Mike Searby's Website

My main research interests are in composing and contemporary music, particularly the music of the Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti. In November 2009 I had a book published by Scarecrow Press entitled Ligeti's Stylistic Crisis: Transformation in his Musical Style 1974-85 which focuses on his opera Le Grand Macabre and the Horn Trio. I have also had several articles published in Tempo on Ligeti's music. My most recent compositions have been for the Delta Saxophone Quartet: Arias and Ghosts (2006) which has been recorded for a commercial release by FMR in Spring 2011 (see Uneasy Dreams DVD), and for soprano and piano: Marabou (2007) written for Jane Manning (see Publications). The style of my music is quite eclectic - composers that influence my work include Birtwistle, Reich, Xenakis, Miles Davis and Ligeti. 

I taught composition on the BMus and MMus courses (1990-2017) - I was also responsible for the MA/MMus Music Courses at Kingston University. In March 2009 I gave a pre-concert talk for the BBC on Ligeti's Violin Concerto and talked about the work on BBC Radio 3. I gave a pre-concert talk for the BBC in December 2009 focusing on works by Kurtag (Quasi una Fantasia), Bartok and Kodaly. In July 2011 I worked with the London Sinfonietta Academy exploring the music of Ligeti, in particular Ligeti's Chamber Concerto. Barcelona Opera  asked me to write a programme note for their production of Le Grand Macabre (November  2011)

In November 2011 I spent a week teaching at Oldenburg University in Germany including a Colloquium entitled "Ligeti's Journey from Modernist to Postmodernist." I gave two pre-concert talks on Ligeti's Hamburg Concerto in January 2012 for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and ran a study day on his music in Edinburgh for the SCO educational unit. See for photos of the event:  http://www.sco.org.uk/experience/blog/2012/01/exploring-ligeti  

In March 2012 I organised an international conference on Ligeti's later music at London University, and I co-edited an issue of Contemporary Music Review on Ligeti's later music stemming from the conference click on Journal

I presented a paper on Ligeti's use of timbre in selected works (Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet) at the Ligeti Conference in Romania May 2016 (see attached below) which was published in the proceedings in 2020 (A Tribute to Gyorgy Ligeti in his Native Transylvania).  I have also written a chapter on Ligeti's use of humour in Le Grand Macabre in the proceedings from the Music on Stage conference 2015 which was published in September 2016 by Cambridge Scholar's Press.

I had an article published (2018) by the Journal for the Society of Musicology in Ireland entitled 'Ligeti the Maverick? An examination of Ligeti's ambivalent role in Contemporary Music' see Ligeti the Maverick link

The following article was published in September 2018 by the Journal for Music Theory Pedagogy entitled "Composers are born not made": some preliminary thoughts on how to construct a pedagogy for music composition see Composers are born not made I presented a paper at the Ligeti Conference in Helsinki in February 2017 focusing on links between Ligeti's and Kurtag's early music of the 1960s .

In 2019 I had a chapter concerning the teaching of modern music history on music degree courses in UK  in a book published by Hollitzer Verlag entitled  Anklaenge 2018 

I was commissioned in 2020  to compose a work based on one of Bach's Goldberg Variations for the Trio Contraste by the University of Oldenburg - it is entitled Canons and Moto Perpetuo for Bass Flute and Vibraphone.

I have written an article examining the importance of Bartok for Ligeti's music to be published  by Oldenburg University (Proceedings of a conference on Bartok and Enescu  - date TBC).

See Brass Teaching for my Brass Teaching website

See Book Web address for details about my book on Ligeti.

My Blog on Music: http://musicmusingsinhe.blogspot.com/

My Soundcloud site http://soundcloud.com/mike-searby which has several of my compositions.

My email address is searbymike@gmail.com

The audio attachment below is a recording of Two Images for Four Chinese Instruments (1998) which was recorded in Beijing in 1998 by the China Conservatory. There are a selection of pdf scores in Publications