I loved music as a child and saw myself as a singer at an early age. As a teenager I took up the guitar and spend hours daily improvising and eventually had a 3-4 hour repertoire of original material as well as the favourite Dylan, Beatles and blues songs. After leaving school I spent a year traveling and after a year of going it alone in “the world” I had come to he end of any career aspirations. At this point I saw the film “Amadeus”. During the course of seeing this film I formed the resolve to devote the rest of my life and faculties to the pursuit of music and especially composition. I knew that this would challenge me for the rest of my life, and I would reap endless amount of pleasure and pain from it.
I now see my activities as ranging from teaching young children in a local choir, performing piano and song recitals, directing local ensembles and musicians further afield both professional and amateur in my own compositions.
In my view music is the teacher of harmonious global citizenship based on individualism in my view and in all my musical endeavors this is plays into my work in one way or another.
In October 2001 I was asked by Rainer Schnurre to consider writing music to the newly formulated Declaration of Human Rights. In the wake of September 11 th this felt like a very timely request. I had long been looking for a longer text to write music to, and yet I had not found anything satisfactory in my own searches. Rainer Schnurre of Arche Nova in Berlin and founder of Artists for Human Rights (www.kuenstler_fuer_menschenrechte.de) had been on the look-out for a composer who would be willing and able to weave music into the fabric of this very linguistically dry, but humanly immensely rich text. The subjects I have found myself time and again drawn towards and immersing myself in, are closely linked with the themes and issues that are so clearly formulated in this new Human Rights Preamble in particular. These themes took me into the problems concerning the Second World War and the holocaust and the systematic violation of Human dignity which has been perpetrated in the world since this time, despite no further “major wars”!
Questions concerning the lack of a true social order in the world, that reflects the human being as an evolving, developing spiritual being, capable of fulfilling the task of being the custodian of the planet, and of realising spiritual ideals in earthly life, have concerned me greatly. As an artist I have questioned the artists’ role and responsibility in our time.
To be given the opportunity to write music to this text so clearly formulated out of a deeply earnest approach to ethics, concordant with the ethics I experience in of Steiners’ Anthroposophy, is a real gift, and I have received it gratefully. Since then, we were asked by Michael Schmock in Wuppertal to bring the work to performance in Germany in May this year. This was at the “Thementag” on Terror und Menschenwürde“ (terror and human dignity). As a preparation for this event we performed the work in Forest Row.
Collaboration with Colin Atwell of Claudio records on recording materal for CDs Brinch vol 1, 2 and 3. With recording artists Rohan De Saram - Cello, William Hancox - Piano, Jonathan trusscott - Violin, Josef Gazsi - Violin, The Bergersen String Quartet. Also Julie Groves.