Stephen Goss

From Wind Repertory Project
Stephen Goss

Biography

Stephen Goss (b. 1964, Great Britain) is a British composer, educator and guitarist.

Dr. Goss studied at the Royal Academy of Music (where he won the Julian Bream Prize) and the Universities of Bristol and London (where he completed his doctorate). His composition teachers included Edward Gregson, Robert Saxton, Peter Dickinson and Anthony Payne, and he studied guitar with Michael Lewin. Steve is currently professor of composition and director of the International Guitar Research Centre at the University of Surrey, UK, and a professor of guitar at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Stephen Goss’s varied output includes orchestral and choral works, chamber music, and solo pieces. is music receives hundreds of performances worldwide each year and has been recorded on over 70 CDs by more than a dozen record labels.

Steve’s use of quotations and references helps to shape his musical language, which is characterised by abrupt stylistic gear changes. ‘Goss weaves together an eclectic range of influences – at once retrospective and forward-looking’. (BBC Music Magazine). His fascination with the continuum that lies between transcription and composition has led Jonathan Leathwood to propose that Steve ‘denies traditional expectations of originality’ and that ‘the listener is drawn into a maze of referents’.

As a guitarist, Steve has worked with many leading composers (such as Toru Takemitsu, Hans Werner Henze, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Elliott Carter) and toured and recorded extensively with the Tetra Guitar Quartet and other ensembles.


Works for Winds


Resources