Will Gregory

Last updated

Will Gregory
William Owen Gregory.webp
Background information
Birth nameWilliam Owen Gregory
Born (1959-09-17) 17 September 1959 (age 65)
Bristol, England
Genres Electronic, trip hop, synthpop, Western orchestral/chamber
Occupation(s)Musician, record producer
Instrument(s) Keyboards, drum programming, guitars, synthesizer, oboe, saxophone
Years active1981–present
Labels Mute

William Owen Gregory (born 17 September 1959) is an English musician and record producer. He is best known as the lead keyboardist, producer, and composer of the electronic music duo Goldfrapp.

Contents

Early life

Gregory was born in Bristol, [1] the son of an actress and an opera chorus-line singer. [2]

I got into music kind of by default as it was the only thing I was good at – I was the weird one at school who practiced the piano during lunch break. In my teens I met other musicians and was so relieved to find some like-minds that I think I never wanted to leave the 'weird' muso club – perhaps it’s the same for many musicians. I ended up playing oboe and then moved on to sax, which got me into diverse musical disciplines. [3]

He studied Western orchestral and chamber music at the University of York. [4]

Career

In the 1980s, Gregory predominantly recorded and toured with Tears for Fears. [5]

In the 1990s, Gregory performed with artists including Peter Gabriel, the Cure, and Portishead, as well as playing oboe for Tori Amos and recording with Paula Rae Gibson. [6] In 1991, he played saxophone with the London Sinfonietta for the Paris début of John Adams's opera Nixon in China. [7] In 1999, vocalist Alison Goldfrapp and Gregory formed the duo Goldfrapp. The pairing has led to international critical, popular, and commercial success. [8]

In the 2000s, as well as Goldfrapp activities, he played saxophone on Portishead's 2008 album Third (on the tracks "Magic Doors" and "Threads").

On 31 March 2011, Gregory's first opera, Piccard in Space, premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. The libretto by Hattie Naylor focused on Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer's first balloon ascent, and the theories of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, both of whom are characters in the drama. The reviews were generally negative. [9]

On 11 March 2013, a newly commissioned baroquesque Gregory work (for orchestra and Moog, based on a sarabande of Johann Sebastian Bach) was performed at the Roundhouse in London. The performance was part of BBC Radio 3's Baroque Remixed series, which also included a piece by Matthew Herbert. [10]

Gregory's other saxophone work includes writing for and playing with the Apollo Saxophone Quartet, [11] and playing with Spiritualized, Moondog and Michael Nyman. [12] [13]

He composed the music for the 2017 series Spy in the Wild . [14]

He composed the music for the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2019 production of King John at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. [15] [16] It was announced in 2021 that Gregory would provide an original score featuring Alison Goldfrapp and Adrian Utley for the BBC and Amazon Prime Video psychological thriller series Chloe. [17]

Discography

with Tears for Fears

with Tori Amos

with Peter Gabriel

with Portishead

with other artists

Film soundtracks

Television soundtracks

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auguste Piccard</span> Swiss physicist, inventor, and explorer

Auguste Antoine Piccard was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer known for his record-breaking hydrogen balloon flights, with which he studied the Earth's upper atmosphere and became the first person to enter the Stratosphere. Piccard was also known for his invention of the first bathyscaphe, FNRS-2, with which he made a number of unmanned dives in 1948 to explore the ocean's depths.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gavin Bryars</span> Musical artist

Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has worked in jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, avant-garde, and experimental music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Mackerras</span> Australian conductor

Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the English National Opera and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He also specialized in Czech music as a whole, producing many recordings for the Czech label Supraphon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joby Talbot</span> British composer

Joby Talbot is a British composer. He has written for a wide variety of purposes, with a broad range of styles, including instrumental and vocal concert music, film and television scores, pop arrangements and works for dance. He is known, to sometimes disparate audiences, for quite different works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thea Musgrave</span> Scottish composer (born 1928)

Thea Musgrave CBE is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music. She has lived in the United States since 1972.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) is a British period instrument orchestra. The OAE is a resident orchestra of the Southbank Centre, London, associate orchestra at Glyndebourne Festival Opera Artistic Associate at Kings Place, and has its headquarters at Acland Burghley School. The leadership is rotated between four musicians: Matthew Truscott, Kati Debretzeni, Huw Daniel and Margaret Faultless.

<i>Felt Mountain</i> 2000 studio album by Goldfrapp

Felt Mountain is the debut studio album by English electronic music duo Goldfrapp. It was released on 11 September 2000 by Mute Records. The album takes influence from a variety of music styles such as 1960s pop, cabaret, folk and electronica.

Dame Judith Weir is a British composer. She served as Master of the King's Music from 2014 to 2024. Appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir was the first woman to hold this office.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Utley</span> British guitarist

Adrian Francis Utley is an English musician and producer, and a member of the band Portishead.

Stephen Gregory is an English jazz saxophonist and composer. He plays tenor, alto, soprano and baritone saxophone as well as the flute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Hazlewood</span> British conductor (born 1959)

Charles Matthew Egerton Hazlewood is a British conductor. After winning the European Broadcasting Union conducting competition in 1995 whilst still in his twenties, Hazlewood has had a career as an international conductor, music director of film and theatre, composer and a curator of music on British radio and television, Motivational Speaker and founder of Paraorchestra – the world's first integrated ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians. He was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in May 2019 and became Sky Arts' Ambassador for Music in January 2021. In 2023 Hazlewood was recognised for his 'outstanding contribution to the musical life of the UK' when awarded the Sir Charles Groves Prize by music charity Making Music.

Dai Fujikura is a Japanese-born composer of contemporary classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Jenkins (musician)</span> Welsh musician

Mark Jenkins is a Welsh musician and music writer. He has written interviews and instrument reviews for UK and international magazines including Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Music Week, International Musician, Keyboard (US), and Mac Format, and has also written a book, Analog Synthesizers, 2nd Edition 2019. He currently writes for the US magazine, Synth & Software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Poore</span> British independent musician (born 1966)

David Nicholas Poore is a British independent musician, who has composed and produced music for over 200 films by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Disney, PBS, National Geographic, RTÉ and other broadcasters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Get the Blessing</span> British jazz group

Get the Blessing are a jazz rock quartet based in Bristol, England. The band formed in 2000 when Jim Barr and Clive Deamer (drums), who had played with Portishead, joined Jake McMurchie (saxophone) and Pete Judge (trumpet) over their appreciation of Ornette Coleman.

James Ralph "Jake" Drake-Brockman was a Bristol-based English musician and sound recordist. Drake-Brockman was known to fans as "the fifth Bunnyman", as he had been associated with the Liverpool group Echo & the Bunnymen since the 1980s and became a full-time member, as keyboardist, in 1989, using the professional name Jake Brockman.

Qigang Chen is a Chinese-French composer who has lived in France since 1984 and obtained French citizenship in 1992.

The BBC Radio Orchestra was a broadcasting orchestra based in London, maintained by the British Broadcasting Corporation from 1964 until 1991.

Eleanor Deanne Therese Alberga is a Jamaican contemporary music composer who lives and works in the United Kingdom. Her most recent compositions include two Violin Concertos, a Trumpet Concerto and a Symphony.

References

  1. ↑ "Synth whizz Will Gregory gears up with ATC SCM25A". TransAudio Group.
  2. ↑ "Goldfrapp's Will Gregory on Their Enduring Partnership". Thebrag.com. 29 March 2017.
  3. ↑ "Will Gregory Interview – The Moog Ensemble!". Musictech.net. 29 September 2014.
  4. ↑ "Will Gregory composes debut opera for BBC Concert Orchestra: Piccard in Space". BBC. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  5. ↑ "Players | Will Gregory Moog Ensemble". www.willgregorymoogensemble.co.uk. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
  6. ↑ "Biography of Paula Rae Gibson". Jazz CDs. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  7. ↑ "Goldfrapp's Will Gregory tackles opera with Piccard in Space". The Times . Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  8. ↑ Raphael, Amy (16 October 2015). "A siren sings". The Guardian . Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  9. ↑ 1 April 2011 press on Piccard in Space, included: "Gregory Piccard in Space, Queen Elizabeth Hall – Reviews – Classical – The Independent". The Independent . London. 1 April 2011.; "Piccard in Space, Queen Elizabeth Hall, review – Telegraph". The Daily Telegraph . 1 April 2011. and "Piccard in Space, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London – FT.com" . Financial Times . 1 April 2011.
  10. ↑ "Baroque Remixed – Part 2". BBC. 2013. Retrieved 11 March 2013.
  11. ↑ "Biography | Apollo saxophone quartet". Apollosaxophonequartet.com.
  12. ↑ "10 Questions for Musician Will Gregory". theartsdesk.com. 4 May 2019.
  13. ↑ "Post". The Viking of 6th Avenue. 9 June 2014.
  14. ↑ "BBC – Spy in the Wild – Media Centre". BBC.
  15. ↑ "Latest Press Releases | Royal Shakespeare Company". Rsc.org.uk.
  16. ↑ Davies, Michael (27 September 2019). "Review: King John (Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon)". Whatsonstage.com.
  17. ↑ "Goldfrapp's Will Gregory to Score Amazon's & BBC's 'Chloe' | Film Music Reporter".
  18. ↑ Newman, Melinda. "Scoring 'Serengeti': Goldfrapp's Will Gregory on Writing for Baboons, Hyenas and Lions". billboard.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.