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Geoffrey Alvarez - Conductor & ComposerGeoffrey Álvarez is a British/Nicaraguan composer, conductor and writer: his ʻGravesian Analysisʼ, applies Robert Gravesʼ technique of poetic criticism to music - and has appeared in publications such as Gravesiana: The Journal of the Robert Graves Society and the contemporary music journal Tempo (Cambridge University Press). His review of Joseph Vella Bondinʼs The Great Maltese Composers: historical context, lives and works, (APS Bank Ltd) is to appear in the Winter 2016 edition of the Musical Times.
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In company with Simon Rattle, he is one of the few musicians to be accepted on the advanced conductorsʼ course at the Royal Academy of Music as an undergraduate, bypassing the preliminary course. In 1984 he gained his D Phil from the University of York, subsequently invited by Berio to a private consultation in Florence. He was a prize-winner in the 2006 Tansman Composersʼ Competiton, Poland, himself subsequently part of the adjudication panel for similar competitions in both England and Malta.
His organ works have been premiered by organists of the stature of David Briggs - Transfiguration - and Kevin Bowyer - St Paulʼs Shipwreck. The later was premiered by Kevin Bowyer in the Glasgow University Contemporary Organ Music Platform in 2015. Edmund Aldhouse was the soloist in Elishaʼs Star for Organ and Brass Ensemble the same year in Ely Cathedral with Prime Brass conducted by Paul Trepte.
With his orchestra, the Álvarez Chamber Orchestra, founder president, Sir Colin Davis, he has conducted many eminent musicians such as clarinettist Michael Collins (Alvarez: Montage for clarinet, horn and chamber orchestra), David Briggs (Poulenc: Organ Concerto), pianist Zygmunt Krauze (Krauze: Arabesque and Terra Incognito), the latter musician being awarded the Légion d'honneur in 2008. Other notable occasions include his direction of his Magnificat at St Alban the Martyr in Holborn, a Nunc Dimittis at All Hallows by the Tower and the string orchestra work The Jewish Cemetery in Łódź in the Polish Embassy, London.
He has frequently set Spanish, from his Colombian nine-hour opera dream cycle La profecía última del rey to his Symphony IX: Canto Cosmico with Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal and recently German with the hundred-minute song cycle, Hölderlinfester, for soprano Carola Schluter who sang his cycle susurritos sonrosados with the Ensemble Phorminx in Darmstadt and Tübingen in 2013
His organ works have been premiered by organists of the stature of David Briggs - Transfiguration - and Kevin Bowyer - St Paulʼs Shipwreck. The later was premiered by Kevin Bowyer in the Glasgow University Contemporary Organ Music Platform in 2015. Edmund Aldhouse was the soloist in Elishaʼs Star for Organ and Brass Ensemble the same year in Ely Cathedral with Prime Brass conducted by Paul Trepte.
With his orchestra, the Álvarez Chamber Orchestra, founder president, Sir Colin Davis, he has conducted many eminent musicians such as clarinettist Michael Collins (Alvarez: Montage for clarinet, horn and chamber orchestra), David Briggs (Poulenc: Organ Concerto), pianist Zygmunt Krauze (Krauze: Arabesque and Terra Incognito), the latter musician being awarded the Légion d'honneur in 2008. Other notable occasions include his direction of his Magnificat at St Alban the Martyr in Holborn, a Nunc Dimittis at All Hallows by the Tower and the string orchestra work The Jewish Cemetery in Łódź in the Polish Embassy, London.
He has frequently set Spanish, from his Colombian nine-hour opera dream cycle La profecía última del rey to his Symphony IX: Canto Cosmico with Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal and recently German with the hundred-minute song cycle, Hölderlinfester, for soprano Carola Schluter who sang his cycle susurritos sonrosados with the Ensemble Phorminx in Darmstadt and Tübingen in 2013
