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photo: Ashwood Photography LondonPhilip Sawyers’s works have been performed and broadcast in many countries worldwide including USA, Canada, Spain, Austria, Czech Republic, France and UK. Music-web International described the Nimbus Alliance CD of Sawyers’s orchestral work as “music of instant appeal and enduring quality”. Robert Matthew-Walker writing in Classical Source described the premiere of the second symphony by the London Mozart Players as a “deeply impressive work, serious in tone throughout, and genuinely symphonic… one of the finest new symphonies by a British composer I have heard in years…”
Development as a composer
Philip Sawyers began composing as a teenager, shortly after picking up the violin for the first time at the age of 13, and remains a proudly self-taught composer. However, it has only been in the last few years that his talent has begun to be recognised with major commissions and performances by orchestras in the USA and frequent performances in Europe. His work has been performed by the London Mozart Players, Grand Rapids Symphony, Orchestra of the Swan, Orquesta Sinfnica del Principado de Asturias, Fort Worth, Albany NY, Tuscon, Tulsa, Omaha and Modesto Symphony Orchestras. Commissions include a Third Symphony for the English Symphony Orchestra and a symphonic poem Hommage to Kandinsky for the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra. A second disc of orchestral work featuring the Concertante for violin, piano and strings, the cello concerto and second symphony was recorded by the Orchestra of the Swan and released on the Nimbus Alliance label. The 2020 planned performance of Mayflower on the Sea of Time, libretto by Philip Groom, an oratorio commissioned by the City of Worcester to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower, and the repeat performance at the 3 choirs festival, were cancelled due to covid. The premier finally took place in Worcester Cathedral in June 2023.