Biography

Grant Cooper was born in Wellington in 1953. His early childhood was filled with music, as his mother was a member of Opera Technique and, later, a soloist with the New Zealand Opera Company. His exposure to a wide range of music through his mother’s performances was formative in that it defined music for him primarily as a communicative language. Seeing his mother in roles as diverse as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly and Julie in Showboat helped to avoid any impression that music could be defined by genre. This desire to connect with the public through musical utterance has defined Grant’s professional musical life as a performer and composer.

Grant graduated from the University of Auckland in 1974 with a degree in Pure Mathematics. He was, at that point, heavily involved in the commercial recording industry as a free-lance trumpeter, appearing for several years on the weekly television programmes Happen Inn and Sing.

In 1975, Grant toured Great Britain and China as a member of the National Youth Orchestra, during which time he performed as principal trumpet of the International Youth Orchestra under Claudio Abbado’s direction as part of the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall. Maestro Abbado invited Grant to join the orchestra of La Scala as solo trumpet. Instead, Grant traveled to the United States, where he has lived since 1976.

In the United States, Grant serves as Artistic Director and Conductor of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. For ten years, he was Resident Conductor of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, where he conducted close to 600 performances. His compositional output has reflected his need to create works which reach out to developing constituencies of the symphony orchestra.

The diversity of his musical taste is reflected in his music. Especially when writing for young audiences, Grant employs a poly-stylistic approach which has resulted in the creation of four substantial works which serve as “points of entry” for new audiences.

His commissions have included concert works as well, most recently a work for soprano and orchestra titled A Song of Longing, Though…

• Commissions (1)