RobertAmesConductor & Composer

Robert Ames is a conductor and composer known for bringing ambitious large-scale symphonic contemporary music into the cultural mainstream. His work has taken him to major orchestras, venues and festivals including the BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, Barbican, Southbank Centre, Elbphilharmonie, Philharmonie de Paris, Concertgebouw and Carnegie Hall, with orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Hallé and Seattle Symphony. His artistic approach is marked by intensity and a distinctive ear for texture, atmosphere and dramatic shape.

Ames co-founded London Contemporary Orchestra in 2008 and, over nearly two decades, helped build the Royal Philharmonic Society Award-winning ensemble into one of the most distinctive orchestral platforms of its generation. As its artistic leader and conductor, he developed a way of working that placed the orchestra at the centre of contemporary culture: flexible, collaborative, exacting and open to new forms of music-making.

Across concerts, recordings and large-scale projects, Ames has worked with composers including Philip Glass, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Mica Levi, Jonny Greenwood, John Luther Adams, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Bryce Dessner, conducting, recording and presenting their music. He has also helped expand the possibilities of orchestral performance through projects spanning concert music, film, theatre, dance, fashion and popular music, collaborating with artists including Radiohead, Anoushka Shankar, Little Simz, The National, Taylor Swift, Frank Ocean, Sigur Rós and The Weeknd.

Alongside his conducting work, Ames has built a parallel career as a composer. His releases include Change Ringing and CARBS, released on BMG, and his work in film has included arranging and conducting on Volker Bertelmann’s Oscar-winning score for All Quiet on the Western Front, and on the Oscar-nominated scores for Conclave and Jonny Greenwood’s Phantom Thread. He wrote the score for Hailey Gates’s Atropia, which won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Ames now brings this experience to a conductor-led practice shaped by new music, recording, collaboration and live performance: an evolving body of work defined by curiosity, alert to the world around it.