Pianist and composer Philip Martin was born in Dublin and studied with Mabel Swainson, Franz Reizenstein, Lennox Berkeley and Richard Rodney Bennett. He has established a busy career in Europe and the United States, where he held the UK-US Bicentennial Arts Fellowship and has been a guest at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Summer School, giving master classes and recitals.
He has written numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works including four piano concertos, a harp concerto, seven piano trios (three of which were composed for the Crawford Piano Trio), and a large number of songs. Recent major works include his first symphony and a third piano concerto for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. CDs of his music have been released on the Altarus and Marco Polo labels.
Philip Martin teaches piano and composition at the Birmingham Conservatoire and is a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists, and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 2012, he was honoured with a Professorship from the City University of Birmingham for his outstanding contribution to the arts.
I believe my music should activate the performer’s imagination to entertain and communicate with the audience. Poetry, places, paintings and performers are frequent starting points. In my larger orchestral works I try to sustain a structured harmonic atmosphere, which contrasts with shorter pieces inspired by Irish folk music.