Deal Summer Music Festival

Introducing the Artistic Director

Paul Max Edlin

Paul Max Edlin was born in 1963. He comes from an artistic family; his grandparents were both opera singers and his mother is an artist. He entered the Royal College of Music in 1981 where he studied composition with Edwin Roxburgh, Richard Blackford and Joseph Horovitz, and trumpet with John Wallace. He continued his studies with Michael Finnissy at Sussex University where he gained his doctorate. He has won many composition prizes including the IX Premio lnternazionale Ancona and the Harriet Cohen Memorial Award.

Paul Max Edlin's music is both colourful and passionate. It moves from sound worlds that can evoke a sense of 'mesmerising spiritual absorption' to others of 'bold spontaneous violence'. Perhaps a childhood brought up in a home full of surreal paintings (his mother is an artist) and grandparents' memories of the operatic stage have helped inform his music. His interests are certainly channeled toward those generated by imagery and drama.

He has won many composition prizes including the IX Premio lnternazionale Ancona. More recently, Edlin studied with Michael Finnissy at Sussex University where he took his doctorate.

Edlin's works have been performed both nationally and abroad by leading artists such as Evelyn Glennie, John Wallace, Nicholas Daniel, Rolf Hind, David Campbell, the Bingham Quartet and the Britten Sinfonia. His music has been broadcast on BBC 2, Radio 3, as well as on radio & television abroad. In 1989 the R.C.M. Opera School under James Lockhart premiered his opera THE FISHERMAN to wide critical acclaim in a production for the London International Opera Festival. Arthur Jacobs, writing in Opera Magazine, called Edlin "our latest operatic prodigy".

A major contribution to Edlin's work to date is his large-scale cycle based on architecture from South-East Asia. This cycle includes: BOROBUDUR for large orchestra, BAYON, a five act opera, PRAMBANAM and BANTEAY SREI. He has recently completed this vast undertaking with a final orchestral work, A PILGRIM OF ANGKOR.

Of his works for chamber forces, FIVE FANTASTIC ISLANDS was been performed widely and recorded by Psappha for their 'Fantastic Islands' CD on the British Music label. This piece inhabits the sound world of his most recently completed opera-ballet, FIVE ARABIAN NIGHTS, written in collaboration with American writer and librettist Patricia Debney. He is currently working on a new operatic setting of Ted Hughes' translation of Federico García Lorca's play BLOOD WEDDING.

Paul Max Edlin is married with two sons. He lives in Kent, where he is a Reader at Canterbury Church University College. He is a founding member of the artistic committee of the leading contemporary music festival Sounds New.