DEREK BOURGEOIS
was born in Kingston on Thames in 1941. He graduated from Cambridge University with a first class honours degree in music, and a subsequent Doctorate. He spent two years at the Royal College of Music where he studied composition with Herbert Howells and conducting with Sir Adrian Boult.
He has composed seventeen symphonies, twelve concertos, several other extended orchestral works, seven major works for chorus and orchestra, two operas and a musical. As well as a considerable quantity of chamber, vocal and instrumental music, he has composed twelve extended works for Brass Band and five symphonies for Symphonic Wind Orchestra. He has also written a considerable amount of music for television productions.
He has written four works specifically about Mallorca: Symphony No 8 - "The Mountains of Mallorca", Symphony No 16 - "Songs of Mallorca", which is a setting for Soprano and Orchestra of four Poems by Miquel Costa I Llobera. A Symphonic Suite in four movements for Wind Band called simply "Mallorca", and a piece called "Felanitx Fantasy" for the Felanitx Band, of which he conductor elect.
From 1970 to 1984 he was a Lecturer in Music at Bristol University. He was the conductor of the Sun Life Band from 1980 until 1983, and during the same period was Chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain, and a member of the Music Advisory Panel of the Arts Council.
In September 1984 he gave up his university post to become the Musical Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. In 1988 he founded the National Youth Chamber Orchestra of Great Britain which held its first course in the Summer of 1989. In 1990 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Bristol Philharmonic Orchestra.
He left the National Youth Orchestra in August 1993 to become the Director of Music of St Paul's Girls' School in London. He retired to Mallorca in July 2002 where he now lives as a full-time composer.
GORDON CROSSE
was born in 1937 and grew up in the Stockport area. Educated at Cheadle Hulme School and St Edmund Hall Oxford, he studied with Bernard Rose and Egon Wellesz, gaining first class honours in music in 1961. PhD studies with Frank Harrison included three months at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in 1962 on an Italian Government
Scholarship and he attended Goffredo Petrassi's master class in composition.
He worked in adult education with the WEA 1963/64 followed by three years as Extra Mural Staff Tutor at Birmingham University in succession to Wilfred Mellers. He then held various fellowships at the University of Essex and Kings College Cambridge followed by a period teaching at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Apart from some teaching at the Royal Academy the period 1980 to 1990 was given over to composition only.
In 1990 financial needs led to full time work and a career change working as a computer programmer. He has now retired from that and hopes to pick up some musical threads if the Muse can be wooed again!
EDWARD GREGSON,
born in 1945, is one of Britain's most versatile composers, whose music has been performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide. He studied composition and piano at the Royal Academy of Music from 1963-7, winning five prizes for composition. He received early success with his Brass Quintet, which was broadcast and recorded by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and the Hallé Brass Consort. This was followed by many commissions from, amongst others, the English Chamber Orchestra and the York Festival. Since then he has written orchestral, chamber, instrumental and choral music, as well as music for the theatre, film and television. Most of his music has been broadcast and much of it is commercially recorded.
His major orchestral works include 'Music for Chamber Orchestra' (1968), 'Metamorphoses' (1979), 'Contrasts - a concerto for orchestra' (1983 rev 2001), and 'Blazon' (1992). In recent years he has completed commissions for the Royal Liverpool philharmonic, the Bournemouth Symphony and the BBC philharmonic (for whom he wrote his Clarinet Concerto in 1994 - premiered by Michael Collins). In the last two years he has completed a major choral/orchestral work entitled 'The Dance, forever the Dance' which was premiered in St Albans Cathedral, and a violin concerto (a commission from the Hallé orchestra) which received its premiere at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, with soloist Lyn Fletcher and the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano.
He has also written a wide range of chamber and orchestral music from his early Oboe Sonata of 1965, written when he was a student at the RAM, to his 'Six Little Pieces' for piano (1982) and his larger scale Piano Sonata in one movement of 1983. His concerti for wind instruments are established repertoire in many countries and he has also written major works for wind band - 'Festivo' (1985), 'The Sword and the Crown' (1991) and 'The Kings go Forth' (1996) and brass band - 'Connotations'(1997, 'Dances and Arias' (1984), 'Of Men and Mountains' (1991) and 'The Trumpets of the Angels ' (2000).
His music for the theatre includes commissions from the Royal Shakespeare Company - 'The Plantagenets' trilogy (1988) and 'Henry lV parts 1 and 2' (1990) - and the York Cycle of Mystery Plays (1976 and 1980). In 1988 he was nominated for an Ivor Novello award for his title music for BBC Television's 'Young Musician of the Year' programmes, for which he has also regularly officiated as a jury member and broadcaster.
Edward Gregson is Principal of the Royal Northern College of Music, having previously held the position of Professor of music at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is an Honorary Professor of Music at the University of Manchester and in 1996 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of Sunderland (his city of birth). He is a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, and the Royal College of Music. He was Chairman of the Association of Professional Composers (UK) from 1989-91 and has represented British composers' interests internationally on many occasions. He is currently a Director of the Performing Right Society, the Hallé Orchestra, the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music; a governor of Chetham's School of Music, and a trustee of the national Foundation for Youth Music.
Photo credit: John Clark
RAYMOND PREMRU
Raymond Premru, professor of trombone died at the age of 63 on Friday, May 8, 1998, at the Cleveland Clinic. He had been fighting oesophageal cancer for a year. Recipient of a 1997 Cleveland Arts Prize and an Oberlin faculty member since 1988, Premru enjoyed an accomplished international career as a composer, teacher, and performer.
"Professor Premru was among the most brilliant of our faculty," said Dean of the Conservatory Karen Wolff. "Not only was he a gifted artist and teacher, he was a composer of considerable musical and technical stature. Students and colleagues found him to be a kind and compassionate friend who was utterly devoted to the interests of the Conservatory. He will be greatly missed."
A memorial service was held at the First United Methodist Church in Oberlin on Wednesday, May 13. A memorial concert was held at the Conservatory Sunday, September 13.
A native of Elmira, New York, Premru earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music in 1956, and a Performer's Certificate in trombone and composition from the Royal College of Music in 1957. His training included trombone study with Emory Remington and composition study with Bernard Rogers and Peter Racine Fricker. He served as bass trombonist with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London for 30 years, from 1958 to 1988, as well as performing regularly with the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, and London Brass (from 1964 to 1988). He served as guest bass trombonist with many prominent ensembles including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, Akron Symphony Orchestra, Canton Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Academy of St. Martin's in the Fields, and English Chamber Orchestra.
Premru played trombone on the legendary Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album as well as with the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Frank Sinatra. He can also be heard on recordings with Oscar Peterson, Petula Clark, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and Mel Torme.
Additional activities included co-directing the Bobby Lamb/Ray Premru Big Band, and conducting Le Domaine Forget Brass Ensemble (Quebec, Canada) from 1989 to 1990. He had appeared as guest conductor with the Eastman Trombone Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra of London, London Festival Orchestra, Eastman Wind Orchestra, and Cleveland Trombone Choir. A generous teacher and adjudicator, Premru maintained an active itinerary of workshops, residencies, master classes and competitions that took him to locations throughout North America and the world.
An active composer as well, Premru was the recipient of numerous commissions, including two, his Concerto for Orchestra composed in 1976 for the American Bicentennial, and his Second Symphony, written for the Cleveland Orchestra. Among Premru's other compositions are the Concerto for Trumpet, commissioned by the International Trumpet Guild (ITG) in 1983, and the Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra, commissioned by the Tubists Universal Brotherhood Association (TUBA) in 1992 in memory of John Fletcher.
Before coming to Oberlin, Premru served on the faculties of the Eastman School of Music, and Guildhall School of Music. A scholarship fund is being established in his memory at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
DARYL RUNSWICK
is Head of the Composition Faculty at Trinity College of Music in London and chairman of Contemporary Music Making for Amateurs. He began his musical life as a Cambridge chorister but quickly moved sideways into the jazz and pop world, playing bass with many international stars as well as running his own groups. This dual speciality (classical / popular) has permeated his subsequent career, which has included work as a solo improvising pianist and as a broadcaster, singing with the pioneering vocal group Electric Phoenix, concert work with the London Sinfonietta, session playing, arranging (especially for The King's Singers) record producing (recently for Keith Tippett) and conducting his own film and TV scores.
His concert works include Lady Lazarus (1984) Zuppa Inglese (1993) accidental counterpoints (1998) Moon/Skull (2001) and the ongoing series Scafra Preludes (1995- ). In addition he has devoted much energy and thought to the search for a synthesis of the improvising skills he learned in jazz with the more complex structures of contemporary concert music, in such works as I Sing The Body Electric (1984) From Two Worlds (1990) I Am A Donut (1992) Moto Interrotto / Ripreso (1995) Dicing with De'Ath (1998) Sarabande (1999) World upon World (2000) and Sonata (Gracing) (2001).
Island, Daryl Runswick's latest major work, had its world première in London in June. This year also saw the first performance of Sonata (Gracing) for cello, in Athens. His large-scale ensemble piece Moon/Skull, conducted by Edwin Roxburgh, came last year, and in 2000 World upon World, a BBC commission, was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with soloists and children's choir, conducted by the composer. He is currently working on a voice-and-electronics piece for Frances M Lynch, based on interviews with Tracey Emin.
