Biography
Philip Sawyers, a composer whose voice developed apart from prevailing trends, saw his catalog receive growing attention through recordings in his later decades. For most of his career he supported himself chiefly through work as an orchestral violinist, instructor, and adjudicator.
Born in London on June 20, 1951, Sawyers began violin studies at thirteen and turned to composition shortly afterward, remaining, by his own description, a proudly self-taught practitioner in that discipline. At Dartington College of the Arts in Devon he received limited composition instruction from Helen Glatz, a pupil of both Bartók and Vaughan Williams, while pursuing violin lessons with Colin Sauer. He continued at the Guildhall School of Music in London, studying violin under Joan Spencer and Max Rostal; there his efforts at writing music received encouragement from Edmund Rubbra, Buxton Orr, and Patric Standford. In the late 1960s he produced several chamber pieces, the earliest being the String Quartet No. 1 of 1968, and chamber music remained a significant component of his output thereafter. His initial large-scale orchestral score, the Divertimento for string orchestra, followed in 1970.
Joining the Royal Opera House Orchestra at Covent Garden as a violinist in 1973, Sawyers also performed freelance with the London Symphony Orchestra, the English National Opera Orchestra, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, appeared in West End theater pits, and worked as a session player on film and popular-music dates. In addition he served as violin coach for the Kent County Youth Orchestra. These commitments curtailed his composing between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s. After departing the Covent Garden ensemble in 1997, he devoted a year to concentrated study at Goldsmiths College, University of London, while continuing freelance violin playing, teaching, and examining for the Royal Schools of Music.
With renewed creative activity, his music gained wider hearings both in Britain and internationally, reaching audiences in the United States, Austria, the Czech Republic, and France. From 2004 to 2022 he completed six symphonies and numerous other orchestral scores, among them the symphonic poem Hommage to Kandinsky, commissioned by the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra. Although scored for standard instruments and often cast in classical forms, his language draws on sources extending from conventional tonality to serial procedures, preserving an accessible and lyrical character across stylistic range. In 2015 the English Symphony Orchestra appointed him John McCabe Composer-in-Association, a post he held until 2018, after which he was named composer laureate; the orchestra has continued to record many of his works. Its release Philip Sawyers: Double Concerto for Violin and Cello; Viola Concerto; Remembrance for strings; Octet appeared in 2023, by which point roughly twenty of his compositions had been committed to disc.
Born in London on June 20, 1951, Sawyers began violin studies at thirteen and turned to composition shortly afterward, remaining, by his own description, a proudly self-taught practitioner in that discipline. At Dartington College of the Arts in Devon he received limited composition instruction from Helen Glatz, a pupil of both Bartók and Vaughan Williams, while pursuing violin lessons with Colin Sauer. He continued at the Guildhall School of Music in London, studying violin under Joan Spencer and Max Rostal; there his efforts at writing music received encouragement from Edmund Rubbra, Buxton Orr, and Patric Standford. In the late 1960s he produced several chamber pieces, the earliest being the String Quartet No. 1 of 1968, and chamber music remained a significant component of his output thereafter. His initial large-scale orchestral score, the Divertimento for string orchestra, followed in 1970.
Joining the Royal Opera House Orchestra at Covent Garden as a violinist in 1973, Sawyers also performed freelance with the London Symphony Orchestra, the English National Opera Orchestra, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, appeared in West End theater pits, and worked as a session player on film and popular-music dates. In addition he served as violin coach for the Kent County Youth Orchestra. These commitments curtailed his composing between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s. After departing the Covent Garden ensemble in 1997, he devoted a year to concentrated study at Goldsmiths College, University of London, while continuing freelance violin playing, teaching, and examining for the Royal Schools of Music.
With renewed creative activity, his music gained wider hearings both in Britain and internationally, reaching audiences in the United States, Austria, the Czech Republic, and France. From 2004 to 2022 he completed six symphonies and numerous other orchestral scores, among them the symphonic poem Hommage to Kandinsky, commissioned by the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra. Although scored for standard instruments and often cast in classical forms, his language draws on sources extending from conventional tonality to serial procedures, preserving an accessible and lyrical character across stylistic range. In 2015 the English Symphony Orchestra appointed him John McCabe Composer-in-Association, a post he held until 2018, after which he was named composer laureate; the orchestra has continued to record many of his works. Its release Philip Sawyers: Double Concerto for Violin and Cello; Viola Concerto; Remembrance for strings; Octet appeared in 2023, by which point roughly twenty of his compositions had been committed to disc.
Albums
