Roger Marsh
Professor Emeritus

Profile

Biography

Roger Marsh is a composer. He studied at the University of York in the early seventies, where his PhD (1974) was supervised by Bernard Rands. 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, and was for three years Head of Department there, before returning to York. His music has been performed and broadcast widely. A work for piano and orchestra, Stepping Out, was premiered at the BBC Prom season in 1990. 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). His setting of all of Albert Giraud's Pierrot Lunaire - 50 Rondels Bergamasques was released in 2007 on NMC records (NMC127), and a major article on Giraud was published in twentieth-century music (CUP) also in 2007. A setting of Dante, 'Il Cor Tristo', was premiered by the Hilliard Ensemble in Perugia, Italy, in September 2008, and recorded on ECM in 2013. He has composed for many leading ensembles including Lontano and the ensemble 'de ereprijs' who premiered his What Charlie did next in Arnhem, Holland, in October 2009. For several years Roger Marsh directed the ensemble Black Hair which specialised in the theatrical realisation of contemporary music. An extended music theatre piece, 'Rising', was premiered by the group in May 2010. Also in 2010, he composed music for a major BBC Radio 3 production of Goethe's Faust. Recent work includes Poor Yorick (2014), a setting of texts from Laurence Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’, and Walking Away (2015) for soprano and marimba. Roger 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).