Roderick Watkins
Roderick Watkins (born 1964) is a composer and Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences at Anglia Ruskin University, England. He was Professor of Composition and Contemporary Music at Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, England until July 2014.
Watkins was educated at Gresham's School and then took a degree in Philosophy and Composition at Oberlin in the US before studying at the Royal Academy of Music, where he won all of the Academy's main prizes for composition, completed his doctorate and became a Leverhulme Fellow. His teachers included Hans Werner Henze, Richard Hoffmann, and Paul Patterson. He also spent a year at IRCAM in Paris and later returned to IRCAM as a “compositeur en recherche” (research composer).
At Christ Church, he is Programme Director for undergraduate Music and teaches composition and contemporary music. In 2005, he was appointed Professor of Composition and Contemporary Music.
Compositions
Watkins' compositions include a full-length opera, The Juniper Tree, premiered at the Munich Biennale in April 1997, and given its UK premiere at the Almeida festival in July of that year by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Markus Stenz. In 2003 he produced the electronic material for Henze’s opera L’Upupa.
Orchestral compositions include Red Light, Who Walked Between, Still, and Light's Horizon.
Electro-acoustic compositions include The Looking Glass and Sound in Space.
Chamber music includes A Valediction: of Weeping, Last Light (for clarinet and piano), and At the Horizon (for flute and piano), a Clarinet Quintet and Breath. A piece for harpsichord and electronics, entitled After Scarlatti, was premiered on 29 April 2009 at the Sounds New Festival in Canterbury.
References
- Independent review of Watkins' The Juniper Tree (3 July 1997), accessed 5 February 2010
- Review of Watkins' The Juniper Tree in The Musical Times, Vol. 138, No. 1852 (Jun., 1997), pp. 42-44, accessed 5 February 2010
External links
- Staff profile at Anglia Ruskin University, accessed 2 September 2014
- Staff profile at Canterbury Christ Church University, accessed 5 February 2010
- Munich Biennale page on The Juniper tree, accessed 5 February 2010