Roger Marsh

Roger Marsh is a British composer and music educator.

Roger Marsh studied composition in London with Ian Kellam, and later at the University of York with Bernard Rands. He spent two years at the University of California, San Diego on a Harkness Fellowship (1976-78) and then lectured in Music at Keele University until 1988 when he returned to York. He is Professor of Music at the University of York.

In 1993, he worked as a visiting professor at Harvard University in Cambridge and on his return to the UK he co-founded (with his wife, the singer Anna Myatt) the contemporary music ensemble Black Hair, which became known for its unusual presentations of new music and music theatre.

Roger Marsh has written music for all genres: orchestra, small and large chamber groups, and many works for voices, often with a theatrical edge. His first real success was the amplified vocal piece ‘Not a soul but ourselves…..’ an inventive setting of texts from James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ that has been performed all over the world.

The crazy solo voice piece ‘Dum’ (A vocal percussive fantasy) has been widely performed, by John Potter, Anna Myatt, Alan Belk and many others including the composer himself.

He has composed for many leading ensembles including Lontano and the ensemble ‘de ereprijs’ who premiered his ‘What Charlie did next’ in Arnhem, Holland, in 2009.

Recent work includes Poor Yorick (2014), a setting of texts from Laurence Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’, and Walking Away (2015) for soprano and marimba.