Oliver Coates

A radiant duality lurks within the oeuvre of Oliver Coates – the British cellist, composer and producer whose classical career and compositional output have arisen in tandem, like two sides of the same moon. It’s an orbit that encompasses the flares of electronic music and pirate radio of his South London upbringing, as well as a penchant for summoning the stranger edges of sound with vast, mercurial palettes of modulation. A former principal cellist for London Contemporary Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and Britten Sinfonia, Coates’ virtuosic renderings of his instrument are a given – attuning to his compositions is to emerge through a portal somewhere between a fever dream and a place of visceral emotional clarity, into an aether of illusive invocations and the silted sonic sublime.

Early glimmers of these reciprocal forces play out in Towards the Blessed Islands (2013) and Upstepping (2016) – the former a mirage of minimalist architecture versus the spectral rave refractions of its follow up. Coates joined the RVNG Intl. family in 2018 with Shelley’s on Zenn-La, a volume of intimate and experimental dance hybrids preceding the darker sensibilities of skins n slime (2020), where lucid incantations of string are melted by a viscous, drone-metal membrane. In 2024, Coates returns to RVNG with the somatic chiaroscuro of Throb, shiver, arrow of time, a capsule of personal resonance and remembrance aglow with the embers of imperfect memories, which furthers his reach in collapsing the digital into the analogue and vice versa.

Coates’ profoundly collaborative nature has led to many rich and long-term correspondences. His impulse to connect with other artists over exquisite detail has cultivated the perennial vocal appearances of Malibu and chrysanthemum bear in his compositions, as well as celebrated projects with Mica Levi, Arca, Dean Blunt and Jonny Greenwood. This sensibility has also expanded his work into visual worlds, which includes his lauded scoring of films such as Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022), The Stranger (Thomas M Wright, 2022) and Occupied City (Steve McQueen, 2023). Coates has also created soundtracks for video art projects with Lawrence Lek and Marianna Simnett, and provided musical creative direction for catwalk presentations by Dior and Chanel. He has curated two editions of DEEP∞MINIMALISM at Southbank Centre in London, where he has also been an artist in residence, featuring the music of Éliane Radigue, Liz Harris, Pauline Oliveros, Hanne Darboven, Morton Feldman, Daphne Oram and Malibu.