Terry Oldfield

Terry Oldfield

TERRY OLDFIELD was born in London, England in 1949 and spent his early childhood in Reading, later attending a Benedictine Monastery School. Terry's earliest musical experiences were in the myriad of folk clubs spring-up around the UK in the late 60s and early 70s, listening to the songs of Leonard Cohen, Bert Jansch, John Renbourne, Dylan.
Terry left school at 16 to travel the world and worked as a roadie for various bands including the Byrds, setting-up stage and sound mixing systems. During an extended stay on the Greek island of Hydra, he took up his first musical instrument, the flute. Says Terry "I think it was learning to play in this way, with no formal guidance, that allowed me to develop the ability to compose music. I spent many happy days improvising tunes and discovering scales and arpeggios for myself, and soon started to teach myself to write these things down". Terry's only formal music training was in Agra, India where he spent some time learning to play the Tablas.
In the early 70s, Terry and his brother Mike, formed a band called 'Barefoot' playing rock'n'roll at colleges and clubs throughout the UK. Mike later went on to record the highly successful 'Tubular Bells' and later Terry played the flute in the famous live performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
Terry's career began in the earnest when he was asked by the BBC to compose music for scenes called Great Railway Journeys of the World. Since then Terry has composed music for over 50 film and TV productions, receiving two Emmy nominations for Land of the Tiger and Twilight of the Dreamtime and a BAFTA nomination for the BBC series Kingdom of the Ice Bear. He also worked on Meerkats United, which in a recent National Television Poll was voted 'Best Wildlife Film Ever'.
Currently Terry has been looking at new directions to take his music "Recently I have found the advent of Global music very inspiring. Especially the Amnesty International Concerts". Terry's future releases with New World Music will reflect this new direction and no doubt increase his already considerable following.