Andrew Powell

Andrew Powell (born 18 April 1949) is an English musical composer, arranger and performer, born of Welsh parents. He moved to Wales in 2003. Early life Powell was born in Surrey, England. He began piano lessons at the age of four and later attended King's College School, Wimbledon, by which time he was also learning viola, violin and orchestral percussion. He was writing music by the age of eleven and later studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen and György Ligeti at Darmstadt in Germany, before taking a music master's degree at King's College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he joined an electronic music group, Intermodulation, with Roger Smalley, Tim Souster and Robin Thompson, and a local progressive rock group, Henry Cow, formed by Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson, in which he alternated between bass and drums. Musical career After leaving Cambridge, Powell's first professional engagement was as a soloist at the BBC Proms, London in August 1970, playing Terry Riley's Keyboard Studies with Roger Smalley. He later worked with several orchestras, including Covent Garden's, with the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Welsh Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra, where he worked with Pierre Boulez. He had also begun to serve as a session player, and founded the group "Come to the Edge" with Robin Thompson and Morris Pert, which performed regularly with the Japanese percussion virtuoso Stomu Yamashta. Powell's career as an arranger began at this time. His first commission was the debut album for Cockney Rebel, whose next two albums he also arranged. He worked with other artists, including Leo Sayer, John Miles ("Music"), Donovan, Cliff Richard ("Miss You Nights"), Al Stewart (Modern Times, Year of the Cat, Time Passages, Russians & Americans and Between the Wars), Ambrosia (Somewhere I've Never Traveled), David Gilmour, Chris Rea, Mick Fleetwood, The Hollies and Münchener Freiheit.