Francis Grier: Difference between revisions

English composer and psychoanalyst (b1955)

Francis John Roy Grier (born 29 July 1955 in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia)^[1] is an English choral and vocal classical composer and psychoanalyst.

As Solo Organist and Composer[edit]

Francis Grier was a chorister at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, the first music scholar at Eton College, and then organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge. He studied the piano with Joseph Cooper, Fanny Waterman and Bernard Roberts, and the organ with Sidney Campbell and Gillian Weir^[2]. After Cambridge where he had worked under Sir David Willcocks and Philip Ledger at King’s, he became Simon Preston‘s assistant at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and succeeded him as Organist and Tutor in Music in 1981, at the age of 25. During this period he made many recordings and TV and radio broadcasts, as organist and chamber music pianist.^[3] At Christ Church he commissioned new works by leading composers for the choir. In 1985 he resigned his appointments in order to explore options that are unavailable to full-time musicians: he studied music, theology and meditation in India, and then worked with people with learning difficulties in communities in London and Bangalore. Since 1989 he has been based in England again, and divides his time between music and psychoanalysis.

He has been commissioned to write numerous works for the BBC, various cathedral and collegiate foundations, including a 1996 a setting of Psalm 150 as a birthday present for Queen Elizabeth II and new work for the ‘Choirbook for the Queen’ to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee^[4]. In 2012 he won a British Composer Award^[5], and was commissioned to write new work for both the Worshipful Company of Musicians and the Rudolfus Choir^[6]. Since 2014 his work has been frequently performed and recorded including by the King’s College Cambridge choir, the choir of Caius College Cambridge, the Philharmonia Voices, Rodolfus Choir, Michael Waldron and the London Choral Sinfonia as well as organist Tom Winpenny^[7].

As The Grier Trio[edit]

The Grier Trio consists of Savitri (violin) and Indira (cello) playing with their father, Francis Grier (piano). They have played at St John’s, Smith Square and at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, as well as in the Blackheath Halls concert series, and they regularly perform at St Mary’s, Perivale^[8] and at Bob Boas’ concert series. In 2016 they played at All Souls, Oxford, and in the Holywell Music Room for the Oxford Chamber Music Society. In 2017 they performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, with the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra directed by Stephen Cleobury.^[9]

Psychoanalysis[edit]

Francis Grier was appointed Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis^[10] in 2022^[11], and is a Training Analyst and Supervisor of the British Psychoanalytical Society^[12].  He is also a couple psychotherapist. He works in private practice in London and leads a seminar for the psychotherapists in the Fitzjohn’s Unit of the Tavistock Clinic, which specialises in working psychoanalytically with patients who would not normally have access to psychoanalytic treatment. He has written and edited papers, chapters and two books on couple psychotherapy, including Oedipus and the Couple (2005)^[13], and papers for the IJP on two Verdi operas (Rigoletto^[14] and La Traviata^[15]), on a gendered approach to Beethoven^[16], on musicality in the consulting room^[17], and on the music of the drives and perversions.^[18]

References[edit]

External links[edit]