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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

The SCA online database currently lists no scores by Eric Wetherell.