Clare College Cambridge

Composer in Residence

Clare College boasts its own Composer-in-Residence, a post that has been filled since 2008 by the English composer Giles Swayne.  He supervises many of those students reading the composition modules of the Music Tripos, and contributes to College life as a teacher, mentor, and of course as a composer.  He regular composers works for the Choir and for instrumentalists in the College, and in addition adjudicates the College's Carol and Chamber Music Composition Competitions.
 

Giles Swayne

Giles Swayne was born in June 1946. He began composing young, and in 1968 (after graduating from Cambridge) won a composition scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he studied with Harrison Birtwistle, Alan Bush and Nicholas Maw. He studied the piano with Gordon Green, Phyllis Hepburn, James Gibb and Vlado Perlemuter. In 1976-77 he visited the Paris Conservatoire to study with Olivier Messiaen; and in 1980 his huge piece CRY for twenty-eight amplified voices was premièred by the BBC Singers under John Poole. Widely hailed as a landmark, this has been performed twice at the BBC Proms and many times worldwide.

In 1981 Swayne made a field-trip to Senegal to record the music of the Jola community of Casamance; these recordings are available on line in the British Library Sound Archive. Between 1990 and 1996 he lived in Ghana; he now lives in London, teaches composition at Cambridge University, and is Composer-in-Residence at Clare College, Cambridge.

In 2011 the Helsinki Chamber Choir under Tim Brown will premiere his Laulu laululle for nineteen solo voices, the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Choir under Rupert Huber will give two performances of CRY in Cologne, and his recent Dolorosa for solo cello, four solo voices and choir will receive its premiere in Leipzig in November 2011 by the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk Choir under conductor Howard Arman.

Giles Swayne on Composition at Clare

Clare is a great place for a composer. I started teaching composition in Cambridge in 2002 at the suggestion of the then Clare Director of Music, my old friend Tim Brown; so I have had close contact with the College, and have worked frequently with the Choir. The Composer-in-Residence scheme, which began in 2008, has brought me into closer association with the College; and when Graham Ross (my composition student when he was at Clare) took over as Director of Music in 2010, the links were redoubled. It is wonderful to work with Graham, who is an inspiring colleague and very good friend. His recent Naxos CD of my Stabat mater and Silent land with The Dmitri Ensemble and Raphael Wallfisch is proof (if it were needed) of his brilliant musicianship, and of his ability to achieve outstanding results by encouraging and inspiring everyone with whom he comes in contact. Clare is fortunate indeed in its new Director of Music.