George Newson

George Newson (b. 1932) is a contemporary composer and photographer. Born in London, he taught himself to read music and play the piano. At fourteen years of age he was awarded a piano scholarship to the Blackheath Conservatoire of Music in London. Nine years later, he won another scholarship to study composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Alan Bush and Howard Ferguson. Post-graduate studies took him to the Dartington and Darmstadt summer schools during the late 50’s and early 60’s where he worked with the Americans Cage and Carter and the Italians Berio, Maderna and Nono. From 1972/77, Newson was the Cramb Research Fellow in Composition at Glasgow University. From 1978/81 he was Composer-in-Residence at Queen’s University, Belfast. Other major awards include grants from the Arts Council in 1965 and 1988, and two British Council tours: the first to Hungary/Romania in 1977, the second to Bulgaria in 1991. In 1984, Boulez invited George Newson to work at IRCAM in Paris; he was then commissioned to compose a work for the Ensemble InterContemporain, performed by them in 1989. George Newson has composed in all forms, including opera, choral works, string quartets, youth orchestra, instrumental and vocal. He has received commissions from the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC, the Orchestre National de Lille and the Nash Ensemble amongst others.