Derek Bell (musician) - As Classical Composer and Virtuoso

As Classical Composer and Virtuoso

Bell was born George Derek Fleetwood Bell in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Because he had been misdiagnosed at an early age as having a disease that would lead to blindness, his parents gave him a musical upbringing. Bell was something of a child prodigy, composing his first concerto at the age of 12. He graduated from the Royal College of Music in 1957. While studying there, he became friends with flautist James Galway. Between 1958 and 1990 he composed several classical works, including three piano sonatas, two symphonies, Three Images of Ireland in Druid Times (in 1993) for harp, strings and timpani, Nocturne on an Icelandic Melody (1997) for oboe d'amore and piano and Three Transcendental Concert Studies (2000) for oboe and piano. Bell had mastered and held an exquisite collection of several instruments, including various harps, harpsichord, piano, cymbalom, and all the members of the oboe family of instruments (musette, oboe, cor anglais, bass oboe) and the heckelphone

As manager of the Belfast Symphony Orchestra he was responsible for maintaining the instruments and keeping them in tune. Out of curiosity, Bell asked Sheila Larchet-Cuthbert to teach him how to play the harp. As time went on, he had many harp teachers. In 1965 he became an oboist and harpist with the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra. He had been known to be able to skilfully play the pedal harp, neo-Celtic harp, and wire-strung Irish-Bardic harp. Bell served as a Professor of Harp at the Academy of Music in Belfast.

Bell had been briefly featured in the 1986 BBC documentary, The Celts, in which he discussed the role and evolution of the harp in Celtic Irish and Welsh society. Aside that, video clips of him only exist in the form of minor interviews and performances with The Chieftains.