Roy Stratford

Roy Stratford was very lucky to have had a music teacher at school who had been a student of the great Austrian modernist composer Anton Webern and who inspired in him a great love of music and a particular interest in the Austro-Germanic tradition from Bach to Stockhausen. He went on to study music at Reading University and then the Royal College of Music ( conducting with Norman del Mar) and has since developed a very varied musical career as pianist, conductor, composer and lecturer. Roy's compositions and arrangements have been published by Oxford University Press and Faber Music, as a pianist he has worked with many fine musicians including Jack Brymer, Gervase de Peyer, John Harle, Susan Milan and Tony Lamb and has a regular duo partnership with violinist Oliver Nelson. He is conductor of the Woking Symphony Orchestra, lectures regularly at Wigmore Hall and West Dean College and teaches piano and chamber music at St. Paul's School.

My approach to the talks is based on a mixture of enthusiasm and demonstration. I think that enthusiasm is infectious (it certainly works for me), and that anything that I say about music needs to be backed up in sound, so I will always spend a lot of time either playing at the piano or a revelant recording.

Future plans include two lecture series at Wigmore Hall, weekends of talks at West Dean College. Recent highlights include concerts in Dortmund and Prague and a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No.22 with Surrey County Youth Orchestra.

My approach to the weekend music appreciation talks at West Dean is based on a mixture of enthusiasm and demonstration. I think that enthusiasm is infectious (it certainly works for me), and that anything that I say about music needs to be backed up in sound, so I will always spend a lot of time either playing at the piano or a relevant recording.