Michael Berkeley was born in 1948, the eldest son of the composer
Sir Lennox Berkeley and a godson of Benjamin Britten. As a chorister
at Westminster Cathedral, singing naturally played an important part
in his early education. He studied composition, singing, and piano at
the Royal Academy of Music but it was not until his late twenties,
when he went to study with Richard Rodney Bennett that Berkeley
began to concentrate exclusively on composing. In 1977 he was
awarded the Guinness Prize for Composition; two years later he was
appointed Associate Composer to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Since then Michael’s music has been played all over the globe and by
some of the world’s finest musicians.
Major works of the 1980s include Gregorian Variations conducted in
England and America by Andre Previn; the 1982 oratorio Or Shall We
Die? sets a text specially written by Ian McEwan, and was made into
a remarkable film for Channel 4 by Richard Eyre; the Organ Concerto,
which was given its London premiere at the 2011 BBC Proms; and the
two pieces for strings, Coronach and Gethsemani Fragments.
Michael’s compositions in the 1990s began with the powerful and
expressionist Clarinet Concerto at the Huddersfield Festival. His first
opera, Baa Baa Black Sheep, based on the childhood of Rudyard
Kipling, with a libretto by David Malouf, was premièred at the
Cheltenham Festival to enormous public and critical acclaim in 1993.
The opera was subsequently broadcast by BBC radio and television
and recorded on CD for Chandos. The London Symphony Orchestra
under Sir Colin Davis premièred and took on tour Secret Garden and
then in August 1998, Michael’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, a BBC
Proms commission, was premièred by the National Youth Orchestra
of Great Britain under Mstislav Rostropovich.
As part of Berkeley’s tenure as Composer in Association to the BBC
National Orchestra of Wales he was commissioned to write three
new works, and the second, the Concerto for Orchestra, was
premièred at the 2005 Proms. This piece, as with most of Michael’s
significant orchestral work, chamber music and his operas, is
available on CD as part of the Chandos Berkeley Edition. Berkeley’s
final commission as Associate Composer to the BBC NOW was
premièred in June 2009. The work, Gabriel’s Lament, is a heart-felt,
haunting in-memoriam to the conductor Richard Hickox and a young
family friend.
Michael’s second opera, Jane Eyre, written to David Malouf’s libretto,
has been produced in the UK, Australia and America and his third
opera, For You, to a libretto by Ian McEwan and commissioned by
Music Theatre Wales, was premièred at the Royal Opera House’s
Linbury Theatre in October 2008, with two UK tours in 2008 and
2009. A recording of For You was released on Signum Records in
August 2010, and the European première was given in Rome in
November 2010.
In 2009 Berkeley collaborated with the artist Kevin Laycock on an
electro-acoustic and visual installation, Collision, which was first
shown at Leeds City Museum, with live music performed by the
musicians of Opera North. Collision has subsequently been shown in
Dublin, Cheltenham, and London. Other recent chamber works
include Three Rilke Sonnets, written for the Nash Ensemble and
soprano Claire Booth, which was first performed at the Wigmore Hall
in March 2011, and Hollow Fires, a song cycle for baritone and piano
setting texts by Housman and Hardy on the subjects of love and loss.
Berkeley was commissioned to compose the anthem Listen, listen, O
my Child for the Enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury,
Justin Welby, on 21st March 2013 in Canterbury Cathedral. He
composed Three Cabaret Songs for Barbara Hannigan and Angela
Hewitt with new words by Ian McEwan, which premiered in July
2013 at the Trasimeno Music Festival in Italy.
Other compositions include Magna Carta Te Deum, commissioned by
Lincoln Cathedral in 2015 to mark the 800th anniversary of the
signing of the Magna Carta; a Violin Concerto for the 2016 BBC
Proms, which was premiered by Chloe Hanslip, BBC National
Orchestra of Wales, and Jac van Steen; and Haiku, a collection of
miniatures for solo piano, which were premiered at the 2016
Presteigne Festival.
For ten years from 1995 Berkeley was artistic director of the
Cheltenham International Festival of Music and he currently presents
Radio 3’s Private Passions.
In 2013 Michael was appointed a non-party political member of the
House of Lords as Lord Berkeley of Knighton, CBE. He speaks as a
passionate advocate for the arts, contemporary music and music
education.
Visit Michael Berkeley’s website at www.michaelberkeley.co.uk