3 obs Score and three playing scores Composer: b. 1953.

Peter McGarr was born in Manchester in 1953 and studied Music and Dance and Mather College. He has had a varied career, including library assistant, carer, tourist information assistant, Junior and Secondary School teacher. For several years he taught steel pan, and his steel band "Orchestral Steel" received the Outstanding Performance Award from Music for Youth. He has also been nominated as Music Teacher of the Year and has received the George Butterworth Award for contemporary music from the Society for the Promotion of New Music. As a composer he is self-taught, but has had performances and commissions from many leading orchestras and ensembles, including London Sinfonietta, BBC Philharmonic, Ensemble Bash, Brodsky Quartet, Black Dyke Band, City of London Sinfonia, Northern Sinfonia, Opus 20 and the Huddersfield, Bath and Spitalfields festivals. In 2000 he was commissioned by the BBC Proms to write a piece featuring Joanna MacGregor, Ensemble Bash and the New Century Strings. Several of his pieces have also been recorded. Peter McGarr is also interested in 20th and 21st century literature, 19th century northern industrial architecture, L. S. Lowry and the 1950s Capitol recordings of Frank Sinatra.

Images of Sleep was composed in 2000 for the 10th anniversary concert of the Three Reeds, who have performed the music several times since then. It is a challenging piece for three oboes, requiring accurate tuning and dynamic control over the whole of the instrument's range. The music moves from unison to discord to harmony and the three parts wind around each other with dream-like quality. They may move independently or in pairs or all together, in a drifting chase towards elusive resolutions. To help the performers, each player has an individual part with a second stave showing the other two parts at a reduced size. The music was set for publication by C. M. M. Nex and F. H. Nex from the composer's manuscript.