Berkeley

Michael Berkeley will turn 60 in 2008. There will be a wide range of performances of his works throughout the year, including a BBC Proms commission on 10 August, two birthday concerts, and features at the Presteigne, Second Glance, and St Endellion festivals.

Click here for the current schedule of performances of Michael Berkeley's works in his birthday year.

Michael Berkeley was born in 1948, the eldest son of the composer Sir Lennox Berkeley. As a chorister at Westminster Cathedral, singing naturally played an important part in his early education and he frequently worked with his godfather, Benjamin Britten. Berkeley studied at the Royal Academy of Music but did not exclusively concentrate on composition until his late twenties when he went to study with Richard Rodney Bennett. The first few works from this period, including the String Trio and Oboe Concerto, were written in a broadly tonal idiom.

However, since the 1982 oratorio Or Shall We Die? Berkeley's music has undergone a very considerable change and in pieces such as For the Savage Messiah (1985), his language has become more distinctive with the emotional quality of the early pieces integrated into a tauter musical idiom. A harder edged sound began to emerge in works such as the two string pieces Coronach and Gethsemani Fragment.

In 1993, the opera Baa Baa Black Sheep (based on the childhood of Rudyard Kipling) was premiered at the Cheltenham Festival to enormous public and critical acclaim. Since then a number of highly successful but contrasting works have further consolidated Berkeley's growing reputation. These include Magnetic Field for the Vanbrugh String Quartet; and Winter Fragments for the Nash Ensemble.

In January 1998, Secret Garden was premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis at the Barbican Hall. A joint commission from the LSO and OUP, Secret Garden was extremely well received and has since been played in Europe and Israel. Garden of Earthly Delights received its premiere at the 1998 Proms, by the National Youth Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovitch. In 2000, Berkeley wrote his second opera, Jane Eyre, which was premiered at the Cheltenham Festival by Music Theatre Wales and subsequently toured around the UK. Jane Eyre received its Australian premiere by Stopera in the autumn of 2004 in Canberra. This production was repeated in Canberra and Melbourne in 2005.

2003 saw Berkeley's music reaching an international audience, with performances of Odd Man Out and Entertaining Master Punch at the Sydney Festival, Australia, and the US premiere of the Chamber Symphony in New York. New works include a string quintet, Abstract Mirror, for the Chilingirian String Quartet and Stephen Orton, cello, and Gethsemane - A Sacred Scena for tenor and ensemble, which was written for the Nash Ensemble.

Berkeley's Concerto for Orchestra was premiered by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the BBC Proms in 2005, under Richard Hickox. A recording of this new work is to be released on the Chandos label as part of the 'Berkeley Edition' which features his orchestral music. The US premiere of Jane Eyre was staged in May 2006 by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and he is currently working on a new chamber opera for 2008, for which Ian McEwan will write the libretto.

Berkeley is Composer-in-Association with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He also acts as Visiting Professor in Composition at the Welsh College of Music and Drama.

The city of Cardiff will be celebrating Michael Berkeley's 60th Birthday year with a series of performances of his works entitled Michael Berkeley@60 Cardiff Connections. Click on the logo below to see the current list of events.