploring its possibilities in contemporary music, both with and without electronics, and is in the process of creating a new repertoire for this instrument.
Having held teaching positions at Musikene in San Sebastián and at the RNCM in Manchester, Garth Knox is currently International Professor at the Royal College of Music in London.
He was recently awarded a Doctorate in Music (honoris causa) by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.