Music is an important part of human life. People listen to music to relax, to entertain, to think about serious things in their life or just to be delighted with sounds which come out of CD players. There are a lot of musicians in our country and abroad who deserve people’s attention. We are going to discuss the life and creative works of great English composer Mathew Adkins.
Mathew Adkins was born on the 29th of March, 1972 in Leamington in Great Britain and now he is living in Huddersfield in the United Kingdom. He combines in himself a gift of a performer and a composer. He got a musical education and if talking about his education, he:
was introduced to electronic and acousmatic music during his music studies at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After he graduated from Cambridge in 1993 he pursued postgraduate research in electronic music at the University of Birmingham with Jonty Harrison and later at the University of East Anglia with Simon Waters (McNaught, Pringle 2009).
He also gave lectures in electro-acoustic music. His specialization is electro-acoustic music, even though in 2000 he devoted his time and several works to instrumental music. He also tried to combine these two directions.
Mathew Adkins says about his work, that “composition is, for me, like a giant puzzle in which the overall shape is fixed but the pieces and the picture itself change and undergoes subtle transformations as one is constructing it” (Conway). Music is everything for him it is not only his job but also a way of life. He devoted his life to music.
“Melt” and “Clothed in the Soft Horizon” are two of his electro-acoustic works with which he came out to international attention when he was 22 years old. These two works were awarded the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award, the Prix de Residence at Bourges, and the Grand Prix of Musica Nova in Prague (Conway). This was his first prize and since that time he won a huge number of other prizes all over the world (including, the USA, Europe, China, Australia, and others).
60 Project (2008) is a work devoted to the “60th anniversary of musique concrète and the pioneering work of Pierre Schaeffer” ([60] Project.). 60 project consists of out of shorts sounds composed by 66 artists, including Lars Akerlund, Jonty Harrison, Steve Roden, Christian Zanesi, and others. The total duration of the work is 60 minutes.
The whole work consists of three almost equal parts. These parts are divided into smaller sections. The whole work includes different pieces and sounds, like a seascape, urban sounds, vocal sounds, and others. All music and sounds are composed electronically. 66 different composers made their music and Mathew Adkins reviewed it, combined, in some cases added or cut something, and gave birth to such a great piece of music as 60 Project.
The contribution of Mathew Adkins in the world musical department is great, especially in the section of electronic and acoustic music. It is possible to like or dislike his music, but it is impossible not to admire his sounds. The 60 Project is a work that has not only musical value but also a historical one, as a devotion to the 60th anniversary of the work of Pierre Schaeffer.
Works Cited
Conway, Paul. Composers: New voices. Mathew Adkins. 2009. Web.
Project. 2009. Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
McNaught, Ian. Pringle, Caroline. 2009. Dr Mathew Adkins. Web.