Michael Berkeley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michael Berkeley (born 29 May 1948) is a British composer. As a chorister at Westminster Cathedral, singing naturally played an important part in his early education and he frequently worked with his godfather, Benjamin Britten.
He studied composition, singing and piano at the Royal Academy of Music but it was not until his late twenties, when he went to study with Richard Rodney Bennett, that he concentrated on composition. In 1977 he was awarded the Guinness Prize for Composition; two years later he was appointed Associate Composer to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Berkeley's compositions include an oboe concerto (1977), an oratorio Or Shall We Die? (1983), Gethsemani Fragments (1990), Secret Garden (1997) and The Garden of Earthly Delights (1998).In 2000, Berkeley wrote his second opera, Jane Eyre, which was premièred at the Cheltenham Festival. He is currently working on a new chamber opera for 2008.
Berkeley is Composer-in-Association with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He also acts as Visiting Professor in Composition at the Welsh College of Music and Drama. and was Artistic Director of the Cheltenham International Festival from 1995 to 2004.
He is also known as a broadcaster - he presents BBC Radio 3's Private Passions, in which celebrities are invited to choose and discuss several pieces of music. In December 1997, one of his guests was a 112-year-old Viennese percussionist called Manfred Sturmer, who told anecdotes about Brahms, Clara Schumann, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and others so realistically that some listeners did not realise that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by Berkeley and John Sessions. Other Sessions creations appeared on Berkeley's show in subsequent years.
He is the son of the composer Sir Lennox Berkeley. Michael is married to the literary agent Deborah Rogers, and they have a daughter, Jessica.
