Beighton, Andrew

Andrew Beighton was born in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire in 1969. He was educated at Ashfield School and the University of Leeds, where he studied composition under Philip Wilby. He showed an early interest in composition, completing his first symphony (which was performed by his school orchestra) at the age of fourteen. As a teenager, he learned the Double Bass, which led to a great deal of experience playing with local youth orchestras and resulted in his deep interest in orchestral music. Andrew also learned the Organ, which instilled in him a love of Bach and a fascination with the formal logic of music. He is now Head of Performing Arts at Kirkby Academy in Nottinghamshire. After much experimentation with atonality and total serialism in his early twenties, Andrew’s music is now written in a romantic tonal idiom and shows a fascination for formal design rooted in the sonata principle. Beighton’s musical heroes are Bach, Brahms, Korngold, Tippett, Britten, Richard Arnell, Rebecca Clarke and George Lloyd.