John Casken

John Casken (born 1949) is an English composer, born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England. Casken read music at the University of Birmingham, studying composition and contemporary music with John Joubert and Peter Dickinson. He then went on to study in Poland with Andrzej Dobrowolski on a Polish government scholarship at the Academy of Music in Warsaw, from 1971 to 1972. During this time he began to have regular consultations with Witold Lutosławski, with whom he formed a close association and friendship. Casken has since written articles on the music of Lutosławski, including the contribution of the chapter "The Visionary and Dramatic in the music of Lutosławski" to Zbigniew Skowron's Lutosławski Studies. Casken left Poland to return to Birmingham as a lecturer in 1973. After a Fellowship at Huddersfield Polytechnic in 1980, he was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Durham in 1981. He was Professor of Music at the University of Manchester from 1992 to 2008 and maintains strong links with The University of Manchester as Emeritus Professor of Music.

The influence of legend and literature as well as landscape and the visual arts can be found in Casken's works. The libretto of his first opera, Golem, based on the Jewish legend of Golem, was written by the composer in collaboration with Pierre Audi, who commissioned and directed the work for the 1989 Almeida Festival. Golem was extremely successful, winning the first Britten Prize for Composition in 1990, as well as being recorded by Virgin Classics. In 1991 a Gramophone Award in the contemporary category was awarded to Casken for this recording. The recording has now been re-released on the NMC label, and there have been six further productions of Golem since 1989: Opera Omaha, 1990; Northern Stage (UK Arts Council/Contemporary Music Network Tour), 1991; Theater Dortmund, 1994; Aspen Festival, 2000; Neue Operbühne Berlin 2001; Opéra de Rennes and Angers Nantes Opéra, 2006.

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