Quick Facts
Biography
Derek Edward Healey (born 2 May 1936) is an English composer, organist, and music educator whose more than 40 published works include orchestral and chamber pieces, an opera, and several organ and choral works.
Life and career
Healey was born in Wargrave, England and studied composition under Herbert Howells and organ under Harold Darke at the Royal College of Music from 1952 to 1956. He graduated from the University of Durham in 1961 with a Bachelor of Music degree and then did two years of further study in composition at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana under Goffredo Petrassi and Boris Porena.
In 1969, he moved to Canada and lived there for the next nine years. He completed his Doctor of Music at the University of Toronto in 1974 and also taught there as well as the University of Victoria, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Guelph before joining the music faculty of the University of Oregon in 1978. Healey returned to England in 1988 when he became professor of music at the Royal Air Force School of Music. He retired from teaching in 1996 and settled in Brooklyn, New York but has continued to actively compose.