Brian works as an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he is Director of Composition, Director of the M.Mus in Musical Composition and Director of Studios. Each of his courses is concerned with composition and music technology and at the Undergraduate level, he teaches the units Music Technology, Advanced Music Technology, Techniques of Composition and Practical & Creative Orchestration. At the Master's level, Brian teaches the course Music Technology in Composition.

Information for research and potential PhD students

At the research level, Brian is particularly interested in meeting with composers who are considering pursuing a Composition PhD in areas such as film, electronica, experimental, multimedia and all areas surrounding acoustic technology interaction. It may be that you are a trained composer in notated contemporary music and wish to broaden your portfolio out into one of the above areas - for example, to produce a mainly notated portfolio of concert hall orientated compositions but also to include some film music.  Alternatively, it may be that you want to produce a portfolio made up entirely of electronica and multimedia type work. Other areas in which Brian is particularly interested include cross-genre composition, especially where techniques of film and modern concert hall composition mix with technology and all those that defy present classifications of musical composition style.

Among the current and recent PhD students that Brian has supervised are a number of brilliant young composers, including Maria Castro, Geoff Hannan, Ian Vine, Walter Körte and Dimitris Tsoukas. Between them, they are enjoying great success with two published by the BMIC (British Music Information Centre) under the New Voices scheme, and others holding AHRC studentships, the Thomas Holloway Scholarship, the Berlin Film Festival prize, the FPRS award plus commissions from The London Sinfonietta and Hallé Orchestra.

For further information please contact the Postgraduate Admissions Tutor in the Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK - Tel: +44 (0)1784 443532.