University composer wins coveted award

03 Dec 2010

A University of Manchester academic has won a 2010 British Composer award – one of the most prestigious honours in the contemporary classical music world

Professor Philip Grange, who is Head of Music at the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, received the prize on Wednesday 1 December at the Stationers' Hall near St Paul's in London for his large-scale work for symphonic wind band called Cloud Atlas.

It won the British Composer Award in the category Wind Band/Brass band, which was broadcast on BBC Radio Three yesterday.

More than 300 submissions were received for works premiered between 1 April 2009 and 31 March 2010 and the list of nominations featured some of the UK's most well known contemporary composers.

Now in its eighth year, the awards are presented by the British Association of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and sponsored by Performing Rights Society for Music.

Professor Grange said: “Cloud Atlas, like my Clarinet Concerto for symphonic wind band of 2000, seeks to challenge the norms of wind band writing by widening the scope, expressive potential and developmental possibilities of the medium.

“I was delighted to receive the British Composer Award for Cloud Atlas as the judges appeared to endorse this.”

Cloud Atlas was premiered at the Cheltenham Festival last year and will be performed in March next year in the Cosmo Rodewald Hall by the RNCM Wind Band as part of a School interdisciplinary event.

The work has also been accepted by the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles for performance at their next conference in Chiayi, Taiwan in July 2011 by the original performers, the National Youth Wind Ensemble of Great Britain.

It will form part of an East Asia tour by NYWE with further performance in Taipei, Hong Kong and Macau.