HELEN ROE was born in 1955. She studied composition with David Lumsdaine and Peter Wiegold, and read music at Jesus College, Oxford.
After a three-year appointment as Fellow in Creative Arts at Wolfson College, Oxford, she took a number of part-time teaching posts, including one as a composition teacher at King's College, London, and another as a tutor on the postgraduate Performance and Communication Skills course at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
Her first broadcast piece was Ash Wednesday, (1975), a 20-minute work for piano, which was played by Ronald Lumsden at the BBC Young Composers' Forum in
1976; since then, several of her larger pieces have been heard on Radio 3. Her music has also been broadcast on Australian and New Zealand radio, Danish television and Channel 4.
Awards include the SPNM prize for a test piece for the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition (1982), the Harriet Cohen Memorial Trust Award (1984), and the Gemini Fellowship for composers (1992).
She is married, with three sons.
A more detailed biography appears in the Pandora Guide to Women Composers, Britain and the United States, 1629 - Present by Sophie Fuller.
Website: www.helenroe.org.uk
Address: Little Greystones, 28 West End, Launton, near Bicester, Oxon. OX26 5DF
Telephone: 01869 252658