About Me
Rambert
As Music Director, Paul Hoskins has helped to build Rambert’s reputation as a vital force in new music in the UK. Following the UK premiere of Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet and a tour of Thomas Ades’ Living Toys, Paul won a Time Out Award in 2004, and then appeared with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra at the 2005 Edinburgh International Festival, conducting three Mahler song cycles with Gerald Finley and Jane Irwin.
In 2008, Rambert began a major programme of commissioning new scores. Paul also conceived the Rambert Music Fellowship, a residency scheme for composers, and launched the Rambert Orchestra. He conducts over 50 performances of new music every year, and the Music Fellowship has become one of the most respected schemes for music and dance. Since moving to the South Bank at the end of 2013, Rambert has commissioned 10 major dance scores, half of them by women.
Orchestras
In the UK Paul has worked as a guest with many orchestras including Britten Sinfonia, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He has also been a regular assistant to Mark Wigglesworth and Sakari Oramo at the Proms, in Birmingham and at the Aldeburgh Festival. In the USA he has performed regularly in San Francisco and New York; in Europe he has worked with Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Holland Symphonia, George Enesco Philharmonic Bucharest, Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Podlaskie Philharmonic in Bialystok, Poland; and Bergen Philharmonic.
Ballet and Opera
Paul has enjoyed many re-invitations to some of the world’s great ballet companies, appearing with New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, and the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. In the last four years he has led major productions for the Croatian National Ballet in Zagreb; Spartacus for South African National Dance Trust in Johannesburg and Cape Town; Nutcracker for National Ballet of Canada in Toronto; and Highland Fling for Scottish Ballet in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Operatic work has included Don Giovanni with Roderick Williams, the world première of Stephen McNeff’s Clockwork, classical operas for Bampton Opera and the Buxton Festival, as well as assisting at Glyndebourne Festival Opera and regularly at English National Opera.
New Music aND YOUNG PEOPLE
Paul believes that new music is vitally important in society. “Composers see further than we do”. We can only understand the classics if we are good at engaging with composers and their context. Young audiences (and dance audiences) are a natural place for new music.
Paul has conducted numerous world premieres, and has worked closely with composers including Julian Anderson, Tobias Picker, Howard Goodall, Stephen McNeff and Mark-Anthony Turnage. He has led among others Cambridge New Music Players, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Ensemble Modern and the London Philharmonic Future Firsts. At Rambert he devised the Music Fellowship programme, and has enjoyed being closely involved in the work of a new generation of British composers including Gavin Higgins, Mark Bowden, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Kate Whitley and Quinta; as well as commissioning numerous other composers including Daniel Bjarnason, Scanner, Gabriel Prokofiev, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Ilan Eshkeri; and instigating projects with Toby Young, Hannah Kendall, Shirley Thompson, Ben Oliver and others.
The NMC Records CD Flux was released to mark Rambert’s 90th birthday and the success of its composers, and came with a package of resources for schools. Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s disc Stolen Rhythm was also released in 2017, winning strong reviews for Rambert Orchestra.
For London Schools Symphony Orchestra Paul devised a project in collaboration with Rambert School; at the Barbican in April 2017 Paul appeared with the LSSO and 30 dancers in work by three young choregraphers, two young composers (Misha Mullov-Abbado and Danyal Dhondy), Stravinsky’s Circus Polka and Mark Baldwin’s new choreography for Appalachian Spring.
Paul is a mentor for young musicians with the charity Future Talent, a regular adjudicator at music festivals, and occasionally teaches sessions at the London senior conservatoires and Saturday morning Junior departments.
Community
Ever since his first student job as conductor of the Morley College Symphony Orchestra in 1991, Paul has enjoyed training amateur orchestras. In London Paul has regularly conducted two of the best, Corinthian Orchestra and Ernest Read Symphony Orchestra, and worked as a guest with Salomon, Haydn Chamber Orchestra, Kensington Symphony and Forest Philharmonic.