Martyn Harry biography
'I have been interested in the notion of communication in music ever since I had private lessons with Hans Keller as a teenager. I see no contradiction in the aspiration to write music of high artistic quality that nevertheless communicates directly to interested, non-specialist listeners. This hope has informed my work as a record producer and it still underpins my own composition. Maybe it is a useful corollary to my own characteristic impatience when it comes to musical material. When I compose I am not primarily interested in articulating pure, abstract conceptual ideas but in locating that performance energy that comes about when disparate ideas are brought to bear upon each other. And the final arbiter of what is exciting and special is myself. So while I am consciously addressing non-specialist listeners in my music, I am also asking them to approach it with an open mind. Complexity is exciting!' Martyn Harry
Born in Crawley, West Sussex in 1964, Martyn Harry studied composition with Professor Alexander Goehr at King's College, Cambridge and music theatre with Professor Mauricio Kagel at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. Martyn Harry's works have been performed by ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta, Eos, Piano Circus and the BBC Singers and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM, NDR 3 and WDR 3.
Martyn's chamber opera The End of the Line, premiered at the 1997 Huddersfield Festival under the auspices of the spnm, joins a long line of music theatre works, one of which, Signal Failure, has been turned into a film by Damian Rodgett and Martyn Harry.
"...hypnotic cross-etchings of rhythm and metre."
Hilary Finch, The Times 7.1.1999
Martyn's most frequently performed concert works include his early Ozymandias for cello and piano and Regenstimmen for solo harp. The latter work has received over fifteen performances in its first year alone since Catherine Beynon premiered it at the Purcell Room in January 1999. Other significant compositions include the outrageous showpiece Fantasy Unbuttoned, which was first performed by the London Sinfonietta at the 1998 State of The Nation weekend and subsequently broadcast several times on BBC Radio 3; the elegiac Still Life for ensemble; and the powerful orchestral work Symphonic Shelley. which was conceived specifically with amateur performers in mind.
Martyn Harry has been Northern Arts Composer Fellow since January 2000. In the three years of his residency at the University of Durham he will write pieces for a great variety of artists working in the Northern region and will be closely involved in the lead-up to the opening of Music Centre Gateshead in September 2002.