Robert Jamieson Crow was born in London in 1956 and spent his childhood and youth in Bristol.  He studied composition with Robin Holloway, Gordon Crosse and Alexander Goehr at King’s College Cambridge and violin with Emanuel Hurwitz and Sidney Griller at the Royal Academy of Music London. In 1978 he moved to Austria, studying violin with Sándor Végh and composition with Cesar Bresgen at the Mozarteum Salzburg, and musicology with Tilman Seebass and Oskar Elschek at the Universities of Vienna and Innsbruck (Ph.D.). 

Later settling in Vienna, he worked as a violinist for many years, mainly in the field of contemporary music (Austrian Ensemble for New Music, Ensemble XX Jahrhundert, Sándor Végh’s Camerata Academica Salzburg a.o.)  He taught music theory at the Mozarteum and at the Universities of Graz, Salzburg and Innsbruck until his retirement in 2022.

He has lived since 1992 in Klosterneuburg near Vienna, where he founded New Music Projects NÖ, an organisation which curates interdisciplinary arts projects in Austria and abroad.

His works have been commissioned by:

South German Radio, Festspielhaus St. Pölten, Styrian Autumn Festival, Festival AdeVantegarde Munich, Aspekte Salzburg, King’s Place Festival London, Tirana Autumn Festival, Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Land Niederösterreich, musica sacra Linz, Holst Foundation, Ambitus Wien, COMA Festival London, Internationales Kindermusikzentrum Leipzig, International Festival of Music for Youth London, Jugendmusikfest Deutschlandsberg a.o.

performed by:

Südfunkchor Stuttgart, Ensemble Reconsil, Max Brand Ensemble, Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, Vokalensemble NOVA, Ensemble Neue Streicher, ensemble arcantus, Escorial Choir Norwich, Ensemble Spinario, Nelson Ensemble, Ensemble arTrium, Ensemble 9, NÖ Bläsersolisten, Trio-Dalbergia, Ensemble Profundi, Ensemble Interpunkt a.o.