School of Music

John Palmer is a British composer with a strong international background. He studied piano and composition and worked mainly in mainland Europe until 1990 when he returned to London. In the mid-70s he began to compose and perform as a pianist songwriter, and directed several groups of experimental music and jazz. Since the mid-80s he has focused on instrumental, orchestral, vocal, and chamber music, and in the early 90s he extended his compositional interests with electroacoustic resources.

Palmer graduated in Piano Studies from the Conservatory of Music in Lucerne, Switzerland, where he studied composition with Edison Denisov and Vinko Globokar. In London he studied Composition at Trinity College of Music and completed a PhD in Composition at City University. He also studied composition with Jonathan Harvey and conducting with Alan Hazeldine at the Guildhall School of Music. His music has been awarded prizes in London (1990 and 1995), Lucerne (1991), Bourges (1994), Tokyo (1996), Klagenfurt (1996), Udine (2010), Paris (2012), and has been released on Animato Records, ORF, Presque Rien Prize Edition. Taukay, Sargasso, Elektroshock Records, Living Artists, and Mnemosyne Synthese.

“I am instinctively searching for creative connections between art, mind and spirit, and composition has become an all-encompassing experience, both physical and metaphysical, sensual, and spiritual. Similar to Eastern meditation, the music I write springs from my inner centre and the perception of an enigmatic sensuality of sound, space and the quasi-silence. After many years, I still discover that music is the most powerful expression of this evolution.”