Derek Healey studied composition with Herbert Howells, organ with Harold Darke at the Royal College of Music, London, and composition with Boris Porena and Gofredo Petrassi in Rome and Siena. He has won prizes in the UK, Italy, and the USA and has taught Theory, Composition, and Ethnic Music at the Universities of Victoria, Toronto, Guelph, and Oregon where he became Academic Professor of Music for the RAF.

He has written works in most genres, having over fifty works published in the UK, Canada, and the United States. Works for large ensembles, particularly Arctic Images, One Midsummer’s Morning, and English Dances have been played by sixteen orchestras or wind ensembles. The opera Seabird Island was the first contemporary opera to be taken on a cross-Canada tour. Healey’s most recent extended work, A Mass for San Corrado, was premiered at Noto Cathedral in Italy in February 2009. His study The Influence of African-American Music on the works of Frederick Delius was published in 2004 by the Delius society (Philadelphia Branch).

Since 1970, his music has been influenced by ethnic and folk music, particularly that of the Orient, Latin America, Britain, and North America. Healey, who has his doctorate from the University of Toronto and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, London, is now retired from teaching and spends his time with composition and research, residing in the Cobble Hill district of Brooklyn, New York. For further information visit http://www.DerekHealey.com