Edward McGuire

Edward (Eddie) McGuire (b. 1948) is a Scottish composer whose work ranges from compositions for solo instruments and voice to large-scale orchestral and operatic works. McGuire studied composition with James Iliff at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1966 to 1970 and then with Ingvar Lidholm in Stockholm in 1971. He was born and brought up in Possilpark in Glasgow. His father played folk violin and was a member of a male voice choir which sang arrangements of Scottish Gaelic and Irish songs at charity concerts. As a student at the Royal Academy of Music McGuire won the Hecht Prize (1968) and the National Young Composers Competition (held in Liverpool University in 1969). A competition organised by the Society for the Promotion of New Music to find a modern test piece for the 1978 Carl Flesch International Violin Competition was won by McGuire with a solo violin piece, Rant. Commissions and broadcasts have included those from St Magnus Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Bath Guitar Festival, Edinburgh International Harp Festival, Lorient Festival, Glasgow Festival Strings, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Hong Kong City Chamber Orchestra, Highland Chamber Orchestra, Glasgow Chamber Orchestra, Meadows Chamber Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, Northern Sinfonia, Ulster Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Notable successes are his ballet Peter Pan, opera to a libretto by Marianne Carey The Loving of Etain and concertos for guitar, trombone, violin, viola, bass and accordion as well as 24 Preludes for various solo instruments. McGuire plays the flute in the folk group the Whistlebinkies.