Professor Gary Carpenter, FRNCM

Professor Gary Carpenter (born 1951, Hackney, London) was educated at Sir George Monoux Grammar School, Walthamstow and studied composition initially with Dennis Carney and subsequently with Humphrey Searle, Thea Musgrave and (principally) John Lambert at the Royal College of Music (1969-72). He has lived in Holland and Germany and has written six operas (The Snow Queen Blewbury 1982, Le Grand Meaulnes Bracknell 1984, Mythologies Wakefield 1988 [all with Ian Barnett] and for Tête à Tête Opera: Doggone, Nyanyushka, Sparklepuff [all with Simon Nicholson), five musicals (including The Streets Of London with Ian Barnett, China Song with Simon Nicholson and Goodnight Mister Tom with Michelle Magorian) and a radio music drama – The One Alone – with Dame Iris Murdoch as well as animated and live action film scores, several ballets including Greyzone (Graz 2000, chor. Christina Comtesse), Kinderspelen (Nederlands Dans Theater 1978, chor. Jiri Kylian, – revived 2014/15 IntroDans, Arnhem) Interactions (NDT 2 1980 chor. Christopher Bruce) and a large amount of concert music including a Horn Concerto for Stephen Stirling and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Sonatinas (a concerto for alto saxophone and chamber orchestra) for Christian Forshaw and Ensemble 10:10, Liverpool.

He has been musical director and/or arranger-orchestrator on many films including The Wicker Man (1973) and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. His Van Assendelft’s Vermeer for clavichord won the British Clavichord Society Composition Competition (2004) and was shortlisted for a British Composer Award (2005), whilst his Azaleas for harp, violin and ‘cello received a Victor Salvi Award in Venice (2004) and won the British Composer Award (2006) in the chamber category. He has also won prizes in Monaco and Vienna and received bursaries and awards from the Arts Council and the Holst and Gulbenkian Foundations.

A portrait CD, Die Flimmerkiste, is released on NMC. His Songs Of Sadness And Piety for voices, saxophone, organ & percussion appears on Christian Forshaw’s CD Renouncement and his Marking Time for basset clarinet appears on Mark Simpson’s Prism CD, also for NMC. Pantomime for 13 winds (in a version woodwind orchestra) forms part of the Twisted Skyscapes CD project with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra Winds conducted by Shea Lolin

Principal works include The Listening Project Symphony (Radio 4, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, [2012] – nominated for Prix Europa 2013), Fred and Ginger (LSO, Daniel Harding [2011]), Bassoon Concerto (Alan Pendlebury, RLPO, Vasily Petrenko [2011], Piano Trio[Fournier Trio, Wigmore Hall 2011, RPS Prize nomination 2012)] and Niederau (2011) which its commissioner, Tempest Flute Trio, have performed internationally over 30 times. His SET – Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Orchestra was premiered in Manchester with Iain Ballamy (sax), Martin France (kit) and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by HK Gruber [February 2014] – repeated in Strasbourg [July 2015] and Liverpool [May 2018]. In a new departure, Gary arranged and directed Satie In Blue, an evening long entertainment for big band first performed in Manchester (June 2014). Dadaville, a BBC commissioned orchestral work (after Max Ernst’s sculpture of the same name) received its premiere at the First Night Of The Proms 2015 (BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo). Last year (2016), The Food Of Love – a sequence of Shakespeare songs in four books for choirs and piano commissioned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust – celebrated the anniversaries of the Shakespeare’s birth (1564/2014) and death (1616/2016) whilst an Aldeburgh Music/14-18 NOW orchestral commission Willie Stock commemorating the two Battles of The Somme (1916 and 1918) received its premiere with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Oliver Knussen at the Aldeburgh Festival. He contributed orchestral material (BBCSO) to David Sedaris’s ‘Death Knows No Season’ broadcast (BBC Radios 3 and 4, December 2016).

Recent works include:
Bauhausmusik for 16 players. May 2022, Guildhall School of Music and Drama. cond: John Harle
…as dreams are made on for strings. Co-commissioned by Rodenkircher Oratorio Choir (Cologne) and Presteigne Festival. 1^st perf. Presteigne Festival (2021). German premiere: Philharmonie Köln (May 2022)
Weltscherzo song cycle on texts by Else Lasker-Schuler for mezzo soprano and organ. Coline Dutilleul (mezzo), Graham Cox (organ). 1^st performance: Treptow, Berlin, October 2020
Mondrian (2019)– concerto for harpsichord and ensemble (Mahan Esfahani/Ensemble 10/10) - subsequent performances in Cologne and Hamburg. CD release with Mahan Esfahani, Ensemble 10/10 and Clark Rundell (October 2026, Rubicon)
Ghost Songs (2018) - Commissioned for 40^th Anniversary of RSNO Youth Choir by RSNO, CBSO, RLPO and Basque National Orchestra. Performances November 2018-24.
Berliner for soprano saxophone and piano. Premiere, TYheo Hillborg, Visby July 2024
The Benefit of Hindsight for solo guitar (Camden Music 2022)

Gary is a Professor at Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) and taught composition at the Royal Academy of Music where he was elected an Honorary Member (HonRAM) in 2015. He received a Fellowship of the Royal Northern College of Music (FRNCM) in December 2016 and was a director of the Ivors Academy where he chaired the Classical Executive Committee. He is a recipient of the 2017 PRS Composers’ Fund award for a portrait CD with the RLPO.

Gary is currently working on a series of works exploring the internal dynamic of solos and duets. These include Speakeasy for trumpet and piano, Capriccio for solo violin (for Fenella Humphreys), an as yet untitled work for flute and percussion commissioned by Helen Wilson. A longer term project Masques and Muses for voice and accordion (begun in 2021) to texts by Eva Salzman. His clarinet quintet The Other Masquerades (2021-22) is slated for CD release at an unspecifed date.