Will Gregory

William Owen "Will" Gregory (born 17 September 1959) is an English musician and record producer. He is best known as the lead keyboardist, producer, and composer of the electronic music duo Goldfrapp.

## Biography

### Early life

Will is the son of an actress and operatic chorus line singer, producer and composer, for what Gregory says music has always been a part of his life.

According to him, he got into music kind of by default as it was the only thing I was good at - in his own words, he "was the weird one at school who practiced the piano during lunch break". In his teens he met other musicians, and ended up playing oboe and then moved on to sax, which got him into diverse musical disciplines, and realised at some point that he wanted to swim upstream as far as he could to the source of where the music came from, which meant getting into writing.

### Music career

Gregory studied Music at York University and during the 1980s performed with Tears For Fears, The Cure, Portishead, Peter Gabriel, Paula Rae Gibson and Tori Amos. As a saxophonist he has worked with Michael Nyman, John Adams (playing in the first performances of the opera Nixon In China), space rock band Spiritualized and the Apollo Saxophone Quartet.

In 2005 Will set up the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, which performed excerpts of Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach live using a selection of synths. Gregory has performed at festivals, including Brighton and Cheltenham, with his ensemble that includes composer Graham Fitkin and Portishead’s Adrian Utley. They perform interpretations of various famous compositions alongside some original Gregory tracks using ten Moog synths and other monos that come from around the same era.

### Goldfrapp and other major projects

Main article: Goldfrapp
The pair began recording their debut album over a six-month period, beginning in September 1999, in a rented bungalow in the Wiltshire countryside. The band's debut album Felt Mountain was released in 2000 and featured Alison's synthesized vocals over cinematic soundscapes.

Goldfrapp released their second album Black Cherry in 2003. The band recorded the album in Bath, England. This album focused more heavily on dance music and glam rock-inspired synths than its predecessor. Black Cherry peaked at number nineteen on the UK Albums Chart and sold 52,000 copies in the US.

Supernature, Goldfrapp's third album, was released in 2005. The album comprises pop and electronic dance music prominently featured on Black Cherry, but focuses more on subtle hooks instead of the large choruses that made up its predecessor. It has sold one million copies worldwide and earned the duo two nominations at the 2007 Grammy Awards for Best Electronic/Dance Album and Best Dance Recording for the song "Ooh La La".

Seventh Tree, Goldfrapp's fourth album, was released in 2008 and debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart. The album is a departure from the pop and electronic dance music featured on Supernature, featuring ambient and downtempo music. The band were inspired by an acoustic radio session they had performed, which led the duo to incorporate acoustic guitars into their music to create "warm" and "delicate" sounds.

He played saxophone on Portishead's 2008 album "Third" (on the tracks "Magic Doors" and "Threads").

The following album was "Head First" in 2010, a work that comes back to the dance music but taking a big inspiration on music from the 80s. Describing their previous album Seventh Tree as an "intimate, dreamy, more introspective album" which was created in response to deep unhappiness with her personal life following the tiring Supernature tour, Head First was a reaction to wanting "to get out the synths again, put your hands in the air" and "set about making an 'up' album." It received a nomination for Best Electronic/Dance Album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.

On 31 March 2011, Gregory's first opera, Piccard in Space, premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. The Hattie Naylor libretto focused on Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer's first balloon ascent, and the theories of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, both of whom are characters in the drama.

After more than a decade of career, the group released a compilation album called "The Singles", which, as the title suggests, recollects every single released from all Goldfrapp albums from "Felt Mountain" to "Head First", apart from two new songs.

The sixth studio album was released in 2013, titled "Tales of Us".

On 11 March 2013, a newly commissioned baroquesque Gregory work (for orchestra and Moog, based on a sarabande of Johann Sebastian Bach) was performed at The Roundhouse in London. The performance was part of BBC Radio 3's "Baroque Remixed" series, which also included a piece by Matthew Herbert.

Goldfrapp have released seven albums, most recently "Silver Eye" in 2017. Hits include "Strict Machine", "Ooh La La", "Lovely Head" and "A&E". The multi-platinum selling band have been nominated for the Mercury Prize, multiple Grammy Awards and won an Ivor Novello for "Strict Machine".

He composed the music for the 2017 series "Spy in the Wild".

## Article bibiography

The following is a list of web pages from where the information on this article is taken.

* The Brag - Goldfrapp’s Will Gregory On Their Enduring Partnership