Geoffrey Grey

Geoffrey Grey was born in Gipsy Hill and lived on the edge of Dartmoor until the onset of the second world war, when he was sent to Scotland to live with his paternal grandparents.

A career as a concert violinist had been envisaged and encouraged by his parents as he had shown a precocious interest in the violin at a very early age. Edinburgh, however, was markedly unfriendly to the English in those days, and its indigenous juvenile population openly hostile to any child with artistic pretensions.

In spite of this he eventually went to the Royal Academy of Music and studied violin, composition, piano and conducting. His composition teachers were William Alwyn, Benjamin Frankel and later, in Paris, Nadia Boulanger.

In 1959 he went to New Zealand where he freelanced as a violinist for a time until he was appointed Tour Musical Director of the NZ Opera Company. He had a number of early pieces broadcast by the NZBS and returned to England in 1960.

He now had a family to provide for and took the job of Director of the Suffolk Rural Music School. This only lasted for a year and then he moved to London where he lived and freelanced as a violinist for the next forty years.

He held a number of principal positions over this period with some of the major orchestras and continued to compose for many different combinations of instruments. He was very active in London musical life and gave many recitals of contemporary music as well as his own compositions.

He played for the ballet, musicals and pop concerts and on a number of occasions toured with the Lindsay Kemp Theatre Company as violist, pianist & percussionist.

In 1992 he went to the Netherlands, working there for a year.

In 1996 in went to live first of all in Cornwall and then Margate where he concentrated almost exclusively on composing.

In March, 2003, after his friend Edwin Carr died, he contacted the oboist Dominique Enon to make the piano transcription of the Oboe Concerto which the composer dedicated to this oboist before the latter's death. This meeting turned out to be fruitful and Grey subsequently returned to France to become involved with the Radio France and in particular the conducting of Kurt Masur. He also maintained contact with Dominique Enon for to whom he has dedicated a work for oboe and piano. Their meeting has also resulted in the publishing of some of his works in France by Gilles Manchec, publishing director of Armiane in Versailles

He now lives in Dorset and in 2007 had three new works published.

• Geoffrey Grey site
• Bibliographie nationale française (in French)
• http://www.rogerchase.com
• Last recording CD