Patrick
Brandon was born in 1946 and has spent almost all his life actively involved
in music. Over the years he has written an enormous amount of music, of many
types and for a wide variety of combinations.
This
composer’s credentials are sound: he received personal instrumental tuition
from the age of 7, studied music, first to ‘A’ Level; then at Reading University,
achieving a B.A. Honours degree. As a schoolteacher, teaching music, he composed
to meet needs of various kinds to encourage young musicians in various idioms:
he also wrote ‘performance’ music in the hope it might be performed! Some
was – he won a BBC Young Composers’ Competition, leading to a Radio 3 broadcast:
he had organ music performed in Auckland Cathedral and broadcast on New Zealand
Radio, and performed in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral: much of his chamber
music has been performed in venues around London and East Anglia.
While
it can rightly be claimed that he has developed an individual style, it can
also be accurately observed that he writes in a number of styles. He has his
own ‘voice’ but he writes in a number of idioms. In all his expressions of
musical creativity Patrick Brandon is serious about what he is doing, whether
the music be for educational use, music in a lighter style or a jazz idiom,
or contemporary ‘classical’ music.
