Roger Marsh

Roger Marsh studied with Bernard Rands at the University of York, UK, in the early seventies. He spent two years (1976-78) at the University of California, San Diego, on a Harkness Fellowship. From 1978 to 88 he lectured at the University of Keele, before returning to the York where he is currently Professor of Music. 

His music has been performed and broadcast widely.  His vocal piece Not a soul but ourselves...is based on texts from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and was recorded by Electric Phoenix on Wergo records.  It is has been re-recorded by Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices  for Harmonia Mundi.  A work for piano and orchestra, Stepping Out, was premiered at the BBC Prom season in 1990, and  an orchestral piece Espace was premiered at the Huddersfield Festival in 1994.  A work for percussion quartet, Sukeroku (2000),  composed for  ‘Backbeat Percussion’, has been extensively toured by them and was recorded in Japan along with a work for O-Tsuzumi and Percussion quartet, Atsumari (2004) (CD: NF61801).  Hoichi a piece for alto flute and electronics has just been recorded by Jos Zwaanenburg for release in 2011.  A setting of Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire – 50 Rondels Bergamasques  was released in 2007 on NMC records (NMC127), and a major new work for the Hilliard Ensemble, a setting of two cantos from Dante’s Inferno, received its premiere in Perugia, Italy, in 2008.   2009 saw the premiere of What Charlie did next’ by the ensemble ‘de ereprijs’ in Arnhem Holland.  In 2010 his music was used for a major radio production of Geothe’s Faust (BBC Radio 3, Sept 19 2010).

Roger Marsh is also known for his abridgements and productions of all the novels of James Joyce for Naxos Audiobooks, including  Joyce’s  Ulysses – unabridged on 22 CDs (2004).   His music is published by Chester Novello and Peters Edition, London.

http://www.editionpeters.com/london/modern.php?composer=MARSH,%20R.&modern=1