Michael Christie

Biography

Michael Christie studied cello, composition and piano at the Royal College of Music (1975-79), where he won the Bliss Prize. As a freelance cellist he worked with various orchestras in the UK, including shows in the West End. His music theatre work with ensembles such as the Lindsay Kemp Company took him on tours to Spain, Italy, Venezuela and the Shetland Islands. In 1989 he was commissioned by the Royal Opera House Garden Venture to write a chamber opera, The Standard Bearer, which was performed at the Donmar Warehouse. He wrote a number of music theatre pieces for Dartington Summer Music and also for the company which he co-founded with Susannah Self, Selfmade Music Theatre, with whom he has toured in Spain, Syria and throughout the UK. As a professional educator Michael has specialised in teaching cello, recorder, composition and creative class music. Currently he is a peripatetic instrumental tutor in a number of schools in North London, and is a professor of composition and musical awareness at Junior Guildhall. He has also led many composition projects in schools for the English Sinfonia over the last few years.A song of his, Spår, was recently performed at the Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm by the well-known Swedish soprano Nina Stemme, accompanied by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. The setting of a poem by Thomas Tranströmer, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in November 2011, was well received. The song is the first of a new song cycle which will be completed later this year, with poems by Tranströmer and Bodil Malmsten.