Graeme Stewart – Composer

Graeme Stewart was born in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal and studied at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in Belfast, under the tutorage of music teacher Philip Bolton. To develop his love of music composition he subsequently studied under Piers Hellawell at Queen's University in Belfast and Miguel Mera and David Burnand at The Royal College of Music in London.

Graeme has scored many short student films from Queen's University, London Film School, Royal College of Art; as well as independent shorts Endgame, by director Andrew Greener (nominated for a Kodak BAFTA award and second place at the TCM short film awards); and Big Phil's Piggyback Ride by director Andrew Tohill - both funded by the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission.

 Recently Graeme employed the skills of Belfast Youth Orchestra to perform the score for The Patrol by Northern Irish writer/director Alan Gildea, which stars American actor Joe Estevez, and which is also funded by the NIFTC. Graeme also cored Andrew Tohill's A Fish Out of Water which had a good reception at the Cinemagic 2006 screening at the Queens Film Theatre, and has enjoyed working on a large commission for the London Irish Symphony Orchestra - Goblin Market.




Jonathan Lee - Composer

Born in 1979, Jonathan Lee showed an early love for music, learning to play tunes by ear on the piano, copying what his father played on the guitar and playing drums in church.

 

His musical journey continued at University College Chichester where he studied for a BA in music with fine art and an MA in music composition. In addition to composing pieces for all of the university ensembles, he also focused on jazz performance and choral direction, gaining a diploma from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.

 

In 2003 he began his PhD in musical composition at the University of Exeter, supervised primarily by Michael Finnissy. The major work in his PhD portfolio, entitled New Birth, was performed at the Northcote Theatre in June 2006, conducted by Marion Wood. Whilst at Exeter he also founded a close harmony choir, Cori. Jonathan was commissioned by the University of Exeter to compose music for a brass quintet on the occasion of the installation of Flowella Benjamin as Chancellor in July 2006. Jonathan was awarded his PhD in January 2007.

 

When not writing and playing music Jonathan also writes and illustrates a series of children’s books for the international publishing house CWR.