Alumnus Gregory Rose to have his piece premiered by George Caird and the Jupiter Orchestra at the Sheldonian Theatre
On Friday 28th April the Jupiter Orchestra and George Caird will premier Gregory Rose's Oboe Concerto at the Sheldonian Theatre.
Gregory Rose (Magdalen College, 1967) celebrated his 75th birthday on April 18th. Brought up in Bampton, he was a violin pupil of the legendary Frances Kitching and studied Music at Magdalen College Oxford in the 1960s, as an Academical clerk under his father, Bernard Rose. As a conductor he is particularly noted for his performances of the romantic and contemporary repertoires, having conducted over a thousand premieres of orchestral, choral and ensemble works throughout Europe and the Far East. Orchestras include the Finnish Radio Symphony, St Petersburg Symphony, London Philharmonic, Polish National Radio Symphony and the Royal Scottish National orchestras, and the National Symphony Orchestras of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Eire, the BBC Concert Orchestra, his own Jupiter Orchestra & Singers, and the amplified vocal ensemble Singcircle. Choirs include the Groupe Vocal de France, the Nederland Kamerkoor, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, the Latvian Radio Choir and the BBC Singers.
Gregory has worked closely with composers such as Stockhausen, Cage, Steve Reich, Lachenmann and Birtwistle. For the Almeida Festival, he directed “Cage at 70” in 1982, and “Reich at 50” in 1986. He has directed over fifty performances of Stockhausen’s Stimmung, including performing with the composer himself, as well as making an award-winning CD of the work in 1980, shortly after directing a performance at the BBC Promenade concerts. He collaborated on the premiere recording of John Cage’s Song Books on the Sub Rosa label and has conducted orchestral arrangements for Linda Ronstadt, Diana Ross, and Madness.
Gregory Rose is a prolific composer, with well over a hundred orchestral, instrumental, and choral pieces and arrangements to his name. This includes over twenty masses, and his Missa Sancta Pauli Apostoli won the Liturgical category of the 2006 British Composer Awards. His music-theatre piece Danse macabre, was described as “…an absorbing musical masterpiece” and was released on a much-acclaimed CD in 2015. He has been composer-in-residence at Texas Wesleyan University and the Southwestern Oklahoma State University in the USA. The main publisher of Gregory’s scores is Verlag Neue Musik (Berlin). Other publishers include OUP, Boosey & Hawkes, Novello and Colla Voce Music.
For more information about the concert, please visit Music at Oxford's website.
