Tuesday (5/7) on the Limelight magazine (Australia) website, Clive Paget writes, “Steve Martland was a composer, performer and music educator who bucked the trend over many years. Born in 1959 in Liverpool he studied composition in Holland with Louis Andriessen. His preoccupation with the function of the composer in society is reflected in his commitment to music education, believing in the educational impact of creativity: ‘Creativity is everything that is against what’s going on in the world right now. It’s to do with tolerance and understanding other people.’ Throughout a fruitful musical career he worked almost exclusively with artists outside of traditional classical institutions—in particular with Dutch and American groups, freelance musicians and especially his own Steve Martland Band. … Perhaps his most popular piece, the five minute Principia, was adopted as the theme music for the BBC radio programme The Music Machine. His massive orchestral work Babi Yar (1983) was premiered in the USA by the St. Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin and almost simultaneously in the UK by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Nicolas Cleobury. It was subsequently recorded for the Factory label.”
Posted May 9, 2013
