Andrew Powell

Artist bio

Andrew Powell - musical composer, arranger and performer - was born 18 April 1949 in London, England of Welsh parents.

He began taking piano lessons at the age of four and later attended Kings College School, Wimbledon by which time he was also learning the viola, violin and orchestral percussion. He was writing music by the age of eleven and went on to study composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen and György Ligeti at Darmstadt in Germany before taking a masters degree in music at Kings College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he joined an electronic music group, Intermodulation, with Roger Smalley, Tim Souster and Robin Thompson, and joined the local progressive rock group Henry Cow, formed by Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson, in which he alternated between bass and drums.

After leaving Cambridge he performed as a soloist at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, London. He later worked with several orchestras, including at Covent Garden and with the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Welsh Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra where he worked with Pierre Boulez. He had also begun working as a session player, as well as founding the group "Come to the Edge" with Robin Thompson and Morris Pert, which performed regularly with the Japanese percussion virtuoso Stomu Yamashta.

Andrew's career as an arranger began at this time and his first commission was the debut album for Cockney Rebel; he also arranged their next two albums and worked with other artists including Leo Sayer, John Miles ("Music"), Donovan, Cliff Richard ("Miss You Nights"), Al Stewart ("The Year of the Cat", "Time Passages", "Russians and Americans" and "Between the Wars"), David Gilmour, Chris Rea, Mick Fleetwood, The Hollies, and others.

He worked on the first album by The Alan Parsons Project ("Tales of Mystery and Imagination") as arranger, conductor and composer, and subsequently on all but two of their albums and with Alan Parsons when the group broke up. He has performed live with both Parsons and Stewart. He also made an orchestral album from The Alan Parsons Project's songs : "The Philharmonia Orchestra Plays The Best of The Alan Parsons Project" in 1983.

Powell produced Kate Bush's debut album The Kick Inside which included Wuthering Heights; he also produced with help from Kate her second album Lionheart.

Other artists he has worked with include Chris De Burgh, Nick Heyward, Michael Crawford, Elaine Paige, The Hollies and Kansas.

He wrote the soundtrack for the movies Ladyhawke and Rocket Gibraltar and has been involved in many other movie and TV projects as well.

He has conducted orchestras and ensembles all over the world, including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony, the Wellington Symphony Orchestra, the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra and the München Kammeroper - as well as the Black Dyke Mills Band and Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

More recent work has included arranging and conducting Wouter Van Belle 's work 'Wow & Flutter' as well as writing for brass bands including the Grimethorpe Colliery Band and the Parc & Dare Band; and the perhaps less accessible album "Stockhausen: Michael's Farewell, etc" with John Wallace.

Of the latest compositions, 'Living Stones', received its world premier at St Davids Cathedral, Wales on 27 October 2007 and 'Glasiad y dydd dros Ben Dinas' at the City of London Festival on 19 March 2008.

He is artistic director of BluestoneArts, a social enterprise company that promotes music, words and visual arts in north Pembrokeshire, Wales. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.