Renowned BBC Proms Gaia Theory composer and winner of the 2008 Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music

Jonathan Dove joined Cape Farewell’s 2008 Disko Bay Expedition, visiting the spectacular Disko Bay area of West Greenland with over 40 international artists, journalists and scientists. Composed after the voyage, his new orchestral work Gaia Theory, commissioned for the BBC Proms 2014, explores the idea of life on our planet evolving alongside the environment.

His composition The Wave premiered at the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester in 2015, alongside Tania Kovats’ exhibition Evaporation, one of Cape Farewell’s Lovelock Art Commissions.

Winner of the 2008 Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music, Jonathan Dove is known for taking opera to new places and reaching new audiences. His “musical tale” The Enchanted Pig was given over 80 performances at the Young Vic and on tour. His opera, The Adventures of Pinocchio, attracted whole families into opera houses around the country. For many children, this will have been their first experience of opera.

He has written two operas specially for television. When She Died, about the public reaction to the death of Princess Diana, was watched by nearly a million people in the UK alone at its first broadcast. Man on the Moon won the Opera Special Prize at the Rose d’Or festival.

An unusual achievement has been a series of “community operas” in different parts of the UK, sometimes involving several hundred performers in a single event. His community cantata On Spital Fields received a Royal Philharmonic Society award and a British Composers award.

His highly successful airport-comedy Flight, first produced at Glyndebourne in 1998 was subsequently performed in Holland, Belgium, Germany, Australia and America, and was presented in London by the British Youth Opera.

Jonathan has written the music for 30 theatre productions, including His Dark Materials for the National Theatre. In 1998 he was joint winner of the Christopher Whelen Award for his work in the fields of theatre music and opera. From 2001-2006 he was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival.

BBC Proms world premiere of Gaia Theory
World premiere of The Wave by Jonathan Dove
About the 2008 Disko Bay Expedition