Peter McGarr


Peter McGarr is an English classical composer and teacher, working in the English experimental tradition and inspired by Northern English landscape and culture.

Biography

McGarr was born in Openshaw, Manchester, and attended Ducie Technical High School for Boys, now Manchester Academy. He studied Music and Dance at Mather College and is self-taught in composition. For several years he taught steel pan, achieving the Outstanding Performance Award from Music for Youth for his steel band 'Orchestral Steel', appearing in the School Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 1984 and 1986. He has received the Butterworth Prize for Composition from the Society for the Promotion of New Music and has been nominated for Music Teacher of the Year, the British Composer Awards, the Paul Hamlyn foundation Awards and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship. He has led composition workshops at the Edinburgh International Festival and also engaged extensively with musical activities involving the elderly and people with dementia.

Style and influences

McGarr has been influenced by the sounds and culture of the Northern English people and landscape. He uses theatre, extended techniques and everyday sounds to 'Sustain rapt melody that seems to scrutinise the tintinnabulations of nature for signs of hope or doom'. His musical style 'Integrates tremolo sounds into a subtle patchwork of changing harmonies.' He follows in a long tradition of British artists and poets who have interpreted the British people and landscape.

Works and commissions

He has received performances and commissions from many leading musicians, orchestras and festivals including the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, BBC Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Joanna MacGregor, Ensemble Bash, Three Strange Angels, Passacaglia, oboeworks, Cappella Nova, CoMa, Exmoor Singers of London, The Crossing, City Chamber Choir Scottish Flute Trio,
Tempest Flute Trio, Kevin Bowyer, Ruth Morley, Sarah Brooke, Emily Andrews, Sarah Field, Brodsky Quartet, Tubalate, Black Dyke Band.
In 2007 he was commissioned by the Tallis Festival to write a 40-part companion piece to Thomas Tallis's Spem in alium. The resulting work, Lindisfarne Love Song included poems about Lindisfarne, diary notes and the detailed geography of the area including shipwrecks and lighthouses. An on-line campaign has since started, Lybats, to secure a performance of the piece on its "spiritual home" of Lindisfarne.
In 2008 the Bath International Music Festival commissioned its largest ever piece; a choral work from McGarr, to celebrate the festival's 60th anniversary. The work was Homesongs and scored for over a 1,000 voices.
Recent projects include an opera for percussionist Chris Brannick, soundtrack to a film-installation by Richard Dawson and a Music-theatre work for 12 percussionists.
His music is published by Faber Music.

British Composer Awards

He won the 2013–14 British Composer Awards for his piece Dry Stone Walls of Yorkshire, written for orchestra with soundtrack and features field recordings made on Saddleworth Moor.

Personal life

Peter McGarr is the only son of Joan McGarr, a school secretary from Audlem in Cheshire and William McGarr, a shipbuilder, coal miner and mouth organ player from Wallsend, near Newcastle upon Tyne. He was brought up in the Openshaw district of East Manchester, where he lived for many years. In 2005 he and his wife, Janet Tye, moved from the city to live in the Lancashire/Yorkshire borderlands on the edge of Saddleworth Moor.

Selected works