BIO
Ynyr Pritchard is a Maltese-Welsh performer and composer. His work often deals with theatricality, artificiality and processes of recontextualisation. They are interested in the creation of synthetic environments and the violent potential and weaponisation of sound. He is equally comfortable performing theatrically and physically as well as on the viola, with an interest in contemporary repertoire.
In 2021, Ynyr was commissioned by Plas Bodfa and soundlands to write a complementation to Annea Lockwood’s Piano Drowning for ISSUE Project Room’s celebration of the composer. They performed an expanded work for the anniversary performance in 2022 and in 2025 was commissioned again to write a third new work, performed with Giuli Tritto, Leandro Landolina and Zack di Lello. In 2023 Ynyr worked with Tangram Ensemble as a finalist in the Henfrey Prize for Composition. Also in 2023, he was selected as a composer for the Limina Contemporary Music Festival in Salzburg to create a new work with Ensemble Adapter and returned in 2025 to work with NAMES. 2025 saw the premiere of a solo piano piece commissioned by the Rhyl Music Festival, written for Ellis Thomas. In 2026, Ynyr released I Leave an Angel in the Vacant House, a free improvisation album recorded at Plas Bodfa.
As a performer Ynyr has recently performed with Ensemble Modern and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra and appeared at Ultima Festival, Gaudeamus Festival, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, cresc... Biennale, Lucerne Festival, New Music Biennial, Young Euro Classic and the BBC Proms as part of NYOGB and the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble. He has been fortunate enough to work with musicians such as Holly Gowland, Christian Mason, Elaine Mitchener, Tansy Davies, Sally Beamish, Helmut Lachenmann, Enno Poppe, Eloain Lovis Hübner, George Lewis, Hanna Hartman, Hans Thomalla, Jagoda Szmytka and Olivia Køppe. In 2026 he will return to the Lucerne festival with the LFCO and Heinz Holliger.
Ynyr has just finished playing as part of the International Ensemble Modern Academy, where they received tuition from Megumi Kasakawa, Lucas Fels and the members of Ensemble Modern. Before, he gained his degree in music from the University of Oxford, studying composition with Martyn Harry, Jonathan Packham and Jennifer Walshe. During his time there, he studied viola privately with Stephen Upshaw. They also attended Stanford University’s sophomore college to study Dj and remix culture with Dr Adam Banks. He first studied viola with Margaret Scourse and then viola and composition later at the Junior Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague with Ásdís Valdimarsdóttir and Calliope Tsoupaki.
At Oxford, Ynyr was a member of the faculty’s new music ensemble, Red Lipstick—a student-run new music collective founded by Thomas Bruges—and FISHGUY, a free improvisation group opening for Matmos. He is one third of the interdisciplinary trio How to Burp Your Baby, alongside Giuli Tritto and Zack di Lello, and a member of Otoconia Quartet, a string quartet with Suzuné Masumoto, Paul Rodríguez Flys and Mari Nagahara.