Biography
Lara Agar is a London-based, Suffolk-raised composer from the UK, whose music blends electronic soundscapes and sampled material with traditional acoustic and classical instruments.
Her music is most at home in abstraction, using indeterminacy, vocality and electronics to create imaginary sound worlds. She has worked with several artists and musicians forming close and ongoing collaborative relationships across dance, visual arts and film. Taking a homegrown and intuitive approach, Lara’s interests lie in the accidental, the found, messiness of stuff, experimental music making, going with mistakes, (Beckett - “Fail again, fail better”), not knowing…
Selected performers and collaborators who have played Lara’s music include Explore Ensemble, the London Symphony Orchestra, Juliet Fraser + Mark Knoop, Orkest de Ereprijs, Exaudi, the Plus-Minus Ensemble, Quatuor Bozzini, the National Youth String Orchestra, Waste Paper Opera Company, Satoko Inoue and the Quatuor Danel.
Her music has been played on BBC Radio 3 Night Tracks and the BBC 3’s New Music Show, as well as in venues such as the Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, Milton Court, Sadler’s Wells, Iklectik, and many more DIY and grassroots venues throughout the UK and Europe. Festivals and concert series include Music We’d Like to Hear (London), Oxford Leider (Oxford), Festival of Laurence Crane (London), New Music Northwest (Manchester) and the Freedom of Movement Festival (London).
Lara is a frequent collaborator in cross discipline art, most notably dance, and has worked with choreographer Anthony Matsena on Codi with the National Dance Company of Wales, and also on Shades of Blue (commissioned by Dance East and Sadler's Wells) which received four star reviews from both the Guardian and the Financial Times, and features in the BAFTA winning BBC 4 Documentary 'Brothers in Dance’ as well as BBC Dancing Nation.
Lara is a guest artist at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where she works as a tutor with Unfinished Collective, curated by Nell Catchpole & Jan Hendrickse. Lara is also the artistic director for the Tantrum Experimental Music Series, a concert series for raw and unfinished contemporary music making, with recent artists including Wojciech Rusin, Anat Ben-David, Eve Stainton & Lola de la Mata.
For 2024/2025 Lara is an Junior Composer in Association at the Purcell School, leading special projects with the middle and upper school composers. As an educator she also teaches violin and piano at the Da Capo Music Foundation.
Lara held a Junior Fellowship (2019/20) at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, following an artist master’s degree in Composition, studying with Paul Newland, Cassandra Miller and Laurence Crane. Her studies were generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust and the Guildhall Trust.
Lara released her debut EP Solstice with October House Records in October 2023, and was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award in 2022 for This Unquiet Autumn.
Her music is most at home in abstraction, using indeterminacy, vocality and electronics to create imaginary sound worlds. She has worked with several artists and musicians forming close and ongoing collaborative relationships across dance, visual arts and film. Taking a homegrown and intuitive approach, Lara’s interests lie in the accidental, the found, messiness of stuff, experimental music making, going with mistakes, (Beckett - “Fail again, fail better”), not knowing…
Selected performers and collaborators who have played Lara’s music include Explore Ensemble, the London Symphony Orchestra, Juliet Fraser + Mark Knoop, Orkest de Ereprijs, Exaudi, the Plus-Minus Ensemble, Quatuor Bozzini, the National Youth String Orchestra, Waste Paper Opera Company, Satoko Inoue and the Quatuor Danel.
Her music has been played on BBC Radio 3 Night Tracks and the BBC 3’s New Music Show, as well as in venues such as the Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, Milton Court, Sadler’s Wells, Iklectik, and many more DIY and grassroots venues throughout the UK and Europe. Festivals and concert series include Music We’d Like to Hear (London), Oxford Leider (Oxford), Festival of Laurence Crane (London), New Music Northwest (Manchester) and the Freedom of Movement Festival (London).
Lara is a frequent collaborator in cross discipline art, most notably dance, and has worked with choreographer Anthony Matsena on Codi with the National Dance Company of Wales, and also on Shades of Blue (commissioned by Dance East and Sadler's Wells) which received four star reviews from both the Guardian and the Financial Times, and features in the BAFTA winning BBC 4 Documentary 'Brothers in Dance’ as well as BBC Dancing Nation.
Lara is a guest artist at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where she works as a tutor with Unfinished Collective, curated by Nell Catchpole & Jan Hendrickse. Lara is also the artistic director for the Tantrum Experimental Music Series, a concert series for raw and unfinished contemporary music making, with recent artists including Wojciech Rusin, Anat Ben-David, Eve Stainton & Lola de la Mata.
For 2024/2025 Lara is an Junior Composer in Association at the Purcell School, leading special projects with the middle and upper school composers. As an educator she also teaches violin and piano at the Da Capo Music Foundation.
Lara held a Junior Fellowship (2019/20) at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, following an artist master’s degree in Composition, studying with Paul Newland, Cassandra Miller and Laurence Crane. Her studies were generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust and the Guildhall Trust.
Lara released her debut EP Solstice with October House Records in October 2023, and was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award in 2022 for This Unquiet Autumn.