Christopher Butler-Cole, 2026
Amplified string quartet
PIRANESI is based on the book, Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. The six miniatures are informed by images from the novel, and its materials—particularly the pitch architecture throughout the piece—are organised in a rhizomatic labyrinth across the work...
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Christopher Butler-Cole, 2025
Amplified guitar trio
CL☺︎UDBURST is constructed around a triptych of intertextual sources: my own poem, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cloud, and the Eucharistic hymn O Salutaris Hostia. My text acts as a contemporary hinge between Shelley’s Romantic poem and the hymn’s sacramental theology, reframing both within a post-digital landscape of technocratic divinity. Where Shelley’s cloud embodies natural transformation and the hymn sings to transubstantiation, CL☺︎
UDBURST reimagines these processes as ones of commodification and control...
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Christopher Butler-Cole, 2025
Duo for violin and cello
read after i'm gone is a meditation on absence,
distance, and the fragile thread of intention through
time. Cast in two movements, the piece explores a
nostalgic hauntology through sonic archeology of
feelings unspoken and moments unresolved...
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Christopher Butler-Cole, 2025
Solo piano
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Christopher Butler-Cole 2025
Clarinet in B♭, violin, cello, fixed materials
summer snow is based on a poem my mum wrote for me before I left for university. Its central image - the white petals of hydrangea flowers falling like snow each summer in our garden - blends the antonymic warmth and light of Summer with the stillness and dissolution of Winter.
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Christopher Butler-Cole, 2024
Solo piano
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His current work is particularly concerned with the possibilities opened by musique informelle: music that emerges without simply reproducing inherited formal schemes, categories or predetermined systems. This interest extends to the relationship between autonomy and context in contemporary composition, and to the ways digital technologies, performance conventions and modes of presentation shape musical experience. His work moves between instrumental composition, electronics, audiovisual media and other forms of presentation, treating these not as separate disciplines but as different ways of interrogating how a musical work comes into being and acquires meaning.
Christopher’s music has been performed by the Villiers Quartet, EXAUDI and Ensamble CienFlores, and presented at the Penarth Chamber Music Festival and Modern Art Oxford. Recent works include PIRANESI for string quartet and optional electronics, LUMEN, a generative audiovisual installation, and IDEAL MEADOW for mixed gamelan ensemble and live electronics. His work has also included music for orchestra, vocal and chamber ensembles, solo instruments and electronics.
He graduated from Durham University with First Class Honours and completed an MSt in Music Composition at the University of Oxford. He is continuing his research at doctoral level at The Queen’s College, Oxford, supported by the Cyril and Phillis Long Studentship. His research considers contemporary composition in relation to critical theory, philosophy and post-digital culture.
Christopher is also the founder and director of VANISHING POiNT ENSEMBLE, an Oxford-based experimental music collective and concert series centred on new work, collaboration and free improvisation.
The Queen’s College, Oxford University
2026-
Funded by the Cyril and Phillis Long Studentship
MSt in Music (Composition) with Distinction
Wolfson College, Oxford University
2025-26
BA in Music with First Class Honours, with the Michael James Scholarship, The Rosalind Dickinson Prize, and the Eva Myra Kisch Prize
Durham University
2022-25
A levels: A* Biology, A* History, A* Mathematics, A* Music
Westcliff High School for Boys
2020-2022
GCSEs: 10x Grade 9; 2x Grade 8
Westcliff High School for Boys
2015-2020
Eva Myra Kisch Prize - awarded to the candidate with the highest grades in the final honours examination in Music and for outstanding proficiency in Music.
Durham University
2025
The Rosalind Dickinson Prize - awarded to the outstanding candidate in final honours.
Durham University
2025
EDI Prize Commendation - awarded for an excellent essay submission to the prize.
Durham University
2025
Penarth Chamber Music Festival Call for Scores
Winner
2025
Michael James Scholarship - awarded to the outstanding candidate in preliminary honours.
Durham University
2023
TEXTURES [1]: BLOOMING WHITE HYDRANGEAS ON A WOOLLEN AMETHYST SKY for mixed ensemble
Ensamble CienFlores in Buenos Aires
19.06.26
Past:
IDEAL MEADOW for mixed gamelan ensemble and electronics
Rob Campion, Isabelle Carré, Zack di Lello at Schwarzman Centre, Oxford
02.06.26
SAY CHEESE! for mixed prepared ensemble
VANISHING POiNT ENSEMBLE at JdP Music Building, Oxford
01.06.26
I’m watching the dawn break over the water for trombone quartet
Slide Action at University Church, Oxford
29.05.26
PIRANESI for amplified string quartet
Villiers Quartet at JdP Music Building, Oxford
CL ☺UDBURST for guitar trio
Emmanuel Sowicz, Tom Bruges, Leonie Atzl at Holywell Music Room, Oxford
03.12.25
HALF-LIGHT for orchestra
Fantasia Orchestra at Schwarzman Centre, Oxford
21.11.25
‘read after i’m gone’ for violin and cello duo
Penarth Chamber Music Festival
19.06.25
Purple Radio
Head of Live Sessions
2024-25
Last Updated 05.07.25