User:Linda.T.Lambert/sandbox
Biography _____________________________________________________________________
Raymond Parfrey (6th May 1928 to 12th March 2008) was a well-known English composer of educational music for woodwind, brass, solo instruments, piano, organ, ensembles, choir and string orchestra. He had a rare and thorough understanding of composing for wind instruments[citation] and was an accomplished pianist[citation]. He was also a music copyist to publishers[citation] and taught music[citation] including pianoforte and was an accompanist and assistant at Harrow Saturday Morning Music School. Parfrey was a member of the Composer’s Guild of Great Britain and won numerous awards in composing competitions including (give best awards). He was an Associate Member of the Royal College of Music.[citation]
The music of Raymond Parfrey has been performed and recorded[citation] by ensembles (and orchestras?) and has been broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and internationally particularly in the USA and Canada.
Born into a musical family, his mother Kathleen was a pianist and a member of the Royal Choral Society and his father Arthur was a professional musician, playing as a freelance violinist for orchestras under Sir Adrian Bolt and Sir Malcolm Sergeant and he played for the Royal Pioneer Corps Orchestra during the war. (first world war?)
Throughout his life he shared his talent and enthusiasm for music with many musicians, students and audiences both at home and abroad. He gave piano performances at local junior schools in Harrow and musical tuition to students[citation]. [other examples?].
He said ‘a composer never retires’ and continued composing up until he suffered a stroke in April 2001. Unable to compose he played the piano to rehabilitate himself until in 2003 he moved into Buchannan Care Home, Harrow-on-the-Hill where for the last five years of his life he was cared for by dedicated nursing staff. Early Years _____________________________________________________________________
Raymond learned music from the age of two with his grandmother teaching him at the piano. At the age of ten he spent five years as a chorister at Durham Cathedral [citation]. He then went on to a boarding school in Edinburgh where he did not receive any musical education.
After leaving school he was conscripted into the army and served with the Royal Army Service Corp (RASC) in Egypt where he learned to play by ear some of the popular 32-bar numbers of the day. In 1965 he enrolled at Trent Park (Middlesex University) as a mature student and studied composition with Dr. Alan Bush, Bernard Stevens, Franz Reizenstein and Geoffrey Winters [citation].
Dr Alan Bush greatly influenced Parfrey[citation] and trained numerous other British composers. [Examples of other composers?]
Parfrey subsequently studied piano with Nicholas Conran [citation] and became an accomplished pianist and an Associate of the Royal College of Music (ARCM).
Career _____________________________________________________________________
It was his training and experience and most of all a love of music as a chorister at Durham Cathedral that put him in good stead for a life-long career in composing, teaching and performing music.
The publisher June Emerson recommended that Parfrey compose wind music and as a result most of his works are for wind instruments, instrumental solos and various ensembles. ‘Lyric Moment’ for alto flute and piano was his first composition published by Emerson Edition in 1972[citation]. Another publisher, Queen’s Temple Publications, describes Parfrey as ‘A well known composer of educational music, who has a rare and comprehensive understanding of writing for wind instruments’ [citation].
Parfrey was an accompanist and assistant at Harrow Saturday Morning Music School.His performances included performing his wind and string chamber works for two years in Ashington, Northumberland [citation]. [what venue, when?]
Awards _____________________________________________________________________
Parfrey composed for numerous international composing competitions. He considered himself a non-competitive person and was surprised his compositions of what he described as ‘naïve little songs and a piano piece’ came top in their respective classes in his first competition organised by the Light Music Society [citation]. Notable awards were for the ‘Polifonico’ competition for unaccompanied voices, in Ibagué, Colombia in November 1985 [citation]. A notable achievement was at Salford University where his work for string orchestra was performed [citation]. [date, was this in a competition?] In composing for competitions he acknowledged that ‘some may say it is rather pointless to just amass a lot of useless music, assuming it is not scrapped’. He went on to say that ‘if you are anything of a composer at all you should be able to find a phrase worth keeping in all but the very dimmest of your works. Then there is the possibility of reworking your material, as happened to Stravinsky when he started to write a piano concerto that eventually became the ballet ‘Petrushka’. In the same way I was able to orchestrate several of the little harpsichord pieces I had composed for a contest in Augusta, Georgia, for string or wind groups’. These pieces were recorded in 1989[citation] as ‘Dolce Dominico’, a suite for string orchestra played by the Camarata Nova Orchestra in homage to the Italian composer Dominco Scarlatti.
[list awards]
Compositions
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Brass • Name (year), (type – optional) for (instruments)
Choir
Ensemble
Organ
Piano
String Orchestra
Woodwind
Recordings
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• ‘Wind in the Wood’ 1995, CD recorded by Tubalaté a Tuba brass ensemble playing oboe and clarinet. • ‘Woodwind Miniatures’ 1996, recorded by Portsmouth High School, Southsea for various ensembles. • ‘Wind Pieces’ 1996, recorded by Portsmouth High School, Southsea for various ensembles. • ‘Tributes to Tunesmiths’ 2000, recorded by Tubalaté a Tuba. • ‘Male voice for Brass’ 2000, recorded by Tubalaté a Tuba.
References
1. ^ Parfrey ARCM.
External Links
http://www.musicweb-international.com/garlands/174.htm
http://www.soundandmusic.org/thecollection/node/12361
http://www.phylloscopus.co.uk/spweb/creators.php?creatorid=634