Lyell Cresswell was a composer of contemporary classical music.

Lyell Cresswell was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He studied in Wellington, Toronto, Aberdeen and Utrecht. From 1978-80 he was Music Organiser at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff; from 1980-82 Forman Fellow in Composition at Edinburgh University, and from 1982-85 Cramb Fellow in Composition at Glasgow University.

Since then he was a full-time composer based in Edinburgh. Lyell Cresswell’s music is widely performed and broadcast. It has been played at many festivals around the world including the Warsw Autumn, BBC Proms, Edinburgh Festival, Musica Insieme – Bologna, Asian Music Festival – Tokyo, New Zealand International Festival of the Arts and so on. The numerous awards he received include recommendations by the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers, the Ian Whyte Award, a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award, an honorary D.Mus from Victoria University of Wellington, the inaugural Elgar Bursary, and the Sounz Contemporary Award for his Piano Concerto. In 2006-7 he was Creative New Zealand/New Zealand School of Music Composer in Residence.

Large-scale works include: The Voice Inside (concerto for violin, soprano and orchestra – 2001), Of Smoke and Bickering Flame (concerto for chamber orchestra – 2002) Canterbury Rhymes (mezzo soprano and orchestra – 2006), Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2010) Triple concerto (2012) The Clock Stops (song-cycle for baritone and orchestra – 2013)

His orchestral music is recorded on Naxos (8.570824 and 8.573199) and Continuum (CCD 1033 and 1034), and other works on NMC, Delphian, Metier, Rattle.

Scotsman Obituary by Ken Walton