Scottish Music Centre - Industry Directory

Artists | Classical | Composers and Arrangers

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time. He lives in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland where he writes most of his music. He has written across the widest gamut of musical genre, and in many styles. The power to communicate forcefully and directly with his audiences manifests itself whether it be in his profoundly argued symphonic works, whether it be in the delightful music-theatre works written to be performed by non-specialist children or whether it be in his sometimes outrageous witty light orchestral works.

As the critic in the Wiener Zeitung wrote following a concert of all Maxwell Davies works at the Musikverein in Vienna "A great and significant occasion on the Vienna concert scene and the public took full advantage of it: the Musikverein was almost fully booked and scarcely anyone left in the interval. I know of no other living composer who could bring that off with a programme consisting entirely of his own works".

His major theatrical works include the operas Taverner, Resurrection, The Lighthouse and The Doctor of Myddfai; the full-length ballets Salome and Caroline Mathilde, and the music-theatre works Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot. His huge output of orchestral works include fourteen concertos, several light orchestral works, including An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise and Mavis in Las Vegas five large-scale works for chorus, including the oratorio Job and eight symphonies, hailed by The Times as being "the most important symphonic cycle since Shostakovich".

Maxwell Davies is also active as a conductor and has recently finished ten years as Conductor/Composer of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, and is the Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He guest-conducts orchestras both in Europe and in the United States including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Russian National Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Philharmonia.

Maxwell Davies is now concentrating his compositional efforts on chamber music, and future commissions include the cycle of ten string quartets which have been commissioned by the CD company Naxos (and called the Naxos Quartets), which will be launched and performed in entirety at the Wigmore Hall in London by the Maggini Quartet over a period of five years.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was appointed Master of the Queen's Music in March 2004.

Artists | Classical | Conductors/Choral Directors

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time. He lives in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland where he writes most of his music. He has written across the widest gamut of musical genre, and in many styles. The power to communicate forcefully and directly with his audiences manifests itself whether it be in his profoundly argued symphonic works, whether it be in the delightful music-theatre works written to be performed by non-specialist children or whether it be in his sometimes outrageous witty light orchestral works.

As the critic in the Wiener Zeitung wrote following a concert of all Maxwell Davies works at the Musikverein in Vienna "A great and significant occasion on the Vienna concert scene and the public took full advantage of it: the Musikverein was almost fully booked and scarcely anyone left in the interval. I know of no other living composer who could bring that off with a programme consisting entirely of his own works".

His major theatrical works include the operas Taverner, Resurrection, The Lighthouse and The Doctor of Myddfai; the full-length ballets Salome and Caroline Mathilde, and the music-theatre works Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot. His huge output of orchestral works include fourteen concertos, several light orchestral works, including An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise and Mavis in Las Vegas five large-scale works for chorus, including the oratorio Job and eight symphonies, hailed by The Times as being "the most important symphonic cycle since Shostakovich".

Maxwell Davies is also active as a conductor and has recently finished ten years as Conductor/Composer of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, and is the Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He guest-conducts orchestras both in Europe and in the United States including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Russian National Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Philharmonia.

Maxwell Davies is now concentrating his compositional efforts on chamber music, and future commissions include the cycle of ten string quartets which have been commissioned by the CD company Naxos (and called the Naxos Quartets), which will be launched and performed in entirety at the Wigmore Hall in London by the Maggini Quartet over a period of five years.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was appointed Master of the Queen's Music in March 2004.

Artists | Classical | Literary Sources

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time. He lives in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland where he writes most of his music. He has written across the widest gamut of musical genre, and in many styles. The power to communicate forcefully and directly with his audiences manifests itself whether it be in his profoundly argued symphonic works, whether it be in the delightful music-theatre works written to be performed by non-specialist children or whether it be in his sometimes outrageous witty light orchestral works.

As the critic in the Wiener Zeitung wrote following a concert of all Maxwell Davies works at the Musikverein in Vienna "A great and significant occasion on the Vienna concert scene and the public took full advantage of it: the Musikverein was almost fully booked and scarcely anyone left in the interval. I know of no other living composer who could bring that off with a programme consisting entirely of his own works".

His major theatrical works include the operas Taverner, Resurrection, The Lighthouse and The Doctor of Myddfai; the full-length ballets Salome and Caroline Mathilde, and the music-theatre works Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot. His huge output of orchestral works include fourteen concertos, several light orchestral works, including An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise and Mavis in Las Vegas five large-scale works for chorus, including the oratorio Job and eight symphonies, hailed by The Times as being "the most important symphonic cycle since Shostakovich".

Maxwell Davies is also active as a conductor and has recently finished ten years as Conductor/Composer of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, and is the Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He guest-conducts orchestras both in Europe and in the United States including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Russian National Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Philharmonia.

Maxwell Davies is now concentrating his compositional efforts on chamber music, and future commissions include the cycle of ten string quartets which have been commissioned by the CD company Naxos (and called the Naxos Quartets), which will be launched and performed in entirety at the Wigmore Hall in London by the Maggini Quartet over a period of five years.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was appointed Master of the Queen's Music in March 2004.