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Edwin Roxburgh was born in Liverpool in 1937. He began his musical life as a cathedral chorister at the Anglican Cathedral and attended the Matthay School of Music in Liverpool. In his teens he played the oboe in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and won a double scholarship to the Royal College of Music where he studied composition with Herbert Howells, and oboe with Terence MacDonagh. He continued his piano studies with Lamar Crowson. Further awards enabled him to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris between 1960 and 1961, while at the same time studying privately with Luigi Dallapiccola in Florence. After his return from Europe he completed his extensive studies at St. John’s College, Cambridge and conducting with George Hurst.

Edwin received his first commission at the age of twenty (a piece for the Merseyside Youth Orchestra) and also in that year conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in his own Overture ‘57.

Following his first post as principal oboist in the Sadlers Wells Opera (now ENO) he began a highly successful career as an oboist, establishing himself as a major interpreter of contemporary repertoire, especially as a virtuoso oboist, giving the UK premieres of Berio’s Sequenza Vii and Holliger’s Cardiophonie. In collaboration with the late Leon Goosens he was the author of the Mehuhin Music Guide, The Oboe, now in its fourth edition.

In 1960 Edwin won the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize, which was followed in 1962 by the Lili Boulanger Trust Award. In 1978 he was awarded a Collard Fellowship and in 1980 the Cobbett Medal for Services to Chamber Music from the Worshipful Company of Musicians.

Edwin became a FRCM in 1976 and has been commissioned to compose over 60 works by people and organisations such as the BBC Proms, Three Choirs Festival, RLPO, London Philharmonic, RCM, BBC Singers, Yehudi Menuhin, and Nicholas Daniels, as well as being the composer of music for several films for BBC Television. Following his appointment as Vaughan Williams Fellow in Composition at the RCM, in 2003 he was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. He is the Associate Composer of the London Festival Orchestra at the Warehouse. As a conductor he has premiered more than 100 works, originally with the Twentieth Century Ensemble of London, which he founded, and later with many of the principal orchestras of the UK. As a teacher at the Royal College of Music, he created a department of Twentieth Century Performance and Study giving annual orchestral concerts which he conducted for BBC broadcasts. He has conducted most of the major UK orchestras and is currently director of the Warehouse Ensemble. His role as a director with the Park Lane Group, which promotes young artists in Purcell Room and Wigmore Hall recitals, is indicative of his main philosophy, that all musicians have a responsibility towards music of our own time and should give as much attention to it as to music of all periods. Paradoxically, his special subject as a Cambridge student was the Renaissance! Since retiring from the RCM in 2003, he now enjoys a creative involvement at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

A new CD featuring Edwin's piano music, Reflets dans la glace: sound adventures for piano, was released on the NMC label on 11th June 2007. Featuring performances by Waka Hasegawa & Joseph Tong, Thalia Myers, Hiroaki Takenouchi, Peter O'Hagan, Sally Mays, Karl Lutchmayer, George King and James Young, the CD can be ordered at www.nmcrec.co.uk.