Rowland Lee
Rowland Edward Lee is a British composer, arranger, orchestrator and musical director whose work encompasses musical theatre, television and concert music. He has composed much orchestral, choral and chamber music including a Violin Concerto, Oboe Sonata, Celesta Concerto, Piano Trio and Requiem. The Requiem is published by Edition Peters and has been featured on the BBC Radio 3 series ”The Choir”. He has composed scores for over 20 short films including the Christmas favorite The Little Reindeer and is regarded as one of the country's principal composers specializing in the animation. His TV credits as composer include more than 12 animated series for the children, including the evergreen 64 Zoo Lane, which, for the last 14 years, has been broadcast in 20 languages in over 40 countries and Cloudbabies. Other TV credits include Everything's Rosie, Pablo the Little Red Fox, Engie Benjy, Henry’s Cat, Captain Abercromby, Crapston Villas, Barking, The Melinda Messenger Show, Families at War and Bang Bang It’s Reeves and Mortimer.
born in Southern England in 1960. From 1979-84 he was a student at the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied composition under Joseph Horovitz, piano with Ian Lake and conducting with Norman Del Mar. GRSM Hons. 2.1. President of the RCM Students’ Association, 1982-3 (the College’s centenary year). Since graduating, he has successfully pursued a career which ranges from the composition and conducting of serious concert works, through work as an orchestrator and musical director of musical theatre and Ballet, to the composition of soundtracks for the television and the film.
He has composed much orchestral, choral and chamber music including a Violin Concerto (commissioned by Stephen Bryant, the leader of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and also performed by David Juritz, the leader of the London Mozart Players), Centennial Overture, Wind Quintet, Bassoon Quintet, Oboe Sonata, Piano Trio, the Warleigh Requiem (which he conducted live on BBC radio South West) and also the Crusaid Requiem, commissioned by the national aids charity of that name.
He has been described as one of the UK's principal composers for the animation, and among his 250-plus TV composition credits are the series Crapston Villas, Margaret Thatcher: Where Am I Now? Stylissimo and the children’s series Henry’s Cat, Captain Abercromby, Engie Benjy, Wilf the Witch's Dog and BAFTA award-winning Pablo the Little Red Fox and 64 Zoo Lane. He has also composed scores for over 20 short films including the Christmas favorite The Little Reindeer. His work has been regularly broadcast in over 60 countries, with some of his songs being recorded in over 20 languages.
His work for Matthew Bourne’s dance company AMP includes an original score for their BBC2 ballet Drip – a Narcissistic Love Story and Orchestrations for Town and Country, and their internationally celebrated productions of Swan Lake and Nutcracker! He has also conducted Nutcracker! at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London with the New London Orchestra and Swan Lake in the opera houses of Ferrara, Tel Aviv, Cologne and Amsterdam (Caree Circus) with a variety of local orchestras. This production of Swan Lake is the first successful commercial production of a major ballet in the UK since Diaghileff’s visit in the 1920s, a situation made possible by Rowland’s masterly reduced orchestration which has confused many ballet critics and reviewers into thinking that they were hearing Tchaikovsky’s original score. He has recently completed another reduced orchestration of Swan Lake for the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s current tour, and the adaptation of another Tchaikovsky score, the Theme and Variations from the Suite in G, as choreographed by Balanchine, for the Royal Ballet of Flanders.
Rowland has orchestrated many works for other composers, notable among which is “The Carnival of Illusions” by Michael Poel, which has been recorded by the Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra.
He is the arranger and original music director for Richard Stirling’s musical Over My Shoulder. For the Okai Collier Company he has been the musical director for Elegies, at the Bridewell Theatre and the UK premiere of cult off-Broadway hit Ruthless, at Stratford Circus. Other credits for Musical Direction include; Marry Me A Little and The Great Big Radio Show, at the Bridewell Theatre, 5 years with Surrey County Youth Theatre and, for Stewart Nicholls at the Theatre Museum in London, A Girl Called Jo, Follow That Girl, Vanity Fair, Zip Goes A Million, The Amazons, Grab me a Gondola, Anne Veronica and Julian Slade's 70th birthday concert. Other work with Stuart Nicholls includes the reconstructions of David Heneker's Popkiss and Noel Coward's Sail Away, published by Warner Chappell.
Many of the above productions are available on CD and The Amazons, which Rowland co-produced, received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Cast Album. In 1986, he was the first recipient of the British Film Institute's Anthony Asquith Young Composer Award. From 1986-96 he was a Visiting Tutor in film music at the Royal College of Art in London.
Apart from his lifelong work in music Rowland has acquired many skills and is a competent bricklayer and carpenter, a painter and a keen gardener. A collector and restorer of player pianos and reed organs, reproducing pianos and related instruments and music rolls.
Expert in the architecture of all the periods, with a special interest in that of the 19th and early 20th centuries; former voluntary caseworker for the Victorian Society. (Rowland knows more about architecture than music!) A scholar of the life and works of the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and author of a dissertation on this subject, 1983 and co-author of the programme note for the British premiere of Korngold’s opera, “Die Tote Stadt” at the South Bank Centre, 1998.
Equipment overview[]
Roland Juno-60[]
- 23 Celesta
Roland Juno-106[]
- 13 Chorus Vibes
- 48 Chorused Bell
- 53 Bassoon
- 57 Chorus Bell 2
EMU Proteus 2 Orchestral[]
- Solo Viola
- Solo Violin
- Quartet
- Marcato 1
- Marcato 2
- Concerto
- Pizzicato 1
- Pizzicato 2
- Tremolo Strings
- Flute
- Piccolo
- Oboe
- English Horn
- Clarinet
- Bass Clarinet
- Bassoon
- Contrabassoon
- Section Winds
- French Horn 1
- French Horn 2
- Trumpet 1
- Trumpet 2
- Harmon Mute
- Trombone 1
- Trombone 2
- Tuba
- Back Brass
- Timpani
- Gong Cymbal
- Bass Snare
- Temple Block
- Xylophone
- Glockenspiel
- Celesta
- Tubular Bells
- Percussion 1
- Percussion 2
- Harp
- Notre Dame