22 members of the
Severnside Composers Alliance
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.
....................................................................
Adrian Beaumont
...no info online yet...
....................................................................
David Bedford (1937-2011)
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.
....................................................................
Geoffrey Brace
01392877810
19 High St., Topsham
Exeter
EX3 0EA
Geoffrey Brace was born in Bristol on February 18, 1930.
Educated at Queen Elizabeth's Hospital and Bristol University (BA hons French) but with no formal music education until he took up his first teaching post in London. where he studied at Morley College with Anthony Milner, Iain Hamilton and John Gardner. During some thirty years in secondary schools (grammar, Comprehensive and independent) his composing was entirely based on his work - choral arrangements, choral compositions and musical plays- two of the latter 'A young man's fancy' and 'All Aboard' published by Chester. Since retiring , he has ventured into the wider world of instrumental and orchestral pieces but only in the context of local amateur performance. ( He firmly believes there is no point in writing anything unless you're pretty sure someone is going to play it at least once.) These include Ode to Music (Kathleen Raine)for soprano, baritone, chorus and chamber orchestra Little Suite for small orchestra ( wind, horns, str.) and, in process Four West Country Dances (full orch.)
....................................................................
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
....................................................................
Sulyen Caradon
01225 313531
Sulyen Caradon founded the Severnside Composers Alliance and served as Chairman until 2007. He 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.
....................................................................
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.
....................................................................
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.
....................................................................
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.
....................................................................
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. He was Chairman of the Severnside Alliance from 2007 to 2011.
....................................................................
Liz Lane
www.lizlane.co.uk
See Liz's website for biographical details.
....................................................................
Jolyon Laycock
01761 490378
www.rainbowtrack.co.uk
1 Paradise Row, Woollard,
Pensford, Bristol,
BS39 4HY.
Dr. Jolyon Laycock - SCA Chairman since May 2011 - 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: “A changing role for the composer in society” (University of York) now published as a book by Peter Lang, AG, Bern, Switzerland. Senior Lecturer in Arts Management and Musicology, Oxford Brookes University 2004-2010. 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.
....................................................................
Nick Moor
...sorry, no other online info yet...
....................................................................
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.
....................................................................
John Pitts
0117 904 8902
www.johnpitts.co.uk
New CD - visit cd.tp/ipm08
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.
John's CD of "intensely pleasant music" has attracted a large number of very positive reviews - see below. He has also written a range of chamber music, plus 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, Kiev Piano Duo.
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, Gondoliers and Iolanthe with the Bristol Savoy Operatic Society.
From January 2010 John has been the Assistant Conductor of the Bristol Millennium Orchestra, recently conducting the Iron Acton Prom in the Meadow Juy 2011.
His piano triet "Are You Going?" was given its concert world premiere, alongside his duet "Changes for 20 nifty fingers" in the Kiev Chamber Music Festival 2010, performed by internationally acclaimed pianists Dmytro Tavanets, Oleksandra Zaytseva and Antoniy Baryshevkiy).
His new piano duet "Raag Gezellig" is the competition piece in the International Piano Duet Competition in Valberg France December 2011.
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 - please see below!
Steven Kings - intensely pleasant music: 7 Airs & Fantasias and other piano music by John Pitts
cd.tp/ipm08 [77.49]
£9.99 (plus p&p) www.cd.tp/ipm08
"Realmente un magnífico repertorio desbordante de calidad, belleza y de sumo interés."
Alejandro Clavijo, Reviews New Age
"The performances by Steven Kings are excellent ...
All [the pieces] are pleasing to hear and will be satisfying to play"
Patric Standford, Music & Vision Daily
“This is a colorful and interesting set by a talented composer....
The playing by Steven Kings is technically and emotionally perfect."
Oleg Ledeniov, MusicWeb International
Stephen Eddins, All Music Guide
“great character and emotional integrity...a thoroughly worthwhile project”
Mark Tanner, Piano Professional Magazine
“recomendable"
Adolfo del Brezo, OpusMusica.com (Spain)
“…surely more than just `intensely pleasant music'.”
Michael Darvell, ClassicalSource.com
Paul Riley, Venue Magazine
Robert Matthew-Walker, Musical Opinion Magazine
Andy Gill, The Independent
“…highly listenable stuff, very deftly in control of its chosen medium. A number of disparate influences are on display here, but welded into an overall idiom of considerable charm… `Intensely pleasant music'? Most certainly.”
Calum MacDonald, International Record Review Magazine
9/10 “this album is beautiful, moving and relaxing”
Andy Whitehead, Cross Rhythms
“A colossal musical project… stunning and seriously impressive" John France, MusicWeb International
"Exciting stuff all round - vital, energising, but sensitive when need be. Toes - prepare to tap." Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International
....................................................................
Geoffrey Poole
07909 975940
www.geoffreypoole.co.uk
Kiama, The Close,
Ruscombe, Stroud, Glos
GL6 6DE
Geoffrey Poole performed several of his solo piano works to the London public before the age of 21, when Wymondham Chants launched his professional career. Subsequent choral works range from the informal (Imerina) to the vast cantata Blackbird (BBCPhil 1994) and an intricate concerto of vocalities, The Colour of My Song (BBC Singers, 2006). His major instrumental composition include several intercultural concertos, such as that for Ghanean drummer (Two Way Talking, MusICA Poole portrait concert 1993), for Javanese gamelan (Swans Reflecting Elephants, BBCSO / South Bank Gamelan 2004), and a sardonic piano-concerto take on the Western millennium (Lucifer, on NMC, 2005). Residencies in Nairobi, Seoul, and USA as Visiting Fellow at Princeton, have provided stimulus while he sustained a distinguished 34-year University career at Manchester until 2001 then to Bristol, becoming Professor in 2004. Retiring in 2009 has allowed him to reappear as piano soloist and conductor, live and on a forthcoming CD. He is currently writing for New York Polyphony, New Bristol Sinfonia, and extending the pianistic cornucopia Chinese Whispers. He is published by Edition Peters, has over 4 hours of his work on commercial CD and he was accorded an extended appreciation in Tempo (249) by Dr. Deniz Ertan. He lives with his wife Celia in the Cotswolds.
....................................................................
Geoffrey Self (1930-2008)
Geoffrey Self MPhil BMus (1930-2008)
Severnside Composers Alliance regrets to announce that our greatly respected member, Geoffrey Self died at home in Bridgwater on October 20th 2008. His ashes are interred in the churchyard of St. Euny, Redruth.
Geoffrey 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. He authored six books, including a highly acclaimed study of E.J. Moeran and, most recently, Light Music in Britain (2001) published by Ashgate. He composed works for orchestra, chamber groups, piano, organ, SATB and songs, several of which have been published by Novello and Animus.
Read more: Geoffrey Self - An Appreciation
....................................................................
Andre Shlimon
07980 339010
www.andreshlimon.bandcamp.com
Andre Shlimon is an alternative-classical pianist and composer based in Bristol, and composes mainly for his own performance either as a soloist (piano / piano with vocals) or in small ensembles. He studied at Trinity College of Music with Hilary Coates (piano) and Alwynne Pritchard (composition), where he won awards for both performance and composition. He's also a singer, songwriter and poet. Alternative-classical music is like contemporary classical but more middle-brow and with more pop/rock influences. It's like Radiohead mixed with Bartok. And Leonard Cohen.
....................................................................
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 Voices and the Cantamus Chamber Choir. 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.
....................................................................
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.
....................................................................
Tim Warren
....................................................................
Eric Wetherell
www.ericwetherell.co.uk
Eric Wetherell was a professional horn player for some years after an academic musical training at Oxford and the Royal College of Music. He was a repetiteur at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Assistant Musical Director and Conductor with the Welsh National Opera, Musical Director for HTV, Chief Conductor for the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra and, up to retirement, Senior Music Producer for the BBC South and West. He has written orchestral works, wind band and brass band compositions, choral works, chamber music, children’s songs and music for films and TV.
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 new Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Eric Wetherell has lived and worked in Bristol for over 30 years and has worked with local musicians and amateur groups, directed local orchestras and choirs, and performed a series of workshops and performances with a group of disabled young adults in South Wales.
Now concentrating mainly on composing, Eric has written orchestral suites, jazz, wind band and brass band works, choral pieces, children’s songs and music for TV and films. He has completed reduced scores of Carmen, A Masked Ball and Macbeth for Midland Opera, based in Birmingham, their annual major productions for the last 3 years. He has also orchestrated most of the Gilbert and Sullivan light operas to make them suitable for performance using chamber orchestras, making them particularly appropriate for amateur companies, working within constrained budgets and with limited orchestral pit space.
He is at present working on a group of part songs featuring Shakespearean sonnets for the students of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Eric Wetherell was recently one of eight short-listed nominees for the first Sternberg Award, given by The Times newspaper “for those over 70 who are still contributing greatly to society”.
As a composer, recent works have included
• Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra
• ‘The Diaries of Adam and Eve’ (a large scale work for orchestra, two singers and two narrators, based on two Mark Twain short stories)
• ‘Bristol Quay Suite’ for string orchestra
• ‘We Are the Women’ (a song cycle for two sopranos and piano which focusses on the First World War)
• Bushes & Briars, for chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia
• Flute Concerto for the Brazilian flautist Marcelo Barboza
• Three Shakespearian Sonnets for solo voice and piano
• Concerto for Recorder and Strings (scheduled for performance in the spring of 2010) for John Turner
• The Painter’s Eye - a song commissioned by the Romney Society in Cumbria
• Salutation: an overture written as a commission from Trinity School in Carlisle for their 40th Anniversary concert in Carlisle Cathedral
Further information about his experience and background can be found on Eric’s website www.ericwetherell.co.uk
....................................................................
Margaret Woodley
No online info yet...
All material copyright (c) 2011 Severnside Composers Alliance 0117 904 8902 severnsidecomposersalliance@blueyonder.co.uk