Paul Mealor
| Paul Mealor | |
|---|---|
Paul Mealor
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| Born |
25 November 1975 St Asaph, Denbighshire, North Wales |
| Residence | Aberdeen, Scotland |
| Nationality | Welsh |
| Education | University of York, Royal Danish Academy of Music |
| Occupation | Composer and teacher |
| Website | paulmealor.com |
Paul Mealor FRSA (born 25 November 1975) is a Welsh composer. A large proportion of his output is for chorus, both a cappella and accompanied. He came to wider notice when his motet Ubi Caritas et Amor was performed at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011. He later composed the song "Wherever You Are", which became the 2011 Christmas number one in the UK Singles Chart.
Born in St Asaph, Denbighshire, North Wales, Mealor studied composition privately with William Mathias and John Pickard and then read music at the University of York (1994–2002). He studied composition at York with Nicola LeFanu, and in Copenhagen at the Royal Danish Academy of Music with Hans Abrahamsen (1998–99).
Since 2003, he has been teaching at the University of Aberdeen, where he is currently Professor of Composition, and has held visiting professorships in composition at institutions in Scandinavia and the United States. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and since 2011 has been published by Novello. Also in 2011, he signed to Decca Records. His first album for Decca, A Tender Light – a collection of sacred choral anthems – spent six weeks at No 1 in the Classical charts.
Mealor's motet, a setting of Ubi Caritas et Amor, was commissioned by Prince William for his marriage to Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey on 29 April 2011, when it was sung by the Choirs of Westminster Abbey and Her Majesty's Chapel Royal conducted by James O'Donnell. Later that year, Mealor was commissioned to write the music for Wherever You Are, a song setting a text compiled from letters written to British Army military personnel deployed on active service in the Afghanistan War by their wives or partners, as part of the BBC Two television series The Choir: Military Wives. The single, released on 19 December 2011, became the 2011 Christmas number one in the UK Singles Chart and raised money for military charities. In the 2012 Classic FM Hall of Fame, he was voted the 'nation's favourite living composer' and succeeded in achieving the highest placing of any new entry in the history of the Hall of Fame with Wherever You Are charting at No 5.
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