Collaborators of the VEHICLES OPERA Project
Primary Investigator:
Professor Martyn Harry
Composer; Artistic Director, JdP Concert Series
Professor of Composition, Faculty of Music, Oxford University
Tutorial Fellow in Music, St Anne's College, Oxford
Lecturer in Music, St Hilda's College, Oxford
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.
Previous Experience:
From 1993 to 1996, Martyn was the Executive Producer, New Music, for the international recording company Sony Classical. In this capacity he initiated and produced recordings of music by Valentin Silvestrov, Gija Kancheli, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julie Wolfe, Howard Skempton, Louis Andriessen, Terry Riley, Nikolai Korndorf, as well as the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Geoff Smith Band and Ensemble Bash.
From 1997 to 1999 he worked for the Arts Council of England as a consultant for its Recordings and Publications scheme, and as an assessor for lottery-funded schemes. Martyn worked closely with the British Music Information Centre, the Sonic Arts Network, the SPNM and the Contemporary Music Network, before the merger of these organisations as Sound and Music.
Between 2000 and 2003 Martyn also orchestrated a number of Hollywood film scores such as the music for Insomnia, Happy Here and Now, Spivs, Inside I’m Dancing and The Descent.
Partner Organisations:
Operasonic is a not for profit company limited by guarantee that was formed in November 2014 by Creative Director Rhian Hutchings and based in Newport, South Wales.
Operasonic is passionate about opera and as an artform that connects with people in a direct and visceral way. We are also passionate about young people and their potential and creativity.
We enable young people to own opera, as audiences, as participants, as creators, as leaders. Young people need contemporary opera created on their terms and in their communities, venues, schools, and online spaces. The opera of the future should be driven by them.
Operasonic creates a range of opportunities for young people to explore, create and experience opera, and we put participation at the heart of every creative process we undertake. We work with a wide range of artists who are all committed to making amazing opera with young people.
Executive Producer – Rosey Brown
