Geraint Lewis was born in Cardiff in 1958 and educated at Bryntaf and Rhydfelen Welsh medium schools, becoming a Junior Scholar at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 1973 before moving to read Music at St. John’s College, Cambridge where he was a pupil of the legendary George Guest. He joined the music department of Bangor University from 1980 until 1987 and published an 80th birthday tribute to Sir Michael Tippett in 1985 with whom he later collaborated academically and on several historical recordings. He writes and reviews regularly for Gramophone magazine as well as in Barn, the leading Welsh cultural forum.
Working closely with William Mathias until his death in 1992 Geraint then directed the North Wales International Music Festival at St. Asaph from 1992 until 2004. In a varied career he joined Nimbus Records in 1988 and produced many significant recordings as well as running the new hall of the Nimbus Foundation from its opening in 1993 by HRH The Prince of Wales until 2004. He was a member of the Arts Council of Wales from 1992 until 2003 becoming Chairman of its Music Committee in 1996 and served as a trustee of Live Music Now, Arts & Business Cymru, Mid-Wales Opera and Music Theatre Wales as well as a Governor of RWCMD. In 2018 he was appointed Artistic Director of Lower Machen Music and is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio Cymru and Radio 3.
As a composer Geraint has written nearly 200 works in virtually all genres including the community opera 'Culhwch ac Olwen' for the 2000 Criccieth Festival, the Dylan Thomas choral symphony 'Nearly in Heaven' for BBC NOW and Only Men Aloud at the 2003 Swansea Festival and the 'Hereford Mass' for the 2003 Three Choirs Festival. In 1999 and 2004 the Chorus of WNO sang his 'Afallon' to open the National Assembly of Wales and his best-known choral work 'The Souls of Righteous', commissioned for the Memorial Service to William Mathias at St. Paul’s Cathedral in November 1992, was memorably performed and broadcast from there on the night after the death of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022. He is currently writing a work for Continuum to premiere at the Brecon Choir Festival in July 2024.