Marcus Blunt

(1947 - 2022)

Composer and friend of Marcus, Frank Bayford, has written a tribute reflecting on Marcus and his life and work. You can read it here.

Marcus Blunt : A Tribute

Above: Marcus Blunt, with his photographic ‘snaps’, at The Post Office, Fritchley, May 1976 (Photo: John Mitchell)

Right: Celebrating at the Midland Hotel, Manchester, following the recording of Marcus Blunt’s Piano Concerto on 16th July 2016. L.to R.: Marcus Blunt; Murray McLachlan; Kathryn Page; Stephen Threlfall; Maureen Blunt; Lesley Wilson.

“Marcus Blunt is one of those genuine British composers whose music has been unfairly overlooked for too long.”

ROBERT MATTHEW-WALKER, MUSICAL OPINION

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Marcus Blunt - composer

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Biography

A composer of mainly instrumental music, performed worldwide as well as throughout the UK. Also broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM, and local radio stations in the UK, USA and Gozo (Malta). Two CDs have been released by Divine Art (orchestral music, complete piano music). Publishers: Modus Music, Emerson Edition.

Marcus Blunt was born in Birmingham in 1947. Although around the age of 9 he had piano lessons from his father for a year or more, and made his first attempts at composition, his interest in music did not really take off until he was 14. He went on to study composition at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, graduating in 1970. After a remarkably wide variety of abodes – in rural Warwickshire, Manchester, York, and London – and occupations – ranging from warehouse packer and photographic processor to department manager at a music publishers – he settled in Derby in 1976 as a teacher of woodwind instruments. In 1990 he and his wife Maureen decided to seek a more congenial environment for his composing work, enjoying the gentler pace of life in rural Dumfries & Galloway.

His output was mainly instrumental, for anything from piano solo to large orchestra, and has been performed – internationally (Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, India, Italy, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sri Lanka, USA) as well as throughout Britain and on BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM – by artists such as the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, the Joachim Piano Trio, and Kathryn Stott. Competition successes include 2nd place in the Purcell Composition Prize in 1995 (Fantasy on SCRiABin for piano), 1st in the Surrey Sinfonietta Composers' Workshop in 2000 (Sonata for clarinet & piano), and the Judges’ Prize in the Oare String Orchestra’s 2012 Composing Competition (Concertino for viola & string orchestra) (the judges included violist Martin Outram and composer John McCabe).

In July 2002 he was a featured composer at the Victoria International Arts Festival, Gozo (Malta), with seven performances and a pre-concert talk, all broadcast on local radio. In 2004 he was commissioned to write a Fanfare to open the Dumfries & Galloway Silver Arts Festival. In 2006 Murray McLachlan recorded a CD of his complete solo piano music for the Dunelm label – reissued in 2014 on Divine Art. In 2009 his Two Serenades for violin, clarinet, cello & piano were chosen for inclusion in the London Schubert Players’ EU-funded Invitation to Composers project, with performances in Edinburgh, Paris and Namsos (Norway), as well as a CD recording released in December 2011. This recording was reissued by Nimbus in November 2012 as part of a 3-CD set entitled A European Odyssey.

In 2016, his Piano Concerto, Symphony No. 2, Bassoon Concertino and Aspects of Saturn were recorded by the Manchester Camerata/Stephen Threlfall, with soloists Murray McLachlan and Lesley Wilson, for a Divine Art CD released in January 2018. Twelve months previously, Aberdeen University’s Vox Regis label issued Lesley Wilson’s CD entitled A Much-Travel’d Clown: Premiere Recordings of Scottish Bassoon Music. Among the eight items are two by Marcus, including Lorenzo the Much-Travel’d Clown for bassoon & piano.

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