The Norman Worrall Memorial Prize
The Norman Worrall Memorial Prize was awarded in 2014 and 2015 in memory of Dr Norman Worrall (1938-2014).

Norman was an academic psychologist who turned composer, arranger and film-maker in his later years. He was passionate about art, literature, classical and contemporary music. He was fascinated by the music of Ockeghem, Purcell, Tallis, Frank Martin, Benjamin Britten, Greek folksongs, and by contemporary composers James MacMillan, Sofia Gubaidulina and David Matthews. He also enjoyed hearing young composers’ works and student performances. As well as composing original music, Norman was an experimenter and a creative adapter of music, taking phrases and chords of existing pieces and extending and transforming them beyond their origins. He worked also with sound effects, blending them with musical ideas into ‘soundscapes’ that portrayed topics such as climate change, the ecosystem, space, dinosaurs and spirituality. Norman made films on subjects as diverse as nanoscience, the planets, visual art and poetry – and wrote original music for his films. His work is published by Visible Music.

The first recipient was Theo (15)  who lives in the West country. He’s been playing the violin for ten years and is a really worthy recipient; for example, he was only 13 when he gained a high distinction in his Grade 8 violin exam. His teacher says “He has an enormous talent and limitless potential. He’s worthy of all help available”. The Norman Worrall prize enabled him to attend the National Youth Chamber Orchestra course in 2014: for a young musician who tells us he can feel ‘quite musically isolated’, this opportunity makes a huge difference.

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