Grant Horsley

DIP.R.C.M.PERF. CERT ED (FENTO) 

 (D.O.B. 1959)

Grant was accepted and trained at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London UK in 1978, graduating in 1982. He studied piano performance with Angus Morrison OBE, piano accompaniment with Ruth Gerald, flute with Edward Walker, conducting with Sir Norman Del Mar and composition with Alan Ridout and Stephen Dodgson. He gained the teaching qualification Cert Ed (Fento) from Greenwich University, London in 2002.

He has had an active career playing all types of music from classical to contemporary. Whilst he was a student at the RCM, he occasionally rehearsed with the Royal Ballet School and later with the London Festival Ballet. He went on to work for the Cameron Macintosh group as a pianist which led him working as a session musician as well as performing piano concertos, playing in jazz trios and quartets, playing in rock/function bands, accompanying singers and instrumentalists, and working in various theatres in the role of musical director.

​In 1994 he became Head of Music in the Performing Arts department at Great Yarmouth College in Norfolk, where he specialised in preparing young people for stage performance in classical, rock, jazz and musical theatre.

​In 1999 he started examining for Edexcel (now Pearson) education and in 2003 became Senior Examiner for A level music and Music Technology, leading a team of examiners in marking AS and A level exam papers in composition, writing question papers and collaborating in recommending grade boundaries.

​He has been commissioned to write music for several private projects, most recently (2023) having his flute pieces published by Allegro Publishing. His music has also appeared in television programmes in the UK.

He is influenced by the romantic style and used a lot of film music harmonies in his writing. He composes mainly for Solo piano and small ensembles- flute duets clarinet, oboe, violin, as well as quartets for saxophone, wind quintets as well as flute and clarinet choir pieces. Most of his work is late elementary to medium advanced. More recently he has taken the established classical piano repertoire and made simplified versions, an area which he hopes to expand.

As an independent music professional, he now currently divides his time between composing, private tutoring and playing as a registered pianist for both ISTD and RAD ballet examinations.

​He is married to Kate; they have three grown up sons and live in South Norfolk. UK.