About Philip

Philip Lancaster is a composer, poet, singer and academic. Beginning his musical life singing in the local parish church choir in Lichfield, he has since at least the age of 11 wanted to be a composer and musician. Brought up in a household where '80s and early '90s pop music reigned, he turned instead to classical music, the music of Edward Elgar becoming a particular obsession. He studied singing, piano and music theory, and also became involved with the Lichfield Festival, volunteering each year and taking part in a composers’ workshop with Michael Berkeley. He also enjoyed a small early success in his composing, winning the (then) Lichfield Cathedral Special Choir carol competition, and writing a hymn tune that entered the repertoire of the local church. He also studied the organ for a time, accompanying the church choir on a couple of occasions, and even worked for a local organ builder for a summer. In his studies, the piano and organ didn't stick well, but the singing did, and whilst at school he became a member of the National Youth Choir. He went on to study music at Bristol University, where he became a choral scholar with Bristol Cathedral Choir, beginning twenty years of singing full time with cathedral choirs. He took singing lessons with various teachers, including Jenevora Williams, Jeremy Huw Williams, and Stuart Macintyre, and eventually graduated to solo work as a baritone, including giving recitals at the Three Choirs Festival, English Music Festival, and Ludlow English Song Weekend.

At Bristol he fell out of composing and diverted down the channels of academic study and scholarship, focussing most particularly on British music. After eventually attaining a degree, Philip continued studying for a masters degree, in which he began in earnest his research into the work of composer-poet Ivor Gurney, producing the first full catalogue of his musical works and his edition of Gurney’s song cycle Ludlow & Teme, one of the songs from which (the exquisitely ecstatic ‘Far in a Western Brookland’) he first heard at the Lichfield Festival, setting him on his interest in Gurney.

Following on from his Masters degree, Philip leapt over the divide into English literature, undertaking a PhD at Exeter University on Gurney’s poetry and archive. This by turn led to a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, continuing the work on Gurney, during which he began teaching poetry at Exeter.

In 2011, recently married with the arrival of his first children approaching, the need to let out his original voice became more pressing, having suppressed it for fifteen years. Not having the confidence yet to return to writing music, this first manifested itself in attempts at poetry, resulting in a small collection of poems, Fulcrum, which was published by subscription in 2014. (Philip first began dabbling in poetry in his early days in Bristol, in around 1997/98, but never with any confidence; but in 2011 writing words seemed easier than writing music.) However, in 2014 Philip was generously awarded a scholarship by The Finzi Trust to buy him time to find his way back into writing music, finding the musical voice that had been growing in him for all of this time. This resulted in an extraordinarily ambitious work, his chamber oratorio, War Passion, the libretto of which he had been devising for a few years and had been wondering about offering to another composer. Remarkably, this was premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in 2016!

With this, and in his ensuing works, Philip has been growing in confidence, and his music has been finding an ever growing audience, to the point where, now a published composer, his work is being recorded for the first time for a debut album due for release in 2026 on Resonus Classics.

Poetically, a second book was published in 2021 by Guillemot Press: an extended single poem, Sonata: violare, col legno (there has been too little space since for writing); and since leaving full time singing in cathedral choirs, Philip has found a new confidence with his voice and is in ever increasing demand as a soloist in oratorio and recital, in repertoire from Bach Passions to Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius and beyond, as well as in consort. He has a busy schedule of singing across the southwest and beyond, and is now teaching singing. He’s also taken on the conducting of a local community choir. Academically, Philip is endeavouring to finish his work on Gurney, completing his co-editing of Gurney’s Complete Poetical Works for Oxford University Press and finishing his monograph on the work; and he has recently been appointed General Editor of the Elgar Complete Edition, overseeing the final volumes of this important forty year project.