Anthony Phillips

A multifaceted musician serving as composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist, Anthony Phillips founded the guitar role in Genesis from 1967 through 1970 before establishing himself as a prolific solo artist and one of the United Kingdom's foremost creators of library music. His compositions have appeared consistently in global advertising, cinema, and broadcast media from the 1990s onward, frequently captured in tandem with drummer and percussionist Joji Hirota. More than thirty albums bear his name, beginning with the 1977 release The Geese & the Ghost, which critics hailed as a prog landmark; the following year he launched the eleven-volume experimental Private Parts & Pieces collection. Sideman appearances include Mike Rutherford's 1980 debut Smallcreep's Day as well as projects by Camel, Mother Gong, and Steve Hackett. In 1988 the orchestral Tarka emerged from joint work with composer, guitarist, and engineer Harry Williamson and the London Symphony Orchestra. The 1990 instrumental Slow Dance, built entirely around its two-part title piece, drew critical parallels to Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. Williamson and Phillips next issued Gypsy Suite in 1994, performing every instrument themselves, while that same year Phillips initiated his intermittent partnership with Hirota on Travelogues 4. The opening decade of the twenty-first century centered on library music, scores, and soundtracks, among them Wildlife with Hirota. Three 2012 projects followed: Seventh Heaven alongside Andrew Skeet, Private Parts & Pieces XI: City of Dreams, and the widely praised double-length instrumental Strings of Light.

Born in 1951, Phillips studied at Charterhouse School in Surrey alongside Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, and Michael Rutherford. Phillips and Rutherford, already bandmates prior to joining Gabriel and Banks, supplied the chief compositional voice for Genesis through its earliest phase and first Decca single "Silent Sun" under Jonathan King's guidance. Much of their material proved too delicate and inward for live presentation by the nascent group, shifting composition toward collective input; by the second album Trespass Phillips had withdrawn, driven by severe stage fright that ended his tenure after release. His imprint nevertheless surfaced prominently on the breakthrough third album Nursery Cryme, whose title track introduced material Phillips had demoed as early as 1969, drawing early progressive-rock attention.

Public output resumed only in 1977 with the solo debut The Geese & the Ghost, succeeded a year later by Wise After the Event and the first Private Parts & Pieces volume. In 1979 Sides appeared under Rupert Hine's production, incorporating Morris Pert of Brand X and saxophonist Mel Collins of King Crimson. Back to the Pavilion, the second Private Parts & Pieces installment, arrived in 1980. The conceptual 1984, issued in 1981 and rooted in George Orwell's novel, earned recognition as the initial successful musical rendering of the book's atmosphere. That year also saw Tarka recorded with Williamson and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, drawn from Henry Williamson's children's book Tarka the Otter; Phillips simultaneously contributed to Mother Gong's Battle of the Birds with Gilli Smyth and Didier Malherbe. Following 1983's Invisible Men by the Anthony Phillips Band, which again featured Pert and Hirota, Phillips continued the Private Parts & Pieces series through four additional volumes in the decade, then began the Missing Links sequence with its first volume in 1989.

The landmark 1990 release Slow Dance, a prog statement evoking both Oldfield's Tubular Bells and Peter Gabriel's third solo album, preceded a shift toward film and library work. Travelogues 4 with Hirota in 1993 opened this period, which also encompassed two further Missing Links volumes, three additional Private Parts & Pieces entries, and soundtracks such as Sail the World (1994), Soundscapes (1996), and English Pastoral (1999). Between 2001 and 2004 four library collections appeared—Drama Action Suspense II, Mystery and Documentary, Radio Clyde, and Archive Collection, Vol. II—alongside the first piano-focused recording, Piano Solos, in 2004. The completely solo 61-track double album Field Day followed in 2005 on Voiceprint, trailed later that year by Soundscapes 2 and Acoustic Guitar Solos 2. Wildlife, another Hirota collaboration and score, emerged in 2007; Documentary Undercurrents closed the year, while World Film & Drama (Beautiful Orchestral Portraits) and English Film & Drama (Beautiful Orchestral Portraits) arrived in 2009.

The 2010 anthology Ahead of the Field / Music for TV and Film preceded Seventh Heaven, the extended neo-classical double album marking Phillips's initial project with composer Andrew Skeet. Also in 2012 came the eleventh and concluding Private Parts & Pieces volume, City of Dreams, after which seven years elapsed before the three-disc audio and video set Strings of Light on Esoteric closed 2019. The all-instrumental solo recording drew from classical, pre-Baroque, and folk wellsprings.