Michael Christie

Biography

Michael Christie studied cello with Anthony Pini, composition with Herbert Howells CH, and piano with Barbara Hill at the Royal College of Music (1975-79), where he won the Bliss Prize. As a freelance cellist he worked with various orchestras in the UK, including shows in the West End. His music theatre work with ensembles such as the Lindsay Kemp Company took him on tours to Spain, Italy, Venezuela and the Shetland Islands. In 1989 he was commissioned by the Royal Opera House Garden Venture to write a chamber opera, The Standard Bearer, which was performed at the Donmar Warehouse. He wrote a number of music theatre pieces for Dartington Summer Music and also for the company which he co-founded with Dr. Susannah Self, Selfmade Music Theatre, with whom he toured in Spain, Syria and throughout the UK. As a professional educator Michael has specialised in teaching cello, recorder, composition and creative class music. 

Currently, he is a teacher of Composition and Musical Awareness at Junior Guildhall, and is the founder and editor of Musical Awareness Resources on Guildhall Moodle, a collection of teaching resources and distance learning activities which is unique in the UK. He also led many composition projects in schools for the English Sinfonia. A song of his, Spår, was performed at the Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm in 2012 by the well-known Swedish soprano Nina Stemme, accompanied by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. The setting of a poem by Thomas Tranströmer, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in November 2011, was well received. He continues to teach privately and compose educational and chamber music.