Helen Grime

Biography

Grime was born in England (York) of two Scots parents, who brought her home to Scotland when she was a baby. She was raised in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, and was composing by the time she was twelve. After graduating from the Royal College of Music (London) in 2004, she began playing as an oboist with eminent organizations such as the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Music Center, in Massachusetts. Conductors who have led orchestras performing her compositions include Daniel Harding, Oliver Knussen, Pierre Boulez and Yan Pascal Tortelier. Her musical titles themselves have poetic significance: Virga (2007), for example, takes its name from the haze of precipitation that evaporates before it reaches the ground. A Cold Spring (2009) weaves restless motives with cool insistence. When composing Everyone Sang (2010), she imagined the orchestra as being made up of many voices. Grime writes as though her music needs to be told and this is one Scot who has written some of the best classical music of the 21st century.