Composer

Biography

Christopher Marshall was born in Paris, France of New Zealand parents in 1956 and educated in Australia and New Zealand. A self-taught composer he holds a Master of Music degree with Honours, a Fellowship in Composition from Trinity College London, and a Teaching Licentiate in Piano from the same institution. In addition to his music qualifications, he holds two postgraduate qualifications in the teaching of English as a second language.

Christopher Marshall’s orchestral, wind ensemble, chamber and choral music has been very widely performed and broadcast particularly in the United States and Europe. His music is accessible, idiomatically written and often exhilarating in its rhythmic ingenuity. It also places great emphasis on expressive memorable melody and frequently delights in integrating diverse stylistic elements.

In 1994 Christopher Marshall was appointed to the position of Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago in Dunedin for two years. In 1995 he was awarded the Philip Neill Memorial Prize. In 1996 he received a Fulbright Research enabling him to take up an 18 month composer residency at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester New York. On his return to New Zealand he continued to build upon his overseas reputation and in August 2006 he headed for the United States where he is Composer in Residence at the University of Central Florida. Christopher Marshall’s music is published in the United States by Alliance Music, EC Schirmer and C Alan Publications and in Britain by Maecenas and has been recorded on several American and European labels. In addition he has his own desktop publishing company, Vaia’ata Print which supplies high quality computer-set editions of his music.