Biography

Michael Graubart
I was born in Vienna in 1930 and came to England as a refugee in 1938. My original interests were primarily scientific. I graduated in physics at the University of Manchester in 1952, but by then I was playing the flute, composing and beginning to conduct. I worked as an electronic engineer at EMI and as a teacher of maths and physics in a variety of settings, including a secondary school, a polytechnic and an American air base, while studying composition with Mátyás Seiber and flute with Geoffrey Gilbert. I later studied conducting with Lawrence Leonard.

In 1966 I became a part-time tutor and conductor at Morley College, an adult education college in London with a strong musical tradition built up by past Directors of Music like Gustav Holst and Sir Michael Tippett, and in 1969 I became the Director of Music myself. I was also the Musical Director of Focus Opera Group and conducted numerous premières and British premières of modern operas and music theatre works. In 1991 I left Morley College to take up a Senior Lectureship in the School of Academic Studies of the Royal Northern College of Music, where I also directed Akanthos, the college's contemporary music ensemble. I retired from full-time teaching in 1996, but still lecture, write on music and compose.

In 1962 I married Ellen Barbour Clark, an American artist, and we have three children. We separated in 1991 and in 1996 I married Valerie Coumont, an English psychotherapist.

My music is atonal, most of it employing a broadly Schoenbergian 12-note technique, and rhythmically complex, but essentially motivic and melodic. It has been performed and in some cases broadcast by various artists, including Katharina Wolpe, Kathron Sturrock, the Arditti Quartet, Lawrence Leonard, Ulrike Anton and others.

Apart from music, I participate in regular seminars in modern European philosophy, and I enjoy hill-walking.