Fraser Trainer studied composition at Huddersfield University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a postgraduate student, where he won the 1992 Lutoslawski Prize.

He already has five London Sinfonietta commissions to his name and has firmly established himself as a composer keen to communicate with both performers and audiences through a vivid and direct musical language. Other ensembles to have performed his music include the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Gürzenich Orchestra, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, Athens Kamerata, The Scottish Ensemble, Viva, Psappha, Kokoro and London Brass.

Knots a twenty-five minute piece for solo violin and five players was commissioned and premiered by the internationally acclaimed violinist Viktoria Mullova in July 2003. A recording of Knots and other works is available on black box.

for the living, a BBC commission for a conerto for violin and orchestra was again written for Viktoria Mullova and first heard at the 2005 Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins. It was for this piece that Fraser received the runners-up prize for the BBC Radio 3 Award as part of the 2006 British Composer Awards. for the living has since been performed in Melbourne by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Viktoria Mullova and conductor Ilan Volkov. A recording has been made for future release.

Gadget, a concerto for Between The Notes and the Gürzenich Orchestra was given its premiere under the direction of Markus Stenz in a concert to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Köln Philharmonie in September 2006, and the London Mozart Players recently performed The Eye a commission from the Cambridge Music Festival.

In February 2009 the London Mozart Players gave the premiere of RESOUND, a work written to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the orchestra. RESOUND features fragments of Mozart's unfinished chamber music as well as excerpts of archive recording material of the LMP in their earliest years of existence and effectively blurrs the boundaries of what the listener perceives as live and recorded sound.

Fraser is now working on a commission for an improvised concerto for Between The Notes for performance in Spring 2011.

FULL BIOGRAPHY