Biography

Michael J Martin's adventures in composing music began when he was a chorister of Westminster Abbey. There he began composing small responses, psalm tunes and frequently improvising/not singing the sop. part in hymns when he should have been. It was there he realised that it's much more satisfying composing the music than just performing it. Yet throughout secondary school he acknowleged the challenges composing entailed.

Michael has a BMus(Hons) in Composition from Trinity College of Music where he was surrounded by a wealth of talented and open-minded musicians, this gave him the opportunity to experiment and challenge both audiences and listeners with his music. He finds collaboration across artistic fields as mutually rewarding both creatively and technically. In 2004 he composed the music for Monica Giltheart and the Mysterious Pencil, a short film by David O'Sullivan which went on to receive the highly coveted Royal Television Society award for Best Undergraduate Nonfactual Short Film 2004. Michael is now studying at Post Graduate level at the London Film School, honing his skills in composing for Film and Television.

Studying with Simon Lambros, Michael draws his influences from a wide variety of contemporary and established composers, these include Alfred Schnitke, John Adams, Krystoff Penderecki, Beethoven, Luciano Berio and Andrew Lovett and Richard Allain (both former tutors). During his 4 years at Trinity, Michael studied with Andrew Poppy, Stephen Montague and Andrew Lovett.

With such a range of influences, Michael continues to find his 'creative signature' which he feels is a combination of contradicting rhythm accents which suggest hidden meters as well as not being afraid of mixing both traditional and non-traditional harmonies in his music.

Technology based music has been part of his creative life for sometime but it really played a role around July 1999 when Michael started summer work at Evolution Electronics Ltd. This involvement as an employee recurred every holiday, even when Evolution was acquired by M-Audio Inc. in 2003. It was there where Michael realized the potential and creative power of music technology.

Educated at Mill Hill School under Richard Allain (composer and head of music) Michael was awarded the Inglis Gundry prize for composition in 2002 for his piece Vexation, for String quartet, Oboe and piano (written for the Sarabande String Quartet). When he left Mill Hill, the orchestra performed Opus, Michael's first performed orchestra piece. This left Michael with an appetite for writing orchestral music, some of which has been recorded and can be found on this website.