MARCH, ANDREW (b.1973)

Andrew March was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, United Kingdom in 1973. Between 1992 and 1996, Andrew attended the Royal College of Music, London, to study composition. During his studies, he was awarded the United Music Publishers Prize and the English Song Prize, and on graduation, a Constant & Kit Lambert Award.

 

In 1996, Andrew won the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize for his symphonic poem, Easdale. The following year, he started work on what would become an orchestral piece, Marine - à travers les arbres, which later that year, was recorded by the BBC Philharmonic for the European Broadcasting Union for Radio 3. In 1998, Marine - à travers les arbres was recorded in Abbey Road Studios for EMI Classics Debut Series. This recording was released on the cover-mount CD of the BBC Music Magazine in March 1998. Andrew went on won first prize in the inaugural Masterprize International Composing Competition.

 

Marine - à travers les arbres has received a total of 13 international live performances, including the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra and the European Union Youth Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy which was televised for the BBC Proms in 1998, and has been widely broadcast in countries such as USA, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, the Czech Republic and Portugal, to name but a few.

 

In 2001, Nymphéas for Two Pianos was written for pianist brothers duo Peter & Patrik Jablonski, who gave the World première in the Royal Palace, Stockholm, in the Autumn of 2002, and then followed with a tour that programmed the piece in and around Scandinavia.

 

In 2004, Walton Music Corporation published Be Still and Know and in 2005, Andrew was involved in a collaborative project to write a number of bespoke choral pieces for the Chapel Choir of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. A CD, Regina Caeli (LAMM188D) was later released by Lammas Records.

 

In July 2005, A Stirring in the Heavenlies was successfully recorded, in full, by the Kiev Philharmonic under the late composer/conductor Robert Ian Winstin for the landmark 12-CD series Masterworks of the New Era.

 

In 2009, Andrew composed an elegy for strings, Sanguis Venenatus which was recorded in 2011 in Olomouc in the Czech Republic and released on CD towards the end of 2012. The elegy has subsequently been broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s "Late Junction" and internationally on Estonia’s Klassikaraadio and Hungary’s Rádió Bartók, with repeat airings during drive-time programmes on stations such as Sweden’s P2 Klassiskt and South Africa’s Classic FM. More recently, Sanguis Venenatus has been accepted for streaming by Pandora.

 

In June 2013, a setting of De Profundis was published by Paraclete Press and later that year, Andrew visited New York City to attend rehearsals and introduce his Three Pieces for Solo Cello which were premièred at Weill Hall, Carnegie by Romanian-born cellist Ovidiu Marinscu.

 

In 2014, Indianapolis publisher Colla Voce Music Inc. published two sacred choral settings, Psalm 13: How Long, O Lord and the evening vesper, Marian Antiphon No. 3.

 

In January 2016, Amoration for Piano and Strings was recorded at the MRTV studios in Skopje with the Macedonian Radio Symphonic Orchestra. The piece has since been broadcast on the UK’s Classic FM, Central New York's WCNY 91.3, Canada’s Radio-Classique, and on Classic FM Netherlands.

 

Since the beginning of 2016, four pieces have been published by Alea Publishing and Recording in the USA; Equipoise for Bass Clarinet and Piano, Nymphéas for Clarinet Choir, Dragonfly for Flute, Viola and Harp, and more recently, Spring Tide Arabesque for Bass Clarinet Duo.

 

Biography © Andrew March 2016