My post yesterday about the centenary of Robert Simpson brought a recommendation in the comments section for his Symphony No. 9. That reminded me that Simpson’s Ninth was made possible through the munificence of an unlikely source – Phil Lesh.

Prior to cofounding the eclectic, long-running rock band The Grateful Dead, Lesh studied at Mills College with Luciano Berio, alongside Steve Reich and Robert Moran. His interest in contemporary classical music endured, so that he became the anonymous benefactor of numerous English composers.

Among them was not only Robert Simpson, but one of Simpson’s great enthusiasms, Havergal Brian. Lesh financed the first recording of Brian’s “Gothic Symphony,” a work that made it into the Guinness Book for being the world’s largest symphony.

You can learn more about it in this article from 1991 in the Los Angeles Times:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-04-ca-365-story.html

If the article is paywalled, you’ll find much the same content here:

How the Grateful Dead backed little-known British composers

Thanks to Lesh, there was never any shortage of composers who were grateful to The Grateful Dead.