ChristopherBest.net

composer and writer

REQUEST CV

I was born in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire and spent my formative years in a small outlying village. I went to the local grammar school, an experience I remember primarily for my involvement in annual opera performances and music festivals. However I was discouraged from taking A-level music (as it was generally viewed as best left as a hobby) and soon found myself at University College London studying geography. I stuck at it for a year, but my heart just wasn’t in it and I left to do a number of office jobs whilst trying to find a path for myself.

At twenty one I decided to enrol at night school and do my music A-Level. From there it was but a short step to Lancaster University (taking composition as a first study under Edward Cowie) and thence to Churchill College Cambridge (MPhil in composition and analysis under Hugh Wood) and Nottingham (AMusD in composition under Nigel Osborne and James Fulkerson).

Around the time I was completing my doctorate, I became involved in adult education, offering music appreciation classes all over Nottinghamshire. This work was immensely enjoyable and a great education in itself; in preparing new subjects each week I must have got to know more music at this time than at any point during my formal studies!

A year or so later, the opportunity came up to teach BTEC and A-Level music at the Coventry Centre For The Performing Arts. Having just bought my first house, it was a stable income too good to miss and an ideal foot in the door for a career in education. It couldn’t have worked out better. As it turned out, CCPA was just about to move into HNDs and we were invited to design courses and submit our proposals. I came up with an HND in composition, which was approved and became the first of its type anywhere in the country. In 1995 the Centre was taken over by Coventry University, our courses were converted into degrees and suddenly I found myself heading up my own degree course!

For me though, the real break came in 1998 when I secured the post of coordinator of composition at Dartington College. Devon is a beautiful part of the country and an ideal base for a composer/writer - if you don’t mind the long journeys out to the rest of civilisation - thank Heaven for the Internet!.

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