Alex Hills was born in Cambridge, England, in 1974. His music has been played at venues ranging from Carnegie Hall and the South Bank Centre to the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club and Café OTO. It has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and the German SWR, featured on the BBC4 Classic Britannia television series and recorded on the American Innova label. Two portrait discs of his music, OutsideIn (2020) and The Music of Making Strange (2013) have been released on the US-based label Carrier Records. He has worked with a wide range of ensembles worldwide, including including PlusMinus, EXAUDI, 12 Ensemble, Mosaik and Either/Or.

Alex studied at the Academy with Michael Finnissy, and in the US at the University of California, San Diego and Stanford with Brian Ferneyhough and Chaya Czernowin. He lives in London, where he holds the post of Lecturer in Contemporary Music and Analysis at the Academy, and occasionally writes and speaks about connections between musical and literary theory, including a recent collaboration on music in the writing of Marcel Proust with philosopher Tom Stern and performers Roderick Chadwick and Philippe Honoré.