FULL-LENGTH BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Piers Hellawell Piers Hellawell’s work has been commissioned, broadcast and performed in many countries; regular collaborators have included the BBC Proms, the Hilliard Ensemble, Schubert Ensemble, Philharmonia Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Stockholm Chamber Brass, with performances at numerous British and overseas festivals. In 1999 Inside Story was premiered at the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts; the CD of that title appeared in 2002, on the Metronome label, when it was a BBC Music Magazine CD of the Month. The same year Hellawell was featured in a major retrospective at the Kaustinen Chamber Music Festival in Finland. In 2004 Hellawell’s Cors de chasse received its world premiere at the Brighton Festival, given by Håkan Hardenberger, Jonas Bylund and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Meanwhile his set for vocal ensemble, The Hilliard Songbook, which gave rise to the Hilliard Ensemble’s ECM album of that name in 1996, is, in the words of ‘The Independent’, ‘one of the most enduring of their many commissions’. The set was performed across the world by the Hilliard: it opened their 30th Anniversary series in London’s Wigmore Hall and also featured in the ensemble’s very final concert, again at the Wigmore, in 2014. Hellawell extended his series of concertante works in 2008 with Agricolas, for Robert Plane (clarinet) and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, premiered at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival and described by ‘The Scotsman’ in its premiere recording as a ‘gorgeously impassioned work.....’ followed by Syzygy, a commission for Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Stockholm Kammarbrass premiered in spring 2013, supported by a Leverhulme Fellowship. 2015 saw work on Wild Flow, a major orchestral commission premiered in the 2016 BBC Proms in London - while a PRS Foundation ‘Beyond Borders’ award supported the 2016 collaboration Up By The Roots with Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey and Fidelio Piano Trio, with whom Hellawell has a long association, during a U.K. tour. Other events marking Hellawell’s 60th birthday in 2016 included a residency at the Great Lakes Festival in Detroit USA in June and works at the Cheltenham International Festival in July. Great Lakes Festival was the start of an association with the San Francisco quartet Friction, who have performed Hellawell's two earlier string quartets and commissioned a third, Family Group with Aliens, which they premiered in August 2019 in San Francisco. Other recent major works are Symphonies in Chains, premiered by the Ulster Orchestra in January 2020, and Rapprochement (Concerto for Piano Orchestra), written for Clare Hammond, which was premiered in Belfast in 2023. A Major Individual Award from the Arts Council of NI in 2017 and a Composers Award from the PRS Foundation in 2018 led to release of the disc 'Up by the Roots', Hellawell’s second on the Delphian label, which was among the Sunday Times’ list of CDs Of The Year in 2020. Other works are also represented on the ECM (New Series), NMC and Metier labels as well as on three critically acclaimed discs of his music from the Metronome label, from 1998, 2002 and 2008; 'Tempo' magazine praised Hellawell’s previous recording on Delphian, ‘Airs, Waters’ (2012), for ‘music of great humanity... a first-rate musical imagination.’ Piers Hellawell is Professor of Composition at the Queen’s University of Belfast; his music is published by Edition Peters (London) Ltd.