Guy Anthony Woolfenden OBE (born July 12, 1937) is an English composer and conductor.
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Woolfenden was born in Ipswich and educated at Westminster Abbey Choir School, London, and Whitgift School, Croydon. He studied music at Christ's College in Cambridge and went on to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1961 and was Head of Music from 1963 to 1998. He was Artistic Director of the Cambridge Festival from 1986 to 1991.[1] He is the founder of the publishing company, Ariel Music. Woolfenden married Jane Aldrick in 1962 and they have three sons.
Woolfenden has conducted three productions with the Scottish Opera, as well as the first British productions of Nielsen's Saul and David, Tchaikovsky's Maid of Orleans and Liszt's Don Sanche.
Woolfenden has composed many pieces for wind bands, chamber ensembles and orchestral works, many of which have been recorded.
He has composed around 150 scores for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has worked with many major European theatre companies, including the Comédie-Française, Paris; the Burgtheater, Vienna; the Teatro di Stabile, Genoa; and the Norwegian National Theatre, Oslo.
He also composed music for the 1968 movie version of A Midsummer Night's Dream[2] and the 1974 television version of Antony and Cleopatra.
His 1977 musical adaptation of The Comedy of Errors won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical.
He was awarded the OBE for his services to music in the New Year Honours List in 2007.[3]