Colin Decio Composer
Colin Decio (1959-) studied piano, composition and classical guitar at the Birmingham School of Music (now Conservatoire). Graduating in 1986 with five diplomas including a distinction in composition.
Pianist
As a concert pianist Colin regularly performs solo piano recitals and is an accompanist to various singers and instrumentalists.
In 2006 Colin’s performed a concert tour of both the South Island and the North Island of New Zealand.
He has been musical director of several showbands both in East Anglia and on cruise ships based in Singapore.
Colin has a PGCE in secondary music education and is a qualified secondary school teacher. As a private tutor he teaches piano, guitar and composition and has much experience in working with adults with special needs.
Previous piano recitals given in –
Cheltenham, London, Birmingham, Bristol, Malvern, Ledbury, Newnham, Bromsgrove, Norwich, York and New Zealand.
Colin is the -
Winner of the Burke Trophy for Advanced Piano
Winner of the John Ireland Chamber Music Prize
Winner of the BMI Composition Prize
Winner of the piano section of the Ludlow Philharmonic Concerto Competition
Colin studied piano with Frank Wibaut, John Humphreys, Roma Foster and Paul Slater.
“I was boxed in as a child by a mechanical brace to straighten the spine. I therefore felt a strong need to express myself in a way that I could not do just through speech. Playing the piano and composing fulfilled that need”.
Composer
A prolific composer with now in excess of three hundred works.
As a pianist-composer and writer of piano music he has written 9 Sonatas, 9 Sonatinas, 15 Preludes, 7 Fantasies, 2 piano concertos including the Piano Concerto No.1 ‘in memoriam John Ogdon’ to name but a few.
As a lover of the Cotswold countryside Colin has written both a ‘Gloucester Symphony’ and a ‘Cheltenham Symphony’ which “speak of the Cotswold Hills and dales” and gives reference to local places such as Cleeve Common and Toddington.
The Cheltenham Symphony (symphony no.2), which premiered in 2005 in Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham is dedicated to Cheltenham MP Lord Nigel Jones and the final movement is marked ‘Gustav Holst in memoriam’; in the finale there is a Ukrainian folk tune taught to Colin by his relatives when he visited them in the post-Soviet Ukraine.
The Gloucester Symphony (symphony no.1) received its premiere on June 7th, 2008 in Gloucester Cathedral with the Gloucestershire Symphony Orchestra to a standing ovation. The Mayor of Gloucester and his wife attended the occasion.
Cotswold Songs is a song cycle for soprano and piano based on the poems of Dymock poet John Drinkwater and A Sabbath Day for mezzo-soprano and guitar also sets Drinkwater’s poems.
Amongst many other songs are settings of poems by Rupert Brooke, A. E. Houseman, Charles Kingsley, Edward Thomas, Osip Mandelstam and D. H. Lawrence.
Recent projects included a theatre work called Souvenir D’Anne Frank based on Colin’s Piano Trio no.1 ‘Het Achterhuis’.
The Souvenir d'Anne Frank rose
Colin recently completed a chamber music series for 2010 which included premieres of his own String Quartet No. 2, Piano Sonata No. 5, Cello Sonatina no.1 and Noel! Noel! for four pianists and one piano.
Colin studied composition with Andrew Downes.
Masterclasses with - Robert Saxton, Bryan Kelly, John Joubert and Ernst Meyer.
“My work was once described as ‘Dynamism’, I like that name!” - Colin Decio
