Prelude IV Eddie McGuire (b. 1948) [5:17

a number of works for the UPIC and touring extensively with les Ateliers UPIC. He also founded, with Geoffrey King and Diana Milne, Edinburgh Contemporary Arts Trust (ECAT), which presents a regular season of new music concerts in Edinburgh. Since 1984 he has edited the international journal, Contemporary Music Review (Routledge). Recent compositions include a concerto for cello and electric cello written for FrancesMarie Uitti and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and a song cycle, Merzmusic, on texts by Kurt Schwitters for the Edinburgh International Festival.

www.scottishmusiccentre.com/peter_nelson/ Photograph: Simon Saffery

Judith Weir is one of Britain’s most wide-ranging composers. She studied composition with John Tavener whilst at school in London, and at Cambridge University with Robin Holloway. For six years she taught composition at Glasgow’s University and RSAMD and she has also held visiting professorships at Oxford and Princeton.

Her interest in theatre, narrative and folklore has resulted in three full length operas, ‘A Night at the Chinese Opera’, ‘The Vanishing Bridegroom’ and ‘Blond Eckbert’; and theatrical collaborations with Sir Peter Hall, Caryl Churchill and Peter Shaffer. Together with storyteller Vayu Naidu, Judith has created a blend of storytelling and music entitled ‘Future Perfect’ which has toured England and India. A new instalment is planned for 2005.

From 1995 to 1998 she was the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Composer in Association; and from1995 to 2000 she was the Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival in London. She spent the first half of 2004 teaching at Harvard University, as the Fromm Foundation Visiting Professor of Music. Judith Weir’s music is published exclusively by Chester Music Ltd. and Novello and Co. Ltd. www.chesternovello.com/composer/ 1729/main.html

After studies at the Royal College of Music with John Lambert, at Dartington Summer School with Peter Maxwell Davies and at London University where he graduated in 1975, Ian McQueen completed his studies when he became the 1976 Mendelssohn Scholar, studying for a year in Denmark with Per Nørgård. He made his professional debut with Eighteenth Century Scottish Dances at the 1976 Edinburgh Festival. This work was commissioned by Maxwell Davies, who conducted the première with his ensemble the Fires of London. Ian is one of Britain’s foremost opera composers, having written eight full-length stage works to date, plus a new chamber arrangement of Gounod’s ‘Faust’.

He has undertaken residencies and projects for London’s Centre for Young Musicians, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, The London Sinfonietta, and the Operahögskolan of Gothenburg University in Sweden, among many others. Ian has been active in the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters (BACS) since it was founded in 1999. He has also served on the Council of the SPNM and is on the Board of BACS, which is now firmly established as the membership organization for all British composers. www.ian-mcqueen.co.uk/

Eddie McGuire was born in Glasgow and studied composition with James Iliff at the Royal Academy of Music, London (1966–70) and then with the Swedish composer Ingvar Lidholm in Stockholm. His works are regularly broadcast and commissions have come from the Glasgow University McEwen Bequest, the New Music Group of Scotland, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the St Magnus Festival, and the Edinburgh International Festival.

In recent years he has produced several largescale works to critical acclaim: the ballet score Peter Pan, A Glasgow Symphony, a chamber opera The Loving of Etain, and concerti for guitar, trombone, viola, violin and (most recently) double bass. McGuire also plays flute with, and writes for, the Scottish folk group The Whistlebinkies. He was a recipient of a British Composers Award 2003 and a Creative Scotland Award 2004.

www.scottishmusiccentre.com/ edward_mcguire/ Photograph: Piero Casadei

Lyell Cresswell was born in New Zealand and has studied at the Universities of Wellington, Toronto, Aberdeen and Utrecht. Following a spell as a music administrator in Wales he returned to Scotland to hold composition fellowships at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. He is now a freelance composer based