Tarik O'Regan

Tarik Hamilton O'Regan is a London-born composer based in San Francisco. In recent years much of his work has investigated and been influenced by his dual Arab and Irish heritages.

24/25 sees performances in many parts of the world, including at Deutsche Opera Berlin, the Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in Manhattan, Soundstreams in Toronto, and by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and Vancouver Chamber Choir among others. Also, this season, his writing is featured on the longstanding BBC Radio series, The Essay, and he will be awarded the prestigious Yaddo Artist Medal at a ceremony in New York City.

Tarik’s music is described as “exquisite and delicate” (The Washington Post); “beautifully-imagined, holding the audience rapt” (The Financial Times); “sublime: a piece that you didn't want to end” (The Times, London); and generating “previously unheard sound worlds with astonishing effect” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). He has worked with a wide variety of ensembles and organizations; these include the Dutch National Ballet, Houston Grand Opera, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Sydney Dance Company, BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Opera House in London.

His output, recognized with two GRAMMY® nominations (including Best Classical Album) and two Ivors®, has been recorded on over 47 albums and is published exclusively by Novello.

“One of the leading composers of his generation” (Gramophone) who is writing “music of startling beauty” (The Observer), Tarik was born in in 1978. He grew up predominantly in Croydon, South London, spending some of his childhood in Morocco, where his mother was born, and in Algeria. Following the completion of his undergraduate studies at Pembroke College, Oxford, and private study with Jeremy Dale Roberts, he began serving as the classical recording reviewer for The Observer newspaper, a position he held for four years. During part of this time he also worked for investment bank JPMorgan Chase. He then continued his postgraduate studies in composition under the direction of both Robin Holloway at Cambridge University, where he was appointed Composer-in-Residence at Corpus Christi College, and Robert Saxton.

He has been appointed to the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship at Columbia University; a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard; and positions at Trinity and Corpus Christi Colleges in Cambridge, Yale, Stanford, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has served on the composition faculty of Rutgers University, and as Senior Advisor to the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. A frequent television and radio broadcaster, he has written and presented two documentaries for BBC Radio 4: Composing LA and Composing New York.

Tarik maintains a longstanding commitment to education and service to the arts in general. This has been acknowledged by his election to an Honorary Fellowship of Pembroke College, Oxford, and his inclusion in the Washington Post’s 2022 list of creative artists who are “changing the classical landscape.”

In 2023 he was awarded the Coronation Medal by His Majesty King Charles III for his Agnus Dei, commissioned for the Coronation Service at Westminster Abbey. Most recently Oratorio of Hope, a project which O’Regan helped devise, was nominated for a 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Award, and the commissioning of his Requiem for the Estranged received a major grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ahead of its premiere in 2025.

www.tarikoregan.com