Misplaced Pages

Giles Robertson Harding Easterbrook (3 January 1949 – 1 September 2021) was a British composer, musician and music publisher. He was an influential promoter of 20th Century and contemporary British music.

Easterbrook was born in Berlin but grew up in Horley, Surrey. He was educated at Purley Grammer School and Worcester College, Oxford, where he switched subjects from Ancient Egyptology and Coptic to music after receiving some private tuition from Kenneth Leighton. He began his career in the early 1970s as a concert manager, then joined music publisher Novello, where he soon became head of promotion. Over 16 years he worked closely with many composers, including Sir Arthur Bliss, Peter Dickinson, Herbert Howells, Daniel Jones, John Joubert, Nicola LeFanu, John McCabe and Thea Musgrave. He helped set up the Kenneth Leighton Trust, worked with Lady Bliss to establish the Bliss Trust in 1986, and promoted and edited some early works by Constant Lambert, including the early Piano Concerto and the ballet Mr Bear-Squash-You-All-Flat (1924).

In 1988 after leaving Novellos he founded his own music publishing company, Maecenas Music, working there with composers including Judith Bingham, Philip Grange, Kenneth Hesketh, Stephen McNeff, Geoffrey Poole and Matthew Taylor. Music for wind ensemble was a speciality of the company, on which he often collaborated with Timothy Reynish at the Royal Northern College of Music. In 1996 he co-founded the Prima Facie record label with Steve Plew. It issued a disc of his own music, The Moon Underwater, in 2010. A revised reissue was released in 2023. Easterbrook was the author of many CD liner notes and contributed to The New Grove Dictionary of Music.

Easterbrook was involved in many aspects of the classical music industry, directing and managing theatre music, composing, performing and ensemble direction, adjudication, tour managing, speaking and broadcasting. He was co-founder of the Chameleon Composers Group and was involved in the organization of the British Music Society, Redcliffe Concerts and (with John Woolf) the Park Lane Group concert series.

He married Jane Armstrong in 2013. She chose his piece Out of the Purple for clarinet and piano as the concluding music at his funeral.

Further reading

• Foreword to Arthur Bliss: A Sourcebook by Stewart R Craggs (1996)
• Notes to Constant Lambert: Piano Concerto, Hyperion CDH55397 (1995)

References

1. ^ 'Giles Easterbrook, maverick promoter of contemporary British composers, notably Sir Arthur Bliss', in The Daily Telegraph, 9 September 2021
2. Giles Easterbrook and others: 'The Bliss Trust', in The Musical Times, Vol. 127, No. 1722 (September1986), p. 480
3. ^ 'Obituary: Giles Easterbrook' by Peter Dickinson
4. Mr Bear Squash You All Flat, Royal Opera House Collection, 2001
5. The Moon Underwater, Prima Facia CD002 (2010)
6. In Passing - Music By Giles Easterbrook, Prima Facia CD204 (2023)
7. 'Giles Easterbrook (1949-2021)', Oxford Music Online
8. ^ 'Tributes to Giles Easterbrook', British Music Society

External links

• Giles Easterbrook, British Music Collection
• Out of the Purple, performed by Ian Mitchell and Huw Watkins

• 1949 births
• 2021 deaths
• English musicologists
• Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford
• 20th-century English classical composers
• 21st-century English classical composers
• 20th-century English musicians
• 21st-century English musicians
• Musicians from Surrey
• Music publishers
• People from Horley