I’m Lisa Portus – the founder of Portus Press. I am a bassoonist and graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, and a player and arranger with over 30 years’ experience.
Background
I established Portus Press in 2008 as a platform through which to sell the numerous arrangements I had created over the years for:
- wind quintet
- wind quintet and piano
- bassoon quartet & bassoon choir
- wind quartet (since 2016)
- wind trio (since 2019)
- music for clarinets, bass clarinets and clarinet choirs (since 2022)
I pride myself on producing creative, imaginative and enjoyable arrangements that are fun to play and to listen to. To find out more about how I work, please click here.
Since 2008 Portus Press has gone from strength to strength, selling music all around the globe. The Portus Press catalogue has grown from just a handful of pieces to over 400. I also offer a small range of original works.
Portus Press titles are played, recorded and broadcast around the world
A number of my works have been broadcast on radio and primetime BBC TV (including the Liberty Bell March, in Miranda Hart’s ‘The Story of Slapstick’): my arrangement of Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs was broadcast on the day of the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms. Walton’s Façade Suite is available on CD by Nicholas Daniel’s Haffner Wind Ensemble and the Finnish Idée Fixe Wind Quintet included my arrangement of Bratton’s Teddy Bears’ Picnic in a CD of children’s music released in 2010.
Quite a number of recordings of my arrangements feature on Youtube. Links to these recordings are included in the listing for the piece concerned. My arrangements have also been used in films and extensively in Youtube adverts too!
Printed sheet music and PDFs
In 2015 I launched an Emailed PDF option – saving postage and waiting for the postman! Now the delivery of PDFs is fully automated so you get your PDFs instantly upon payment. However, for VAT reasons PDFs are manually emailed to customers in the EU.
Alternative parts
In response to customer requests I also now offer alternative parts (to replace the horn with a second clarinet and/or the bassoon with a bass clarinet) for most of my wind quintets, wind quartets and wind trios for a small additional charge.
I do hope you enjoy my website and all it offers. I’m always keen to hear what you think: it’s very easy to contact me.