21 members of the Severnside Composers Alliance
You can search for music by each composer by clicking the button underneath their information. Alternatively, you can search the database by instrumentation/online recording etc. by clicking on Search Scores.
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Adrian Beaumont
...no info online yet...
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David Bedford
0117 962 4202
www.impulse-music.co.uk/bedford.htm
David Bedford was born in London in 1937 of a musical family, (his grandmother was the composer Liza Lehmann, and his mother, Lesley Duff, was a member of the English Opera Group just after the war and was thus involved in several Britten premières). He began composing at the age of seven and went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Lennox Berkeley. A grant awarded by the RAM in 1961 enabled him to study with Luigi Nono in Venice. In the late 60s he played keyboards with Kevin Ayers' cult band 'The Whole World', which led to numerous collaborations with musicians from the rock world, most notably in arrangements for Mike Oldfield, Elvis Costello, Frankie goes to Hollywood, Roy Harper, Propaganda, China Crisis, Enya, Billy Bragg and many more. He has also done orchestrations for the films 'The Killing Fields', 'Supergrass', 'Absolute Beginners', 'Meeting Venus', 'Orlando', and was Choral Coordinator for 'The Mission'. He has written original music for several of the Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense TV series. Another aspect of Bedford's work is composing for educational purposes - he was appointed Youth Music Director of the English Sinfonia in 1986, and Composer in Association in 1994. His music in this genre ranges from small pieces for pupils with little or no musical knowledge, to 7 school operas. He is in frequent demand for creative workshops and composition projects throughout the U.K. and overseas. His innovative approach has led to such works as 'Seascapes' (1986) and 'Frameworks' (1989), in which students are encouraged to create their own music in the context of a public concert with a professional orchestra - these two pieces have so far involved over 4000 students. His largest major educational piece is 'Stories from the Dreamtime', (1991) for 40 deaf children and symphony orchestra. For over 30 years he has received commissions from major orchestras, festivals, ensembles and soloists, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, English Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, John Alldis Choir, Singcircle, Electric Phoenix, Endymion Ensemble, Sir Peter Pears, Jane's Minstrels, BASBWE, The Composers Ensemble, The Aldeburgh Festival, Harrogate Festival, Spitalfields Festival, Chelmsford Festival, Huddersfield Festival, Kings Lynn Festival, Norfolk and Norwich Festival and many BBC commissions including 4 for the Proms. His most recent projects include, 'A Charm of Joy', a commission for choir and strings for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival 1996, where he was composer in residence; a major choral/orchestral commission, 'A Charm of Blessings', for the Spitalfields Festival 1997, and a string quartet commissioned by the Norfolk and Norwich Music Club for the Schidlof Quartet to perform in their 1998 season. He has recently completed an oboe concerto commissioned by the John Lewis Partnership for Nick Daniel for 10 performances in October 1998. Future projects include a major commission from the BBC Symphony Orchestra for a Festival Hall performance in April 1999 as part of the BBC's Sounding the Century series. This will be followed by a commission from the Academy of Ancient Music for a piece for orchestra. This is part of their new policy of commissioning new pieces and is the 2nd in the series which was initiated with a commission from John Tavener.
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Reg Brunt
Reg plays piano and is a member of a national organisation called COMA (Contemporary Music for Amateurs). It has been set up for amateur musicians of all abilities to meet on a regular basis in Bristol. National meetings and workshops happen once a year and range from soloists to full orchestra. If anyone is interested, please contact Ann Claxton tel. 0117 950 7404
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Sulyen Caradon
01225 313531
SCA CHAIRMAN - Sulyen Caradon was born in Gravesend in 1942, of Cornish extraction. His mother, Margaret, was a piano student at the Royal Academy of Music before the war. After a childhood of piano lessons and singing in choirs, he took up the clarinet at Ardingly College, from where he proceeded to the Guildhall School of Music to study composition with Peter Wishart, and later, Michael Bowles at the Birmingham School of Music. He played in Cornelius Cardew's SCRATCH ORCHESTRA in London during the sixties, and, more recently, co-ordinated the South-West Region of COMA (Contemporary Music for Amateurs) from 1993-98. He plays clarinet in his professional quintet, SYLFANOME, and conducts the amateur, ZEPHYRIAN WOODWIND ORCHESTRA. Having a strong interest in ecology, he stood as Green Party candidate for North Somerset in the 1979 General Election, and has continued involvement with the local group of Friends of the Earth.
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Susan Coppard
01225 866 679
CD/cassette/sheet music are all available for Sue's pieces - phone or email for a Squeeze Music Mail Order Catalogue or to place an order.
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Julian Dale
Julian is a former winner of the Huddersfield Young Composers' Competition, whose music has been broadcast on Radio 3 & Channel 4 TV. He has written for diverse professional & amateur groups, including a body of work in an extended-tonal idiom for amateur orchestras & string ensembles. A number of his works have prominent parts for double bass (his own instrument). He has also made string arrangments of a large quantity of music from Machaut to Satie. Sample CD on request.
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Frank Harvey
01793 770139
www.britishacademy.com/members/harvey.htm
Born Southampton 1939. Frank received his initial musical training as an army bandsman, and subsequently at Southampton University as a mature student. An interest in composition was encouraged first by Jonathan Harvey (no relation) and then by the late David Gow. He has lived in the village of Purton, near Swindon in Wiltshire for many years, and much of his work has been written for local schools. This has ranged from the popular style of incidental music for Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to a quasi-operatic setting of the Goddess' Trio in Shakespeare's The Tempest. In collaboration with a drama teacher, David Calder he has written a musical called Black Bart's Treasure. The music for a play about Brunel was developed into an organ piece GWR 150, which in turn led to a setting by a local poet Mary Ratcliffe about the Swindon Railway Works entitled The Ballad of Steam. He has also written an orchestral work Moonlight Sonata 1940, inspired by some disturbing childhood memories of the Southampton blitz, a symphony, and chamber music. Some of his songs have been performed by the English Poetry and Song Society. A recently commissioned work, A Purton Suite for Brass Band was performed in 2000 by Swindon Brass.
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Jean Hasse
www.visible-music.com
Jean Hasse is an American composer and performer who has lived in England since late 1994. She has worked as a music publisher, editor, copyist, teacher, performer and concert producer. She recently completed an MA in Composing for Film and Television at the University at Bristol and now teaches Composition in the Music Department. Recent works include: Collections Considered, for violin (performed by Peter Sheppard-Skaerved at the British Museum), Flip, for sax qt and strings (St George's Hall, Bristol), and various scores for short films. She composed a musical soundscape to precede the University of Bristol Vice-Chancellor's lecture on Brunel and Science in December 2006. Jean is currently writing a new score to accompany screenings of the 1926 silent film FAUST (F.W. Murnau, Director, 106 min). She will conduct the South West Ensemble (CoMA SW and University of Bristol players) in performances in Bristol (Victoria Rooms, 13 October 2007) and London (Barbican Centre, Cinema 1, 21 October). Please see the Visible Music website for further information.
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Liz Heighway
Liz Heighway comes originally from North Yorkshire and took a history degree at Leeds University. She did a mature degree in music at Oxford Brookes from 2001-2006. She is a now research student reading for a PhD; her subject is the music of the Severn river. She is married and has two grown-up children, both musicians.
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Steven Kings
www.stevenkings.co.uk
Steven Kings was born in 1962. He studied music at St John's College Cambridge and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He now lives in Bristol, playing and teaching the piano, and working as an accompanist, chorus master and conductor. In 1985 he won the Young Composers Competition at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with Snapshots for flute, saxophone, `cello, double bass and percussion. Several of his scores have been shortlisted by the Society for the Promotion of New Music, including Phantasy V (for solo clarinet) in 1984, Window Waiting (for Tenor, Choir and String Quartet) in 1991, and Passion Games (for viola) in 1999. In 2002 Steven was one of the prize winners in the Tong Piano Duet competition, and "red land spring" for piano duet was performed in Tokyo and London. His "haiku mass" was nominated for a British Composer Award in 2003. His setting of the Canticles, Songs of Mary and Simeon, was commissioned by the Worcester Cathedral Chamber Choir, and first performed by them at the 2005 Three Choirs Festival.
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Liz Lane
www.lizlane.co.uk
See Liz's website for biographical details.
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Jolyon Laycock
01761 490378
www.rainbowtrack.co.uk
1 Paradise Row, Woollard,
Pensford, Bristol,
BS39 4HY.
SCA TREASURER - Dr. Jolyon Laycock - Composer, pianist, poet, teacher, lecturer, music animateur, researcher. Born in Bath in 1946; Studied for B.Mus and M.Phil in composition at the University of Nottingham under Ivor Keys and Arnold Whittall. Additional composition studies with Roger Smalley, Pierre Marietan, Michel Decoust, Henri Pousseur and Cornelius Cardew. During the 1970s pursued a freelance career as an experimental sound artist based at the Birmingham Arts Laboratory, and Spectro Arts Workshop in Newcastle on Tyne, presenting work in galleries and arts centres in the UK and Europe. In 1979 took up the post of Music and Dance Co-ordinator at the Arnolfini in Bristol, running a programme of contemporary music and dance regarded as one of the most innovative outside London. In 1990 took up the post of Concert Director at the University of Bath and at the newly opened Michael Tippett Centre at Bath Spa University College and founded the award-winning concert series “Rainbow over Bath”. In 1996, initiated the programme “Rainbow across Europe”, funded by the European Kaleidoscope Fund. This collaborative network of concert promoters and educational institutions in several European cities in France, Netherlands, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Austria was described by Gillian Perkins as a ground breaking initiative which took British techniques of “creative music making into European classrooms in several countries at once”. Left the University of Bath in 2000 to concentrate on the completion of doctoral thesis: “Rather Special People - a changing role for the composer in society” (University of York). Founded the Rainbow Foundation in 2001 to carry on and develop the work in creative music-making in an international context initiated by “Rainbow over Bath”. A CD of my Instrumental and choral music is available from the Rainbow Foundation. It features the following performances: “A Dream of Flying”; Rainbow International Ensemble, conductor Roger Heaton; “Edgar the King”; Eclectic Voices and Western Sinfonia, conductor Scott Stroman; “Mengjiang Weeping at the Wall”; UK Chinese Ensemble, Rainbow International Ensemble, junior school children from Corsham and members of Corsham Choral Society, conductor Nicholas Keyworth.
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Nick Moor
...sorry, no other online info yet...
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James Patten
www.jamespatten.co.uk
Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize, 1963.
Professor of Composition, Trinity College of Music, London, 1965-1970.
Music performed on BBC Radio and Television (Omnibus, The Wednesday Play, Blue Peter), ABC Radio and SA Radio.
Member of the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.
Member of the International Gustav Mahler Society.
Member of the Samuel Beckett Society.
Member of the DAAD Alumni Forum.
Trinity College of Music Alumni.
Mentioned in the International Who's Who in Music.
Included in Debrett's Directory: People of Today.
Entry in the British Music Yearbook.
Entry in the International Cambridge Biographical Dictionary.
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John Pitts
0117 904 8902
www.johnpitts.co.uk
SCA SECRETARY - b.1976 Kingston-upon-Thames. Winner of the Philharmonia Orchestra Martin Musical Scholarship Fund Composition Prize 2003 (Piano Quartet).
SPNM shortlisted composer (Typhus 99, Nuts & Bolts 02). After a gap year in Pakistan, a BA (Bristol 98) and a MusM (Manchester 99) he now teaches music in Bristol. He has written music for four plays, and two short operatic works - Crossed Wires (Huddersfield Festival 97) and 3 Sliced Mice - commissioned by Five Brothers Pasta Sauces and performed under his own baton in Bristol. His music has also been performed by the Contemporary Consort, Fidelio Piano Quartet, COMA's London Ensemble, Bristol University Symphony Orchestra. His piano duet Changes was recently broadcast in Austria. He writes music for Christian worship, and a new setting of O little town of Bethlehem was released November 03 on the Naxos Book of Carols CD, sung by the award-winning choir Tonus Peregrinus, (conducted by his brother Antony Pitts) and released in July 04 by Faber. John also has conducted Tarantara Tarantara, Pirates of Penzance and Gondoliers with the Bristol Savoy Operatic Society - Iolanthe in July 06.
Scores and Parts are available online from SibeliusMusic (price in $US), or order hard copies direct from the composer (price in £UK, +£3 p&p per order).
If you can't see any music after clicking on a score then follow the link at the bottom of the new page, and download SCORCH free - it takes only a few seconds).
Some scores now available as paperbacks from lulu.com - see below!
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Geoffrey Poole
01225 865383
www.geoffreypoole.com
Geoffrey Poole settled in the South West in January 2001, having been born in Suffolk in 1949, grown up in London, and lectured at Manchester University from 1976. He is a contemporary classical composer with an internationalist outlook, which results in various approaches to the synthesis of high art and high folk traditions from Europe, Africa and Asia. He has also lived in Nairobi (1985-7), and in the USA as Visiting Fellow in Composition at Princeton (1997-8). He is currently Reader and Director of Composition at Bristol University.His works include three string quartets commissioned by The Lindsays, orchestral music live or broadcast by the Halle, RLPO, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and others, choral music broadcast by The King's Singers, the Tavener Consort / BCMG and the BBC Singers, a new Sheherazade-style voyage for RNCM Wind Orchestra and some very unusual concertos: Two-Way Talking for Ghanean Drummer and 5 ensembles, Swans Reflecting Elephants for Javanese Gamelan and chamber orchestra, and Lucifer for piano and 21 loud instruments scheduled for London Premiere in the BMIC Cutting Edge series on 6 November 2003. He has also written several works for children, including the widely played recorder pieces Skally Skarekrow's Whistling Book, and Look Behind You! commissioned by Chamber Music 2000 and included in the Schubert Ensemble's latest NMC disc. Geoff has served on many public bodies including North West Arts Board, BBC Reading Panels, SPNM Reading Panels and Board of Directors, and ISCM Board of Directors. Currently his music is represented on Metier, ASC, Serendipity, RCA, Forsyth and NMC recording labels, and is published by Maecenas Contemporary Composers, self-published, or Forsyths.
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Geoffrey Self
Geoffrey Self MPhil BMus, born in 1930, was Somerset County Music Organiser from 1959, and Head of Music at Cornwall College from 1964 for 17 years. He conducted the Somerset County Orchestra (1959-64) and Cornwall Symphony Orchestra (1972-81), receiving the honour of the Gorsedd Shield for services to music in Cornwall in 1981. Since then he has authored six books, most recently Light Music in Britain (2001) published by Ashgate. He has composed works for orchestra, chamber groups, piano, organ, SATB and songs, several of which have been published by Novello and Animus.
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David Simmonds
01761 419367
David Simmonds was born in London, in 1953, and moved to the West Country in 1976. He earns his living as a Chartered Building Surveyor, in his own practice. David studied composition, privately, with Nicholas Keyworth and, as a lifelong learning student, in the Composers' Workshop at the University of Bristol, with Dr. John Pickard, Joylon Laycock and Mark Henry. David sings, as a tenor, with the RSCM Cathedral Singers and the group Schola Anglicana. He is the Musical Director of the Beckington Choir, near Frome in Somerset. David's compositions range from instrumental to choral works, both Sacred and Secular and including: "For the Fallen" a cantata for Remembrance Day (for Mezzo Soprano, SATB Choir, Trumpet, Cor Anglais, Percussion and Strings); and a setting of the Requiem Mass (for organ, SATB choir and percussion). David's String Quartet No. 1 was performed by the Emerald Quartet in a Severnside Composers' Alliance concert at Bristol University in June 2007.
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Raymond Warren
members.sibeliusmusic.com/rwarren
Raymond Warren was born in 1928 and studied at Cambridge University and later privately with Michael Tippett and Lennox Berkeley. From 1955-72 he taught at Queen's University, Belfast and was also Resident Composer to the Ulster Orchestra, a post which involved both composing for them and also conducting concerts of contemporary music. He was Professor of Music at Bristol University from 1972-94. His compositions include three symphonies, a violin concerto, an oratorio "Continuing Cities", two passion settings, three string quartets, and six operas, of which three are church operas for children. There are three song cycles, one commissioned by Peter Pears. He is also the author of a book,"Opera Workshop", giving a composer's view of the art of opera.
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Eric Wetherell
www.ericwetherell.co.uk
Eric was born in Tynemouth and trained as an organist and pianist at The Queen's College, Oxford. He went on to the Royal College of Music to study with Gordon Jacob and Harold Darke. He also studied composition with Herbert Howells. He left to join the horn section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and later was a repetiteur at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for three years. He has been Assistant Musical Director of Welsh National Opera, Musical Director for HTV and Chief Conductor of the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra. Until his retirement from the BBC in 1985 he was Senior Music Producer, Bristol. His compositions cover all forms of music from orchestral suites, wind band and brass band works to jazz. He has written choral pieces and children's songs, and music for TV and films. Recent compositions include Bushes and Briars, a choral work commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia, and a cantata, The Diaries of Adam and Eve, premiered at St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol in June 2000. He has written biographies of Gordon Jacob, Arnold Cooke, Patrick Hadley and the violinist Albert Sammons, and has contributed entries on all four to the next edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Eric was guest conductor of White Horse Opera's production of Bellini's Norma in October 2000.
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Margaret Woodley
No online info yet...
All material copyright (c) 2005 Severnside Composers Alliance 0117 904 8902 severnsidecomposersalliance@blueyonder.co.uk