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Paul Ayres’s music, widely performed and commissioned, usually involves a
text or takes some starting-point from pre-existing music, ranging from a
simple "arrangement" to a completely new work in which the model is
indiscernible, but especially the interesting grey area in between.
Paul’s many compositions include works for solo voice ("art-song" and
cabaret songs), choir (sacred and secular), theatre (musicals and incidental
music) and various instruments (solo, duo and small ensemble):
Works for solo voice set texts by Wilfred Owen, Brian Patten, John Donne,
Shakespeare and others - work has been broadcast on BBC tv’s This is the
Day, performed at Wigmore Hall, Conway Hall, and Rheingold Club in London;
Choir music for amateur and professional groups, concert or church use,
performed by many choirs in the UK, including New London Children’s Choir,
University of Warwick Chamber Choir, Ealing Youth Choir, St Barnabas
Dulwich; prize from Amadeus Choir of Toronto leading to publication by
Gordon V Thompson Music; works shortlisted for BBC Wales Composing for
Children, Schola Cantorum of Oxford, Jackdaws Educational Trust and the
Richard Gregson-Williams Memorial Prize; broadcast on Classic FM;
Theatre music - musicals (The Gentile, Doctor Frankenstein, Goblins) and
incidental music for many plays, performed at Edinburgh Fringe, North Pole
Theatre Greenwich, Two-Way Mirror Theatre Bounds Green, Questors Theatre
Ealing, Burton-Taylor Theatre Oxford; an extract from his chamber opera "The
Ballad of the Boys of Bighorn O’Malley" was performed at the Barbican Centre
when Paul was selected as a finalist in the BBC Young Composer of the Year
Award 1992; dance score won third prize in the Festival des Arts de
Saint-Sauveur, Canada;
Instrumental compositions include commissions from Air Concertante Denmark
(2 saxophones and organ), Ocarina Workshop Northamptonshire (ocarina
quartet) and private sponsors (piano/organ);
Arrangements for various musicians, from Meatloaf’s "Bat out of Hell" for
BBC tv’s Even Further Abroad with Jonathan Meades to spirituals and hymns.
(of acappella versions of four spirituals) "well and aptly arranged"
John Rutter
"a versatile and sensitive composer, equally at home in a wide variety of
styles"
The Church Times 4.x.96
"an impressively versatile range of style and inventiveness"
John Scott, Director of Music, St Paul’s Cathedral, London
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