Composer, arranger, educator, performer, publisher: Wes Ramsay began his career in music publishing as an editor with Brass Press, an independent firm specializing in historical editions—and where his first arrangement was published—followed by a first-job-post-university editorial stint at The Benson Company, a prominent gospel music publisher of its day.

His trombone studies took him to Austria, New College Festival (Sarasota, Florida) Aspen Music Festival and a (mis)adventurous two years in Guadalajara Mexico, where he served as a principal in that city’s symphony orchestra. (He now files that experience under ‘What was I thinking?’)

He returned to his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, to the record industry and a long period busily working in all genres with all manner of (not necessarily sane..) clients, including a number of the music publishers established there.

Wes is best known as co-composer/arranger for an extended choral work—Come Away to the Skies: A High Lonesome Mass. Co-written with choral conductor Tim Sharp, it is a setting of the Ordinary of the Mass scored for SATB choir and bluegrass band (fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo, bass, drum kit). As a uniquely American work it employs the melodies of the Southern Harmony tradition. Since its premiere in 2011, High Lonesome Mass has received hundreds of performances in North America, Ireland and the UK.

August Press is honored to serve as publisher of this work, which continues to be performed by choirs throughout the United States.

Wes serves as a regional representative for the London-based Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, the world's largest and most prestigious music examination service.

Working from his desk on a farm near Nashville (a short drive from his golf club), Wes Ramsay is blessed to be married to renowned harpist/teacher/composer/conductor Carol McClure.Wes and Carol are proud parents of daughter Susannah (BA, Salem College; MSN, Vanderbilt), a midwife nurse practitioner in Baltimore; and son Parker (MA Cambridge; MM Oberlin; MM Juilliard), a concert artist and author based in New York City and Paris.