“Ward’s music is direct clear and expressive; players and, I should guess, particularly singers must find his work grateful to perform…”

CLASSICAL MUSIC

David Ward’s music has been commissioned by, amongst others, the BBC, London Festival Orchestra, Edinburgh Quartet, Bingham String Quartet, Saltire Quartet, Shetland Arts Trust, Woodend Music Society, Woodend Arts, Ross Pople, Michael Beeston, Shinobu Miki, Nigel Boddice and Richard Stilgoe, with funds from the Arts Council of GB, the Scottish Arts Council, Creative Scotland, the Esme Fairbairn Foundation and the National Lottery as well as sponsors, subscribers and trust funds. David has also received direct grants from the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Scottish Arts Council and Enterprise North East as well as from the Hope-Scott Trust, John Younger Trust and other trusts and foundations.

In 2007 David received a commission from the Institute of Evolutionary Studies to write a piece for 23 solo strings (the same line-up as Strauss’s Metamorphosen) in celebration of Darwinian evolution. Evolutionary Metamorphoses was commissioned to celebrate the Theory of Evolution and to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth in 1809 of Charles Darwin.

In 2010 David was commissioned to write a piece which has the title e-mails from Palestine (1) and had its first performance at Woodend Barn, Banchory, Scotland on Friday 12th November 2010 as part of sound, North East Scotland’s festival of new music. A studio recording of the piece is planned, to be followed by further performances. e-mails from Palestine (1) was commissioned by Woodend Arts Association with support from Creative Scotland.