Joseph Havlat
Joseph Havlat is a pianist and composer from Hobart, Australia, based in London. Working as a soloist and chamber musician for music very new, very old and some things in between, he has performed in major concert venues around the UK, Europe, America, Japan and Australia.
Joseph is a leading interpreter of new music, having collaborated with such composers as Hans Abrahamsen, John Adams, Thomas Adès, Gerald Barry, Brett Dean, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Michael Finnissy and Thomas Larcher. As a chamber musician he has performed with William Bennett, James Ehnes, Steven Isserlis, Katalin Károlyi and Jack Liebeck, alongside regular duo partners Lotte Betts-Dean and Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux. He is also a member of the LSO percussion ensemble with whom he has released a CD on the LSO Live label, featuring the premiere recording of John Adams’ two-piano work ‘Roll Over Beethoven’.
As a composer his music often explores the sounds of the natural world, imbued with the harsher shapes of human modernity. He has written music spanning from solo voice to large ensemble, including for Ensemble x.y, of which he was a founding member. Current work includes music for viola and piano commissioned by Sally Beamish, and a mixed ensemble piece for the Australian Festival of Chamber Music.
Joseph studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London under Prof. Joanna MacGregor from 2012-18, where he received his BMus and MMus with distinction, including awards for exceptional merit in studentship and the highest recital mark for a postgraduate pianist. He has been a Young Artist of St. John’s Smith Square, the Oxford Lieder Festival and Kirckman Concert Society, and was a first prize winner of the Royal Overseas League Music Competition.
Recent highlights include playing Adès’ In Seven Days with the LSO under the baton of the composer, as well as the premiere of his Növények at Wigmore Hall. In late 2021 he appeared with the BBC Philharmonic giving the premiere of Robert Laidlow’s piano concerto Warp, broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and in 2023 he made his solo recital debuts at King’s Place and Wigmore Hall in London, where he is appearing five times in the 2023-24 season.
Joseph has been featured on several recent CD releases in the past few years: Finnissy vocal works on Divine Art Metier (with Lotte Betts-Dean and Marsyas Trio), Lisa Ilean’s Weather a Rare Blue and Rebecca Saunders’ murmurs for NMC (with Explore Ensemble), and two solo CDs, one featuring Czech and Hungarian folk music, and the other the premiere recording of Isabella Gellis’ The Dissolute Society Comprised of All Sorts. He has begun a fruitful collaboration with Delphian Records, with whom two chamber CDs are currently in post-production and two further planned during 2024, one with Lotte Betts-Dean and one with violist and composer Sally Beamish.
Joseph teaches piano at the Royal Academy of Music. He likes ferns.