Régis Campo
Guest composer 2025
Born in 1968, Régis Campo studied composition with Georges Boeuf at the Marseille Conservatoire. He went on to study composition and musical civilisations with Jacques Charpentier at the Conservatoire national de région de Paris. He then entered Gérard Grisey's class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, where he was awarded first prize for composition in 1995. In 1992, he met the Russian composer Edison Denisov, who considered him to be ‘one of the most gifted of his generation’. From 1999 to 2001, he was a resident at the Villa Médicis. His style, often described as playful and colourful, emphasises melodic invention, humour and joy. In Europe and in some thirty countries around the world, many artists have performed his music. They include Dame Felicity Lott, Kent Nagano, Jay Gottlieb, Zoltán Kocsis, Bertrand Chamayou, Pieter Wispelwey, Jean-Claude Casadesus, Alain Meunier, Laurence Equilbey, the Chanticleer Ensemble, Dominique Visse and the Clément Janequin Ensemble, Mireille Delunsch, Thierry Escaich, Laurent Petitgirard, Laurent Korcia, Alain Altinoglu, the Ensemble intercontemporain, the TM+ Ensemble, the London Sinfonietta, Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam, Ensemble Musicatreize, Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio-France, Orchestre Colonne, Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Orchestre OrchestrUtopica de Lisbonne, Orchestre national d'Île-de-France, Quatuor Diotima and Quatuor Parisii. His work has received numerous awards, including the Gaudeamus Prize (1996), the Special Young Composers Prize (1996), the Dutilleux Competition Prize (1996), the Hervé Dujardin Prize from Sacem (1999) and the Pierre Cardin Prize from the Académie des Beaux-Arts (1999), the Sacem Young Composers Prize (2005), the Georges Bizet Prize (2005) and the Commission Prize from the Simone and Cino del Duca Foundation of the Institut de France (2014). In 2001, his work Lumen, for orchestra, was premiered by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano, in California, and in April 2003, the same performers achieved great success with the premiere of his First Symphony.
His second opera, Quai ouest, based on the play by Bernard-Marie Koltès, was premiered in September 2014 at the Opéra national du Rhin during the Musica Festival, and then revived during the 2014-2015 season in German at the Staatstheater in Nuremberg. The Ars Musica festival commissioned two works from him in November 2018: Dancefloor With Pulsing for theremin and orchestra and Un Omaggio affettuoso ed eccentrico al Maestro Morricone for orchestra, both works premiered by the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège. At the end of 2018, a biography was dedicated to him: Régis Campo, musique de l'émerveillement by Thierry Vagne (éditions Aedam Musicae). In February 2019, Heartbeats for orchestra was premiered with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal conducted by Kent Nagano. Released in 2019, his album Street-art received a Choc de Classica. The same year, the Tana Quartet premiered its seventh quartet, Borderline Activity, in Marseille, Lille and at the Art Musica festival in Brussels. Its catalogue - published since 1998 by Henry Lemoine - includes over 300 works. These include Commedia (1995) for 19 musicians, the Violin Concerto (1997), the Piano Concerto (1998-1999) and Lumen (2001) for orchestra. Premier Livre (2000-2002) for piano, Pop-art (2002), Symphonie n°1 (2002-2003) for orchestra, Ouverture en forme d'étoiles (2006) for orchestra, Bestiaire d'après Apollinaire for soprano and orchestra (2007-2008), Les Quatre Jumelles, opéra-bouffe for 4 singers and 9 instruments (2008), Quatuor à cordes n°5 Fata Morgana (2012), the opera Quai ouest (2013-2014), Street-Art (2015-2017).
On 17 May 2017, he was elected to the Académie des beaux-arts in the Musical Composition section, in the chair previously held by Charles Chaynes. This seventh chair was created in 1967 and occupied by Olivier Messiaen and then by Marius Constant. In 2020, Régis Campo was appointed by the École normale de musique de Paris to a new composition class. His colleagues were Michaël Levinas and Éric Tanguy. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie des Sciences, Lettres et Arts de Marseille - known as the Académie de Marseille - as an associate member at the meeting of 26 October 2021.