Howard Skempton

Howard Skempton was born in Chester in 1947, and has worked as a composer, accordionist, and music publisher. He studied in London with Cornelius Cardew from 1967 which helped him to discover a musical language of great simplicity. Since then he has continued to write undeflected by compositional trends, producing a corpus of more than 300 works.

His catalogue is as diverse as it is long, ranging from pieces for solo cello (Six Figures, 1998), to the Concerto for Hurdy-Gurdy and Percussion, Concerto for Accordion and Oboe, and Lento, premièred by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican in 1991, and later performed at the 2010 BBC Proms.

Recent commissions include two from the BCMG — Field Notes, a collaboration with textile artist Matthew Harris, scored for oboe and string trio, and a setting of Coleridge’s epic The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, performed by the BCMG and Roderick Williams, December 2015, and a string quartet for Harrogate Festival’s 60th anniversary (July 2016).

Howard Skempton on Wikipedia