Geoffrey King (born 1949) is a British composer and teacher. [1]
Born in Croydon, England, King's first musical studies were at the Royal School of Church Music at Addington Palace. Later, at the Royal College of Music, he studied with Humphrey Searle, Justin Connolly and Alexander Goehr. As a postgraduate, he undertook further work with Alexander Goehr at University of Southampton and also with Jonathan Harvey. With an Italian government scholarship, he went to study with Ernesto Rubin de Cervin at the Conservatorio "Benedetto Marcello" in Venice.
In 1976, King moved to Edinburgh to work at St Mary's Music School and during this time, together with Peter Nelson, he formed ECAT, the Scottish promoter of new music concerts. After twelve years in Edinburgh, he moved to The Hague to do further study at the Koninklijk Conservatorium and subsequently settled in Amsterdam, where he now lives. From 1987-89 he was composer-in-residence at Huddersfield Polytechnic and then at the NCOS (National Centre for Orchestral Studies) in London.
Geoffrey King has written about 100 works. His orchestral music includes several symphonies and concertante pieces. He has also written much instrumental/chamber music and some vocal and theatre music. He has been commissioned and performed by some of the main ensembles and new music promoters, including Aldeburgh Festival, Almeida Festival, Arditti Quartet, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, ECAT, Edinburgh International Festival, London Sinfonietta, Lontano, Musica Nova, Nash Ensemble, Piano Circus, Schönberg Ensemble, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Slagwerkgroep Den Haag and St. Magnus Festival.
Stuart Oliver Knussen was a British composer of contemporary classical music and conductor. Among the most influential British composers of his generation, his relatively few compositions are "rooted in 20th-century modernism, [but] beholden to no school but his own"
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music.
Peter Alexander Goehr was a German-born English composer of contemporary classical music and academic teacher. A long-time professor of music at the University of Cambridge, Goehr influenced many notable contemporary composers, including Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson, George Benjamin and Robin Holloway.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.
Thomas Wilson CBE FRSE was an American-born Scottish composer, a key figure in the revival of interest in Scottish classical music after the second world war.
The National Youth Orchestra (NYO), formerly the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, is the national youth orchestra of the United Kingdom, consisting of 164 members of ages 13 to 19 years. Auditions take place in the autumn each year at various locations in the country. The minimum standard needed to audition is ABRSM / Trinity Guildhall / London College of Music Grade 8 Distinction, though it is not necessary to have taken any examinations. In 2011, the orchestra was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society's Best Ensemble Award. In 2012, the NYO received the Queen's Medal for Music. In 2015 the NYO received the Royal Philharmonic Society's Ensemble award, which recognized particularly the launch of NYO Inspire as well as their other work.
Robert Kemsley (Robin) Orr was a Scottish organist and composer.
Sarah Frances Beamish is a British composer and violist. Her works include chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music. She has also worked in the field of music, theatre, film and television, as well as composing for children and for her local community.
Silvina Milstein is an Argentine composer and scholar of twentieth-century music, living in the United Kingdom and teaching at King's College London. Her music has been described as "turbulent and hesitantly ecstatic", as well as "highly poetic", "rich and dense". In 2018 her piece shan shui was nominated for the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber-Scale Composition.
Matthew King is a British composer, pianist, and educator. His works include opera, piano and chamber music, and choral and orchestral pieces. He has been described by Judith Weir, Master of the Queen’s Music, as “one of Britain's most adventurous composers, utterly skilled, imaginative, and resourceful."
Albert Meredith Davies CBE was a British conductor, renowned for his advocacy of English music by composers such as Benjamin Britten, Frederick Delius and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
David Horne is a Scottish composer, pianist, and teacher.
Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music.
Nicholas Sackman is an English classical composer.
Geoffrey Paterson is a British conductor.
Lyell Richard Cresswell was a New Zealand composer of contemporary classical music. He was the younger brother of philosopher Max Cresswell. Cresswell studied in Wellington, Toronto, Aberdeen and Utrecht and lived and worked in Edinburgh from 1985 on. Although he lived more than half his life away from New Zealand, he regarded himself as a New Zealander.
Helen Grime is a Scottish composer of contemporary classical music. Her work, Virga, was selected as one of the best ten new classical works of the 2000s by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Classical music in Scotland is all art music in the Western European classical tradition, between its introduction in the eighteenth century until the present day. The development of a distinct tradition of art music in Scotland was limited by the impact of the Scottish Reformation on ecclesiastical music from the sixteenth century. Concerts, largely composed of "Scottish airs", developed in the seventeenth century and classical instruments were introduced to the country. Music in Edinburgh prospered through the patronage of figures including Sir John Clerk of Penicuik. The Italian style of classical music was probably first brought to Scotland by the cellist and composer Lorenzo Bocchi, who travelled to Scotland in the 1720s. The Musical Society of Edinburgh was incorporated in 1728. Several Italian musicians were active in the capital in this period and there are several known Scottish composers in the classical style, including Thomas Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie, the first Scot known to have produced a symphony.