Musicatlas
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Life
Michael Blake studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (BMus), where his piano teacher was Adolph Hallis, and the University of London, Goldsmiths College (MMus). In 2000 Blake was awarded a doctorate in composition by Rhodes University, South Africa. In 1976 he attended summer courses in Darmstadt and Dartington with Peter Maxwell Davies, György Ligeti and Mauricio Kagel.
Blake spent the years 1977 to 1997 in London where he worked as a freelance composer, pianist and teacher and he lectured at Goldsmiths College. From 1979 to 1986 he was the keyboard player in the electroacoustic group Metanoia, and its co-director. In 1986 he founded the ensemble London New Music for the performance of experimental music, and the group played regular concert seasons at the South Bank, ICA and elsewhere. LNM undertook British Council-sponsored tours in Europe, and broadcast regularly for BBC Radio 3 and several European radio stations, often premiering new work commissioned by Blake. Michael Blake has also given solo and piano duo recitals in many European cities and, since his return to South Africa, at universities around the country; he has particularly championed music by South African, American and British composers.
Blake divides his time between composing, teaching, and promoting the work of fellow (especially younger) composers. At the beginning of 1998 he moved back to South Africa and settled in Grahamstown where he teaches composition and is the director of the annual contemporary music festival, New Music Indaba. As a teacher of composition, he believes that the ability to compose is innate in everyone and just needs to be cultivated. Blake’s vision for the New Music Indaba is to have the widest possible audience listening to the most challenging music of our time, and discussing it critically. At the 1999 meeting of the International Society for Contemporary Music held in Bucharest, Blake made a successful bid for South Africa’s re-entry into the ISCM after an absence of nearly four decades, and he is currently President of the ISCM South African Section, NewMusicSA. In this capacity he has represented South African new music at a number of festivals and meetings worldwide. He has been a guest lecturer at several South African universities, and at the Janacek Academy in Brno, the National Conservatory in Buenos Aires and the University of Toronto.
Blake’s compositional output has been performed widely in Europe, the USA, Australia, Japan, southern Africa and most recently in Argentina. Works have been broadcast on radio, television and the internet. He has collaborated with many soloists and ensembles including the Fitzwilliam String Quartet, Trio Basiliensis, Musica Aeterna, Ensemble Bash, Ixion and Stuttgart Kammerorchester, pianists John Tilbury, Marcel Worms and Antony Gray, clarinettist Lesley Schatzberger and, since 1997, several leading South African performers including pianist Jill Richards, clarinettist Robert Pickup and tenor Musa Nkuna. In recent years, he has had commissions from the Arts Council of England, the South African Music Rights Organisation and the National Arts Council of South Africa. Recently he has been collaborating with leading filmmaker Aryan Kaganof and the first fruits of this include the audiovisual piece "Reverie".