Brief Bio

I spent the early part of my life in Bath, and was educated at King Edward’s School and Prior Park College. Having been a music student at Bretton Hall and Reading University, I later studied conducting with George Hurst and John Carewe, and developed my composition for a while under Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.  My teaching career began in Southampton, continued in Bruton, Somerset, diversified in Bermuda and I finally settled in Bristol, UK, where I was appointed as Director of Music at Clifton High School in 1994.

In 2007, I decided to retire in order to concentrate on composition, and for eight years I was a part-time research student at the University of Bristol.  In August 2010, I was awarded the Raymond Warren Prize for Composition. Having studied under Professor Geoff Poole and Professor John Pickard, my PhD in Composition was completed in January 2015. At the same time, I became a Fellow of Trinity College, London, in Composition.

Over the years I have conducted numerous choral societies and orchestras.  In 1984, I directed performances of Olivier Messiaen’s Trois Petites Liturgies at Sherborne Abbey and Clifton Cathedral, and in 2007, conducted a large-scale performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana with massed choirs at the Colston Hall, Bristol.  In September 2013, I was appointed Musical Director of Portishead Choral Society, and in 2014, composed a special new cantata for the choir to coincide with their Diamond Jubilee celebrations.  Awake the Voice, a thirty minute work in six movements for chorus, soloists, audience and orchestra, received its first performance in December 2014, and was subsequently performed again in 2018 in Clifton Cathedral in a collaborative Christmas-themed concert with two other choral societies.

As a performer, I am primarily a cellist, and have played in orchestras and various chamber ensembles.  As a founder member of Celli Amici, I recently produced a set of new cello duets, and also completed a Suite for three unaccompanied cellos, best described as elaborate ‘extensions’ of selected movements taken from the solo Suites of J S Bach.