Geoffrey Álvarez Explained

Geoffrey Alvarez
Birth Date:	1961
Birth Place:	London
Occupation:	Composer conductor writer librettist
Nationality:	British

Geoffrey Alvarez is a British/Nicaraguan composer and conductor. He chairs the annual international composition competition run by the Alvarez Chamber Orchestra.^[1] He is also a writer on music and inventor of Gravesian Analysis.^[2]

Education and work

Alvarez studied composition privately with Giles Swayne, then with Paul Patterson at the Royal Academy of Music as a Leverhulme scholar, and later at the University of York with David Blake and Richard Orton, where he obtained a D.Phil.

Some of his papers are published in Gravesiana: The Journal of the Robert Graves Society, whilst he has contributed several articles for Tempo on the work of composers such as Michael Finnissy^[3] and Alexander Goehr's Arianna.^[4] His own work (his setting of Psalm XXIII in Hebrew) was reviewed in the same publication by Mark R. Taylor.^[5]

His compositions range from the wind quintet The Travelling Musicians, performed by the Harlequin Wind Quintet in the Purcell Room in 2001 to seven symphonies and numerous operas including a collaboration with poet Ruth Fainlight commissioned by the Garden Venture of the Royal Opera House: The European Story.^[6]

In November 2006, Geoffrey Alvarez returned from Poland as a prize-winning finalist and soloist with the Arthur Rubenstein Łódź Philharmonic Orchestra in the Final of the Tansman 6th International Competition of Musical Personalities, Composers Competition, Łódź 2006^[7]

Selected works

Music

• Montage for Clarinet, Horn & Orchestra (1979)
• Symphony No. 1 (1980)
• TheTell-Tale Heart (Opera) (1981–3)
• Brass Etchings (1983)
• Oboe Concerto (1984–85)
• Three Madrigals for Chamber Choir (1986–8)
• Lament in Memoriam Anderson (1987)
• Hied and Seek for Soprano, Basson and Live Electronics (1987)
• Triptych for Soloists, double choir and orchestra (1989)
• Kerbcrawling for chamber ensemble (1989)
• String Quartet (1990)
• Sept Piece for Horn and Piano (1990)
• Obsessions for Flute Viola and Harp (1990)
• Oboe Quartet (1991)
• Emisori Rites, Chamber Opera for Eight Performers (1991)
• Songs My Parrot Taught Me (1992)
• The European Story, Opera (1992)
• Bastien and Bastienne Arias - Mozart, Recitatives - Geoffrey Alvarez (1993)
• The Laughing Lotus for Woodwind Quintet (1997)
• Symphony No. 2: The Five Seasons (1998)
• The Travelling Musicians a Pantomime for Wind Quintet (1999–2000)
• Psalm XXIII for soprano and piano (2000)
• My Last Muse for bass and orchestra (2000)
• Concertino: for piano and chamber orchestra (2001)
• El Duende: for tenor and piano (2002)
• Tríptico Nicaragüense: for tenor and piano
• Teares or Lamentations: Six Sundry Sights: for 10 course lute
• Magnificat: for SATB chorus (2004)
• The Old Jewish Cemetery in Lodz (2008)
• Fantasia on Tansman's Last Theme: Alla Polacca (2008)
• Symphony No. 3: El tempano (2008)
• Symphony No. 4: the Breath of Life, for thirteen winds (2009)
• Missa Regina Elissa: for chorus, timpani, organ and strings (2009)
• The Tripple Goddess, Concerto Grosso for Flute, Violin, Harp and Chamber Orchestra (2009)
• Symphony No. 5: Ceridwen's Cauldron for three harps and two pianos (2010)
• Symphony No 7: Hyperborea (2010)
• Hölderlinfenster, song cycle for high voice and piano (2013)
• St Paul's Shipwreck, Organ Symphony for organ and brass ensemble (2015)

Awards and honours

• Eric Coates Composition Prize, Royal Academy of Music, 1979
• Josiah Parker Composition Prize, Royal Academy of Music, 1980
• Royal Overseas League 'Bernard Shore' Composition Award 1990.
• Recommended work: I International Uuno Klami Composition Competition 2003–2004
• Fourth Prize in The Tansman 6th International Competition of Musical Personalities, Composers Competition, Łódź 2006

External links

• Catalogue

Notes and References

1. Web site: Musique sans Frontiers Composition Competition. 24 July 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20171123210447/http://www.composerssite.com/content/musique-sans-frontiers-composition-competition-%C3%A1lvarez-chamber-orchestra. 23 November 2017. dead.
2. Web site: Geoffrey Alvarez (1999). The Five Seasons: Graves's Goddess Sings. Gravesiana, Vol 2, No 2. 165-176.. 24 July 2015. 4 March 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304045343/http://robertgraves.org/issues/18/9346_article_121.pdf. dead.
3. Tempo, no. 205 (July 1998), p 25, Cambridge University Press
4. Tempo, no. 208 (April 1999), p 52, Cambridge University Press
5. Tempo, no. 217 (July 2001), p 53, Cambridge University Press
6. Fainlight R. Selected Poems. Sinclair-Stevenson: London 1995
7. Web site: Interview with David Bruce on Composition Today.. 24 July 2015.