Derek Bourgeois

Derek David Bourgeois (16 October 1941 – 6 September 2017) was an English composer. Career Derek Bourgeois was born in Kingston upon Thames in 1941. After receiving his university education at Magdalene College, Cambridge (honours degree and doctorate), Bourgeois spent two years at the Royal College of Music, studying composition with Herbert Howells and conducting with Sir Adrian Boult. In 1980 he began conducting the Sun Life Band (now the Stanshawe Band of Bristol), which was his introduction to brass bands. In 1994 Bourgeois was appointed director of music at St Paul’s Girls School, London, a position previously held by a number of noted composers, including Gustav Holst and Herbert Howells. After retiring from this post in 2002 he and his wife settled in Mallorca. Following her death in 2006, he remarried in 2008 and moved to New York City, but returned to the United Kingdom in 2009. For his Symphony of Winds, the First International Conference for Conductors, Publishers and Composers awarded him with their main commission in 1981. He also chaired Composer’s Guild of Great Britain and served as the artistic director of Bristol Philharmonic Orchestra. He founded the National Yo