Gary Carpenter and Nick Owen met at LIPA in the very early days when we were sat at the back of a very cold classroom in a portacabin, charged with the task of writing their courses with the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of distraction. This soon became impossible and they were soon fondly referred to the ‘Beavis and Butthead’ of LIPA by the Head of Performance Design at the time, Colin Fallowes.
They took his acclaim as an honour and agreed to collaborate at the earliest possible opportunity. This manifested in the production ‘Tabloid!!! which was produced at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool in October 1995. Whilst the production was based in 1986, Gary points out that the themes are as relevant today as they were then:
The character of Bellamy is more relevant now than ever: a charming but ambitious geezer using sex to achieve ever more elevation in the newspaper world despite being hopelessly incompetent and virtually illiterate. He could even have ended up as Prime Minister had we set it later than the 1980s. He would certainly might have written for The Spectator…
In the immediate future, Gary has his Piano Trio performed at Wigmore Hall on Saturday 30 November 2024 (incredibly also Nick Owen’s birthday): you can read more about this here.
Gary studied composition at the Royal College of Music, London with Humphrey Searle, Thea Musgrave and John Lambert, and participated in master classes with Nadia Boulanger. He has lived in Holland and Germany and has written operas, musicals (including The Streets of London [Her Majesty’s Theatre, 1981], Goodnight Mister Tom – The Musical) a and China Song (Vivian Ellis Prize 1999 and tour), ballets (mainly for Nederlands Dans Theater), a radio music-drama (The One Alone with Iris Murdoch) and much concert music. Musical director and/or arranger-orchestrator on many stage shows and films (including The Wicker Man [1972]), his Azaleas for harp trio received a 2006 British Composer Award in the chamber category. CDs include SET (orchestral works) and Die Flimmerkiste (chamber works).
Orchestral works include Fred and Ginger, SET (tenor sax concerto), Dadaville, Willie Stock and Ghost Songs (with junior choir). Mahan Esfahani and Ensemble 10/10 premiered Mondrian (concerto for harpsichord and ensemble) in Liverpool (March 2019) and subsequently in Cologne (May 2023) and Hamburg (November 2023). His work has been played by the London Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Concert, Hallé, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Scottish National, Aalborg Symphony, Basque National, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Dutch Radio Philharmonic orchestras. Conductors include Daniel Harding, Vasily Petrenko, Sakari Oramo, Duncan Ward, Oliver Knussen, Andrew Manze, Harry Christophers, Clark Rundell, Giancarlo Guerrero, Roberto Forés, Thomas Søndergård, Edward Gardner, Michael Seal and HK Gruber amongst others. A dark folk album co-written with Matthew Deighton for the band Magnet will be released in 2025.
Gary holds a professorship at the Royal Northern College of Music and lectures at the Royal Academy of Music.
Tabloid!!!
The script of the musical theatre production, Tabloid!!! written by Nick Owen and Gary Carpenter. Illustrations by Paul Warren.
60 pages in colour, produced in a rehearsal friendly format.