Composer Helen Grime is one of the UK’s most distinguished compositional voices, whose accolades include British and Scottish composer awards and residencies with Wigmore Hall and the Hallé

She has had works commissioned by ensembles and institutions including the London Symphony Orchestra, Barbican Centre, Aldeburgh Music, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Britten Sinfonia, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Tanglewood Music Center Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Koussevitsky Foundation. Conductors who have performed her work include Sir Simon Rattle, Pierre Boulez, Andris Nelsons, Marin Alsop, Oliver Knussen and Sir Mark Elder. Among the soloists who have performed her music are trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger, violinist Leila Josefowicz, percussionist Colin Currie and soprano Ruby Hughes.

Grime studied at the Royal College of Music with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh (composition) and John Anderson (oboe). She came to public attention in 2003, when her Oboe Concerto won a British Composer Award. In 2008 she was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to attend the Tanglewood Music Center where she studied with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read Thomas. Grime was a Legal and General Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music from 2007 to 2009.

Between 2011 and 2015 Grime was Associate Composer to the Hallé Orchestra. This fruitful period resulted in a series of new works and a recording of her orchestral works released by NMC Recordings. This disc was awarded ‘Editors Choice’ by Gramophone Magazine on its release and was nominated in the Contemporary category of the 2015 Gramophone Awards. In 2016 her Two Eardley Pictures were premiered at the BBC Proms and in Glasgow, winning the prize for large-scale composition in the Scottish Awards for New Music and a nomination in the British Composer Awards the following year.

Grime was Composer in Residence at the Wigmore Hall from 2016 to 2019. Highlights of this period include a day of concerts devoted to her music, as well as the premieres of a Piano Concerto for Huw Watkins and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Oliver Knussen, and a song cycle, Bright Travellers, for soprano Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton.

Between 2010 and 2017 Grime was Lecturer in Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2017 she was appointed Professor of Composition at the Academy.

Photo by Benjamin Ealovega.

Selected Publications

  • River for chamber orchestra, commissioned by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg and Orchestre de Paris
  • Night Sky Blue (trumpet concert) commissioned by the London Symphony and Boston Symphony orchestras
  • String Quartet No. 2 commissioned by Wigmore Hall and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Recording available on NMC records with the Heath Quartet

A full list of publications and recordings can be found here: Helen Grime - Wise Music Classical.