Helen Grime

Helen Grime MBE (born 1981) is a Scottish composer whose work, Virga, was selected as one of the best ten new classical works of the 2000s by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Though she was born in York, England, Grime's parents returned to Scotland with her when she was a baby, and spent her early years in Ellon, Aberdeenshire.[1] Her grandparents were music teachers in Macduff, Aberdeenshire. Her mother taught music at St. Margaret's School, Edinburgh.[2]

As a youth, Grime learned the oboe[3] with John Anderson, whilst her sister Frances learned violin. Grime began music studies at age 9 at the City of Edinburgh Music School, and continued at age 17 at St Mary's Music School.[4] She played the oboe in the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland. She started to compose from age 12,[5] where her teachers included Hafliði Hallgrímsson.[6]

Grime continued formal studies at the Royal College of Music (RCM), where she studied composition with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh and played oboe in the RCM Sinfonietta and RCM Baroque Orchestra. She earned first-class honours and a master's degree from the RCM in 2004. Her other composition teachers included Sally Beamish and Jennifer Martin.[1] She was a 2008 Leonard Bernstein Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center (USA). Grime was a Legal and General Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music from 2007 to 2009. She became a lecturer in composition at the Department of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, in January 2010.

Grime's compositions include an oboe concerto, for which she herself was the soloist in its world premiere,[1] written on commission from the Meadows Chamber Orchestra (Edinburgh), and for which she won a "Making Music" prize in the British Composer Awards. Other works have included Virga (2007), commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra and later performed at The Proms in August 2009.[7]A Cold Spring (2009) was commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and premiered 20 June at Aldeburgh Festival, conducted by Oliver Knussen.[2] The BBC commissioned her work Everyone Sang for the 75th anniversary of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2010. In 2010, she was signed to Chester Music for publication of her music.[8] In February 2011, she was named the next associate composer of The Hallé Orchestra, starting in autumn 2011, for a contracted period of three years.[5]

Grime was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to music.[9]