Adrian Jack

Adrian Frederick Joseph Jack (16 March 1943 – June 2026) was a British composer. Life and career Adrian Frederick Joseph Jack was born in Datchet, near Slough, Buckinghamshire, England, on 16 March 1943. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School, Northwood (1954–1960), and the Royal College of Music, London (1961–1964), where he studied composition with Peter Racine Fricker, fugue and orchestration with Gordon Jacob, piano with Antony Hopkins and organ with John Birch. From 1967 to 1969 he studied composition and electronic music with Włodzimierz Kotoński at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw, Poland. Jack started composing at the age of 13. He later studied at the Royal College of Music. The main conscious influence at that time was Messiaen. Hearing Boulez’s “Le marteau sans maitre” brought a new atonal complexity to his music, replaced by an austere paring-down following his discovery of Edgard Varèse. He actually wrote to Varèse to ask if he could study with him in New York and received a letter of refusal, not very long before Varèse died in November 1965. For the next 20 years, Jack composed somewhat intermittently, but his works included “Holly Bush”, written in Po