EVENT: Friends of the Library talk

Dr Bannan is Lecturer in Music Education at UWA having previously been on the staff of the University of Reading. His interests are as wide as his background. He is a graduate of Cambridge University, has taught at Eton College and the Yehudi Menuhin School. For 12 years he was the conductor of the Esterhazy Singers, a London chamber choir that specialised in the music of Haydn, using instruments of that period, and he has also conducted contemporary music groups. He is a noted composer who has fulfilled commissions for the Allegri and Grieg Quartets, Cantemus Novum of Antwerp and the Gentlemen of St Paul’s Cathedral. A Winston Churchill Fellow took him to the USA to prepare a report on the training of choral conductors and singing teachers. His interests as an educator focused increasingly on means of releasing children’s creativity. Voice is central to much of his research, not least into the origins of music, and his talk promises to be an original and insightful glimpse into this tantalising subject.