Freelance composer, writer and teacher of voice and piano in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, and at Sibford Quaker School, near Banbury, Oxfordshire. Member of the Royal Society of Musicians, ISM, European Piano Teachers Association,
Born in London in 1948, after studying the piano with Alice Goossens Raymond Head M.A. Dip.Ed. went to Dartington College of Arts and Rolle College, Exmouth, Devon from 1967-1970. He studied composition privately with Roger Smalley and Edwin Roxburgh and visited Darmstadt, Germany for the Ferienkurse für Musik in 1968. After teaching at Bottisham Village College, Bottisham, Cambridge and subsequently in Devon he went to Rome in 1976 and taught at St George's School, Rome and was a repetiteur for Hans Werner Henze's first Cantiere at Montepulciano, Tuscany. Disillusioned with "modern" music Raymond Head began an investigation into Indian influences on Western culture which was to result in post-graduate work at the Royal College of Art, London, travel in the USA on a British Academy scholarship and eventually a book THE INDIAN STYLE (1986) and work at the Royal Asiatic Society, London.
He is a Holst scholar and has contributed many reviews and articles to TEMPO, The Independent, BBC Music Magazine. The Listener, Early Music etc etc and CD notes for Hyperion and Cariton Classics, and broadcasts for the BBC. He has also lectured very widely in this country, Europe and America.
Teaching on holiday courses for the University of Hawaii and Colorado in London 1988-1990 encouraged new composing ideas within a new Post-Modern aesthetic - truly contemporary, but rather than just being "Modernist", endeavouring to introduce a new feeling for communicative expression.
He has recently edited an urtext edition of the Wind Quintet by Gustav Holst.
Recent Works
Sample Scores
email: Raymondhead@AOL.com
