Gary Carpenter studied composition under John Lambert at the Royal
College of Music. He has lived in Holland and Germany and has written three
operas (The Snow Queen, Le Grand Meaulnes, Mythologies; all with Ian Barnett),
one 10 minute opera buffa - Doggone - with Simon Nicholson, several ballets for
Nederlands Dans Theater and a large amount of concert music performed by,
amongst others, the Hallé, BBC Concert, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Dutch
Radio Philharmonic Orchestras, Anthony Pini, John Harle, Gerald MacChrystal,
Simon Haram, Quartz Saxophone Quartet, Joanna
MacGregor, Grimethorpe & Britannia Brass Bands, the RNCM Wind Orchestra
(Manchester), Lontano and the Haffner Ensemble. His Flying God Suite was
premiered in the USA by the Florida State University Wind Orchestra. He is
active as a lecturer, musical director and pianist and has won prizes as
diverse as the Austrian Composers’ Union and Federal Ministry of Education and
Culture Composers’ Competition - Vienna (1st prize - 1977) and the
Vivian Ellis Prize - London, for best musical (China Song with Simon Nicholson -
1998). He has been the recipient of two Arts Council bursaries, two Holst and
one Gulbenkian Foundation award. In an extraordinarily varied career, he has
taught at the Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music & Drama
(London), Hope University College (Liverpool) and Welsh College of Music &
Drama (Cardiff); was musical director and arranger on the film The Wicker Man;
arranged much of the orchestral music for Schlöndorff’s
film Voyager; orchestrated the title track from Lesley Garrett’s upcoming CD
I Will Wait For You; Damon Albarn’s music for the films Ravenous and Ordinary
Decent Criminal; most of Simon Callow’s Toronto/West End production of The
Pajama Game... and written an electroacoustic score - Tightrope, for the Berlin
aerial artist Crystalle. He lives on the Wirral in North-West England.