Ian was born in Wrexham
in 1962 and attended Grove Park School and Yale VIth-form College before
studying composition with Anthony Gilbert at the Royal Northern College of
Music in Manchester.
His introduction to music was
through local piano teachers, Glyn Hughes, Ian Belton and Lottie Williams Parry
and, in particular, his music teachers at Grove Park and Yale, John Tudor
Davies and Graham Marshman, both of whom encouraged his interest in
composition.
While at the RNCM, Ian won all
of the college’s major composition prizes and has twice won at the Royal
National Eisteddfod. In 1998, he was
highly commended for Y Tair Telyn in the internationally renowned Gregynog
Composers’ Award of Wales, a competition that he himself instituted as part of
the Gregynog Festival in 1989.
For the past fourteen years,
Ian has been Head of Music at Newtown High School in Montgomeryshire.
Among many musical activities
in mid-Wales, he has been Musical Director for Hafren Youth Theatre, Newtown
Community Theatre Group, Sinfonia Maldwyn and the North Powys Youth Orchestra,
which he still rehearses every Friday evening in Welshpool.
He is an active community
theatre composer and is currently completing a bi-lingual setting of the
Branwen legend for schools, working on a piece for treble recorder and harp for
the leading recordist, John Turner and continuing with a long-term project
composing jazz-style violin pieces for young players.
Ian is happy to be back
conducting in Wrexham. Three years ago,
he was invited to work with the Cambrian Philharmonic Orchestra and he is a
former member of the Wrexham and District Orchestral Society – the forerunner
of the Wrexham Symphony Orchestra – with whom he played the double bass over
twenty years ago, under Keith Dawber and Andrew Lansom.
He was pleasantly surprised to
see some familiar faces from all those years ago and apologises to those who
hadn’t realized just how long ago it really was!
October 2001
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