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Andrew Morris

Visiting Professor

Music

Andrew Morris

Qualifications And Background

MA, BMus (London), MEd (Cantab.), GRSM, FTCL, ARCO(CHM), LRAM, ARCM

Awards

  • ARAM
  • ARSCM

Biography

Andrew Morris is a free-lance conductor, organist and teacher of musical skills. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, the University of London and at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. As a boy he was a chorister of Westminster Abbey under Sir William McKie. His musical career began in 1971 when he was appointed Organist and Director of Music of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in the City of London where he broadcast with the Choir on BBC Radio 3 and ITV and made several recordings with Abbey Records. During this time he was also Music Director of the New English Singers and performed with instrumental groups such as the London Mozart Players, the London Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble and the English Consort of Viols.

His St Bartholomew’s International Festivals of 20th Century Music were widely acclaimed and in these festivals Andrew Morris conducted many new works including the London premieres of music by Lennox Berkeley, John Tavener and Elizabeth Maconchy and, as an organist, played British premieres of pieces by Augustine Bloch, Pál Károlyi and Miroslav Miletic and the London premiere of Paul Patterson’s Games. He has remained active in the world of contemporary music through his involvement with the Park Lane Group. As an organist he has appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, St Paul’s Cathedral, King’s College, Cambridge, Hexham Abbey and most of the churches in the City of London.

Andrew Morris was a professor of Piano and Harmony at the London College of Music in the 1970s and was then Director of Music at Bedford School for 32 years. At Bedford he established a Composer-in-Residence scheme which has been a blue-print for other schemes. He conducted the School’s First Orchestra in the BBC Youth Orchestras of the World series, the Chamber Orchestra in the Purcell Room, St Martin-in-the-Fields and St James’s, Piccadilly, and the Chapel Choir in venues such as St Mark’s, Venice, Chartres Cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, Madrid Cathedral, St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.

He has been President of the Music Masters’ and Mistresses’ Association and is a former President of the RAM Club at the Royal Academy of Music. An experienced adjudicator and an examiner for the ABRSM for 38 years until 2019, he currently supervises harmony, counterpoint, keyboard and tonal skills at Cambridge University and teaches at Trinity Laban Conservatoire. His book Music in Independent Schools, written with Bernarr Rainbow, was published by The Boydell Press in 2014. Andrew Morris has been Master of the Worshipful Company of Musicians and is currently Chairman of the Friends of the Musicians’ Chapel.

Qualifications

MA, BMus (London), MEd (Cantab.), GRSM, FTCL, ARCO(CHM), LRAM, ARCM

Awards

  • ARAM
  • ARSCM