Composer
Biography:
Roland Chadwick (born May 22, 1957) got a guitar for his 13th birthday and immediately started to compose. The result of his very first self-taught compositional attempts later became the starting material for Song and Dance No. 1. After three years of guitar lessons and without formal compositional studies, he wrote the suite Dances for Winter Oakwood, which is performed worldwide to this day. Today he is one of the most prolific composers of classical guitar music in England.
His debut as a guitarist was at the Sydney Opera House Broadwalk Theatre. Concert tours to various countries such as Italy, Sweden, England and Mexico followed, where he officially represented his home country Australia at the Cervantino Festival in 1989. He was a founding member of the Sydney Guitar Quartet. Together with some of the most important Australian string players around the outstanding German violist Hartmut Lindemann, he founded the Paganini Project. After moving to England he played a.o. with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and for all the leading English guitar societies. With virtuoso colleagues Vincent Lindsey-Clark and Roland Gallery he founded the Modern Guitar Trio, with whom he recorded some of his trio works (Letter from LA, The Wendy House, Rococo Cafe and The Memory of Water).
His recordings with Steve Vai, Barriemore Barlow (Jethro Tull) and the English Chamber Orchestra have achieved iconic status in their genre. He has also played with top artists such as Level 42's Mike Lindup, Sir George Martin and Alan Glen of the Yardbirds.
Roland Chadwick's wide-ranging compositional oeuvre ranges from works for classical guitar solo to art songs and ballets (performed by the San Francisco Ballet and the Bangarra Dance Theatre, among others) to experimental jazz, guitar concertos and prog blues. Singers and guitarists such as David Daniels (Virgin Records), Sarah Poole (Prima Facie Records), Craig Ogden, Cedric Honings, the Sydney Guitar Quartet and Detlev Bork have recorded his music or performed it live. Roland Chadwick's works are published by the Danish publisher Bergmann Edition.
Albums:
The Beast of Many Colors – new music for classical guitar:
