Conductor, Composer, Climber.

The very full life of Graham Treacher.

Life was never going to be dull for Graham Treacher.

Driven by his twin loves of mountain climbing and making music. It has been a case of Monteverdi one week, the Matterhorn the next.

Spanning nine decades, he’s met and worked with famous figures in both fields. And yet it’s the metaphorical mountains he scales that define him.

A full life, marked by trauma, fortitude and love.

A life, that as it unfolds through the pages of his book, makes us realise just what humans can achieve, when they keep climbing.

Graham Treacher is a musician and mountaineer, born in 1932 and raised during the Second World War in Brighton and Hove. With his elder brother Donald, his early years were spent drawing and painting in their ‘studio’ bedroom at home. His life changed dramatically in 1942 when Donald committed suicide. His sister took him to All Saints Parish Church, where he became a chorister and discovered the joy and power of music.

After the war, he camped and climbed in North Wales with his brother Keith, worked for two years in an antiquarian second-hand bookshop, and spent three years farming before going on to study at the Royal Academy of Music.

His career has encompassed conducting, teaching, composing and climbing. Graham is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. He founded the London New Music Singers, conducted at the Henry Wood Proms, and was invited by Sir Georg Solti to work at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He served as Music Adviser to the London Co-operative Society, Associate Conductor of the BBC Scottish Orchestra, and, with Imogen Holst, revived the Morley College Thaxted Festivals. He became the first Director of Music at the University of Warwick and later Lecturer in Style and Performance at the University of York.

He is a member of the Alpine Club of Great Britain and has made first ascents in the Lyngen Peninsula in Arctic Norway, as well as undertaking expeditions to Tibet and Ecuador in support of Free Tibet.

His compositions include Darwin’s Dream, celebrating the birth of Charles Darwin, and The Vision of Albion, a tribute to William Blake.