Philippe Hurel was born in France in 1955. He studied musicology at the University of Toulouse and at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP). He was a musical researcher at IRCAM in 1985-1986 and 1988-1989. From 1986 to 1988, he held a residency at the Villa Medici in Rome. In 1995, he received the Siemens Foundation Prize in Munich for Six Miniatures en Trompe-l’œil.

In 1991, he founded the Court-circuit ensemble and served as its artistic director, with Pierre-André Valade serving as musical director. From 1997 to 2001, he taught composition as part of Cursus, IRCAM’s composition and computer music course. He was a composer in residence with Arsenal in Metz and with the Philharmonie de Lorraine from 2000 to 2002.

In 2002, he was awarded the SACEM Composers prize, and in 2003 was awarded the SACEM Prize for best premiere of the year for Aura.

His scores, which are published by Gérard Billaudot and Henry Lemoine, have been performed by many ensembles and orchestras, led by conductors including Pierre Boulez, David Robertson, Jonathan Nott, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Bernard Kontarsky, Stefan Asbury, Kent Nagano, Peter Eötvös, Markus Stenz, Ed Spanjaard, and Pierre-André Valade, with whom he works regularly.

More recent compositions include two tributes to Georges Perec, Cantus (2006), which premiered at the Festival Musica in a performance by Françoise Kubler and the Accroche-Note ensemble, and Espèces d’espaces, a commission from the French Ministry of Culture that premiered in 2012 at Lyon’s Musique en Scène Biennale in a performance by Elise Chauvin, Jean Chaize, and 2e2m, conducted by Pierre Roullier.

Step, a commission from the Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain for flute, clarinet, percussion, and piano, premiered in 2008 in a performance by the New York New Music Ensemble. New York’s ICE ensemble devoted three concerts to Hurel’s work at the Miller Theater in New York, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and in San Francisco.

Hurel was a guest composer at Maerzmusik in Berlin, which, in collaboration with the Berliner Festspiele and the city of Warburg, commissioned his Phasis for saxophone and ensemble. In 2008, the Ensemble Intercontemporain premiered a new version of Aura for piano and large ensemble at the Cité de la Musique in Paris.

Plein-jeu for accordeon and electronics, the third part of the cycle Jeu, commissioned by the CIRM, premiered in 2010 in a performance by Pascal Contet. That same year, Ensemble Nikel premiered Localized corrosion in Tel Aviv, and he completed Praeludium, the final piece in the orchestral cycle Tour à Tour, which already included Tour à Tour I (2008). Tour à Tour III premiered in March 2012 at the Printemps des Arts in Monaco. A new opus, Tour à Tour II, was added in 2015, commissioned by the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France. The complete cycle of Tour à Tour was performed at IRCAM’s 2015 ManiFeste Festival. Hurel’s first string quartet, Entre les lignes, premiered in a performance by the Arditti Quartet during the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik in 2016.

A monographic album, Traits, released on the Motus label, was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros in 2016.