David Lewiston Sharpe has composed music in a wide range of genres, including orchestral works, chamber pieces, solo songs and piano pieces. His musical voice has been described as having "an approachable lyricism", as well as being "unfettered, gentle, veiled, carefully shaped and warmly expressive".

David is happy to accept commissions for all genres of music. Please contact HL Promotions at hle.lee @ btinternet.com for intro CDs and more information, or reach David direct at dlsharpe2003@yahoo.co.uk .

David was born in Oxford in 1976. He studied composition with Gary Carpenter at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, read music at King's College London and undertook piano and harpsichord studies with Virginia Black at the Royal Academy of Music. Since graduating he has worked on the editorial team of the revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, to which he also contributed, and in music publishing for several years. He has published writings on seminal works of standard repertoire as well as reviews.

His musical output exceeds 70 works, characterized by an unclouded lyricism, often modally derived, and also by a juxtaposition of the melancholy and the expressive with a carefree wit and an anxious excitement. At the root of a number of pieces is his perennial preoccupation with the philosophy of the ancient world, as shown in Rubai'yat, Stone of the Seven Kings and At the Western Shore of Thebes among other works.

Other pieces, such as the chamber work A Salvador Dali Suite and the Concertino for violin and orchestra, give vent to a brisk humour with often partially veils rather more dark undertones.

The disparity between pensive expression and an almost 'throw-away' raillery is nowhere more stark than in the fitfully conceived Piano Concerto No.1: a grand rhapsody that begins introspectively forms the first movement, and is counterbalanced by a torrential 'escapade' in the finale. Initially intended as a single movement portrayal of the central character and incidents in P.B. Shelley's epic Alastor, The Spirit of Solitude, the piece eventually became recast in its present full-scale three-movement form. The notion of a continuous, flowing solo part - representative of a poet's worldwide journey in search of the secrets of 'the birth of time' - was however retained across the three movements. The test that this piece presents is therefore as much one of stamina as it is of technical agility.

Pieces such as Cori Spezzati, for 20 double basses, the Anniversary Overture, the brass band Overture - The Lydian Fanfares as well as the Epiphany anthem 'When they saw the Star' reflect a concern with music composed for specific occasions and events. This is a more clear indication of a need for his music to convey the emotive subtext of a story or environment, rather than abstract procedures or ideas - that need underlies most of, if not all, David's music.