Helen Grime

Helen Grime studied oboe with John Anderson, and composition with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh at the Royal College of Music. She graduated from the BMus course with First Class Honours and completed her Masters with Distinction in 2004. From 2005-07, Helen was a Legal & General Junior Fellow at the RCM.

In 2001 she wrote Doorstepping Susanna, a short opera, for ENO Studio and Tête à Tête Opera. In 2003 Helen's Oboe Concerto was premiered by the Meadows Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Peter Evans, with Helen as soloist, and repeated in 2004, by the RCM Sinfonietta. The work won the Making Music category of the 2003 British Composer Awards; Helen was awarded the intercollegiate Theodore Holland Composition Prize in 2003 as well as all the major composition prizes in the RCM. Following the award, BBC Radio 3 commissioned Chasing Butterflies for 100 violas led by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra viola section and conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Helen's music has been performed by the LSO, Philharmonia, BBC SSO, Britten Sinfonia, Composers' Ensemble, Hebrides Ensemble and the Contemporary Consort. Her music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Romance, for violin and piano, has been released on Usk Records performed by Alexandra Wood and Huw Watkins and as part of the NMC Songbook.

Helen attended the Britten-Pears Contemporary Performance and Composition course in 2005, and in 2006, the Aldeburgh Opera Writing workshops; she was awarded a 2008 Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to study at the Tanglewood Music Center.

Virga, commissioned by the LSO in partnership with UBS, received its first performance in 2007 conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier, and Into the faded air for members of the Britten Sinfonia received its premiere tour in 2008. Future projects include a violin and piano piece and piece for piano duet for ABRSM Spectrum, a work for the Kungsbacka Trio and a work for string quartet and solo violin for the violinist Cerys Jones.