Public seminar: Martyn Harry (University of Oxford)

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Biography

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Professor Martyn Harry

Martyn Harry studied Composition with Alexander Goehr as part of his BA at Cambridge University, and Music Theatre Composition with Mauricio Kagel in Cologne on a DAAD scholarship. He has an Associate Diploma in Performance and Communications Studies from the Guildhall School of Music, and a PhD in Composition from City University where he studied with Simon Emmerson, Michael Finnissy, Douglas Young and Robert Saxton.

From 2000 to 2003 Martyn was the Northern Arts Composer Fellow, based at the University of Durham, in which capacity he produced numerous compositions for the Northern region (covering Newcastle, County Durham, Cumbria, Northumberland, Teeside and the North Pennines), involving professional arts organisations, universities and members of the community. As part of his work he created Durham's innovative Opera and Music Theatre course, where Durham students devised a new production every year for performance in primary and secondary schools, in conjunction with CTC, now Theatre Hullabaloo.

Martyn became Head of Compositional Studies at the music department of Durham University in the academic year 2003-2004, and had a significant role in the department's successful bid to become a Centre of Excellence for Teaching and Learning in Music. Along with Agustin Fernandez, Martyn directed the I3 project in close conjunction with Simon Clugston of Northern Sinfonia. He created a number of innovative music theatre projects with the director Lore Lixenberg, including productions of Berio's A-Ronne, Wishart's Anticredos and Kagel's theatrical tour-de-force Staatstheater, which won approbation from the composer. He will also be remembered for his initiatives to change the learning environment for composers, such as the new first-year Contemporary Music course, which combined close study of avant-garde compositional techniques along with opportunities for composing for film (e.g., the film scores created by postgraduate film composers for Buñuel's L'Age d'Or, Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, Chaplin's East Street and - jointly with Mariam Rezaei and Richard Stopford - Dimitri Kirsanoff's Ménilmontant).

In January 2009 Martyn Harry took up his present post as a university lecturer at the Faculty of Music, specialising in Composition, with tutorial responsibility for music at St Anne's.