Nathaniel Otley is a composer, conductor, and violinist from Ōtepoti, Aotearoa (Dunedin, New Zealand). His compositional work investigates avenues for ecological thinking in compositional practice, using ideas of vulnerable engagement and instrumental affordance to explore dynamic, constantly evolving musical textures and timbres. This ecological exploration was the focus of Nathaniel’s Masters of Music in composition at the University of Sydney where he was supervised by Professor Liza Lim and Dr. Benjamin Carey. Nathaniel completed his undergraduate studies in 2019 at the University of Otago studying composition with Anthony Ritchie and Peter Adams, and violin performance with Tessa Petersen. He is currently undertaking doctoral study at the City University of New York (CUNY) on a Graduate Center Fellowship.
His compositions have been performed in New Zealand, Australia, France and Japan by artists including the ELISION, Semblance, Ictus and Argonaut Ensembles, Mark Menzies, the NZSO, NZ Trio, the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and the Dunedin Youth Orchestra amongst others. In 2024 he won the SOUNZ Contemporary Award, Aotearoa’s premiere award for Art Music Composition for his piece the convergence of oceans. In 2022 he attended the Voix Nouvelles programme at Royaumont in France where his work Mycelium was premiered by Marie Ythier and Ensemble Ictus, the work was later a finalist for the 2023 SOUNZ Contemporary Award, New Zealand’s premiere award for classical music composition. In 2019 he was a featured young composer at the Bendigo International Festival for Exploratory Music (BIFEM) as part of their Reo Hou future voices New Zealand programme with his piece Impasto. His piece Recalibration for violin and electronics also won the 2019 University of Otago Lilburn Trust Composition Competition and he was also among the winners of the 2019 NZ Trio Impetus composition competition. As an orchestral composer Nathaniel was the 2023 NZSO National Youth Orchestra Composer in Residence and a three time finalist in the NZSO TODD corporation young composers award including taking out the top prize in 2019 with his piece biosphere degradation.
As a violinist regularly performs in solo and chamber settings including a wide variety of New Zealand music. In the past he has been a member of the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, NZSO National Youth Orchestra, New Zealand Youth Choir, New Zealand Secondary Students Choir, Dunedin Youth Orchestra and the New Zealand Secondary Schools Symphony Orchestra. He is also an active conductor with a specialisation in new music .
Nathaniel Otley 