The composer Jeffrey Lewis died on November 30 2025, aged 83. He was one of Wales’s leading composers, and lectured at Leeds College of Music (1969 – 1972) and University College of North Wales, Bangor (1973 – 1992).
Jeffrey Lewis was born on 28 November 1942 in Neath, South Wales; he joined St Mary’s church choir there and took piano and organ lessons. Being in the midst of a choir of boys’ and men’s voices and observing the ritual of the liturgy were profound experiences that were to shape him as a musician, as was hearing Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur on the BBC Third Programme at around the same time.
By the time Jeff went to Cardiff University as an undergraduate, he had already started to compose. Whilst still a student, two pieces were workshopped by the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra under John Carewe, and he received significant performances at the 1967 Cheltenham Festival. An Arts Council Travel Bursary, awarded on the recommendation of Sir Michael Tippett, enabled him to spend time studying in London with Don Banks, at Darmstadt with Stockhausen and Ligeti, and in Poland with Boguslaw Schaeffer. He also spent the early part of 1968 in Paris as pianist with the Paris Chamber Ensemble.
Schaeffer’s teaching was really the only formal compositional guidance Jeff acknowledged; the experimental world of Polish music in the late 1960s was eye-and ear-opening, and he brought back home a considerable portfolio of new works. A commission from the Swansea Festival in 1969 for the CBSO conducted by Louis Frémaux came at the same time Jeff moved to Yorkshire to take up his first teaching post at the Leeds College of Music.
Jeff found a world of considerable artistic freedom there; there were collaborations with the School of Art next door, and with the jazz musicians at the College itself. At the start of 1973, however, he moved to North Wales to take up a post in the music department at Bangor University, where he introduced a whole generation of music students to a cross-section of twentieth century music. Jeff spoke with a quiet but lively enthusiasm, his commentary frequently peppered with humorous or even surreal observations. The same air of erudition worn lightly carried into his composition teaching – he never imposed a particular style or language on his students.
Jeff’s music reached a new maturity with Memoria of 1978, a commission from the BBC WSO. Predominantly tranquil, motivic fragments are embedded within shifting modal harmonies and luminous orchestral textures. Up until then, Jeff’s compositions had tended to juxtapose activity and points of stillness within the same piece, whilst using a predominantly dissonant harmonic palette; from Memoria onwards a new consonance entered his language.
His compositional principles remained constant, however: an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of colours and textures, a fondness for unusual instrumental combinations and a fascination with the listener’s perception of the passage of time. A love of cinema informs some of the structural devices in his compositions, ideas cross-cutting or fading into each other; his interest in psychology reflects that same impulse to interrogate the very act of listening.
Jeff was commissioned by many leading instrumentalists and ensembles – Dame Gillian Weir, Thea King, Electric Phoenix, the Choir of Westminster Abbey and the Hilliard Ensemble inter alia – as well as by Bangor University and the BBC. It is an extraordinarily rich body of work, in urgent need of rediscovery.
Retirement from the University in 1992 allowed Jeff time to concentrate on composition. There were several CD releases, mainly of piano and chamber music; and I completed a PhD thesis on his music, including a catalogue of his works, performances and broadcasts to date – see https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/54510941/FULL_TEXT.PDF
In a lecture he gave to the Friends of Cathedral Music in 1992, Jeff stated that ‘music, of all the arts, is capable of conveying the timeless mystical dimension essential to contemplation, expressing and reflecting spirituality.’ This sums up in a single sentence Jeff both as a composer and, in the widest sense, as a musician.
Jeffrey Lewis (28 November 1942 – 30 November 2025). He is survived by his son, Richard, daughter, Sarah, and four grandchildren, Orla, Aoife, Elis and Mari.
Written by David Jones