Andrew Downes was born in Handsworth, Birmingham, in 1950, into a well-known Midlands family of musicians. He won a choral scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he specialised in composition, and in 1974 he went on to study at the Royal College of Music with Herbert Howells, who wrote of him as ‘one of the most effective composers coming to me these days. I have very considerable hopes for him’. His emergence as a leading international composer has been combined with a strong academic profile as an innovative and inspired educator: he was Head of the School of Composition and Creative Studies at the Birmingham School of Music (later Birmingham Conservatoire) for 30 years, and then devoted himself solely to composition. His output includes an opera, three symphonies, numerous concerti and chamber works, song cycles, piano music and a large body of choral and sacred music. He died in January 2023. Please visit https://www.andrewdownes.com for more information.