“Rory Boyle’s music will be new to many listeners. This varied and compelling collection shows him to be a composer of considerable range and depth.”

DAVID JENNINGS, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

The Scottish composer Rory Boyle received his earliest musical training as a chorister at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. He went on to study composition (with Frank Spedding), piano, clarinet, organ and conducting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), following which he continued his studies with Lennox Berkeley in London.

Whilst still a student he won the BBC Scottish Composer’s Prize with his first orchestral score. Further important awards followed including 2 Royal Philharmonic Prizes and the Zaiks Prize in the International Competition set up in memory of Kazimierz Serocki, one of the leading figures in the Polish avant garde.

In 2006 he won a Creative Scotland Award to write an opera on the nineteenth century German feral child Kaspar Hauser with a libretto by the Edinburgh based poet and writer Dilys Rose. The opera, Kaspar Hauser, Child of Europe, was performed in Scotland and Germany to critical acclaim and won for Boyle a British Composer Award in the stage work category in 2010 with the Jury citation describing the work as “a very accomplished score; a powerful and disturbing story told with theatrical flair, dramatic pacing and excellent characterisation.”. Five years later he won a second British Composer Award for his brass band score Muckle Flugga (commissioned as the test piece for the 2014 European Brass Band Championships), and he has received two further nominations in these annual awards: Elegy For the Black Bitch for brass quintet in 2005, and Burble for solo clarinet in 2012.

His list of works covers most genres and he has written for many leading performers including The BBC Singers (Songs From the Marshes), Evelyn Glennie (Marimba Concerto), Nicholas Daniel (Oboe Concerto, ‘Sorella’), Karen Cargill (Watching Over You), Michael Chance (Lord Lundy), David Hubbard (Bassoon Concerto, ‘That Blessed Wood’), Olga Kern (SixT(ok)ens), Garth Knox (Et Voila), Mark O’Keeffe (Ceremony After a Fire Raid), The Edinburgh Quartet (Quartetto da Requiem), The Fine Arts Brass Quintet (Giochi di Sospiri), and the Schubert Ensemble (Phaethon’s Dancing lesson).

Read a review of a recent performance of Cantemus Igitur (2019) by Keith Bruce in Vox Carnyx.