Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was a renowned English composer and pianist. Sorabji was born in Chingford, Essex, England, in 1892. His father was a Zoroastrian Parsi civil engineer and his mother English. From an early age Sorabji was privately educated and had a growing obsession with contemporary European and Russian music.

First considering a career as a music critic, Sorabji experimented with composition, resulting in a wave of musical creativity. Primarily a self-taught musician, Sorabji performed in London and Paris and in 1919 played his First Piano Sonata to an impressed Busoni, who wrote a glowing review. Sorabji made a few more concert appearances, his last one being in 1936. From then on he lived as a recluse, rejecting all public performances but continuing to compose.

Sorabji then went on to work as a critic for The New Age and The New English Weekly until 1945. In 1975 he allowed his four-hour multi-movement piece Opus Clavicembalisticum to be recorded.

Sorabji's compositions were notorious for their inordinate length and harmonic complexity. This is why so many of his works have rarely been performed. Most notably, the pianist John Ogdon and the organist Kevin Bowyer have been brave enough to learn and perform some of Sorabji’s compositions.