The Pataphysical Piano

Andrew Hugill (b. 1957) is a composer, writer and Director of the Institute Of Creative Technologies (IOCT) at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, where he founded the Music, Technology and Innovation programme in 1997. He is the author of The Digital Musician (Routledge, 2007) and The Origins of Electronic Music in ‘The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music’ (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He edited and contributed to an issue of Contemporary Music Review (Routledge, 2006) on ‘Internet Music’, and curated a CD and booklet called ‘Pataphysics (Sonic Arts Network, 2006) which has received rave reviews in almost every European language.

Hugill studied composition with Roger Marsh at the University of Keele between 1976 and 1980. After university he earned a living as a music copyist and as musical assistant at the Opéras de Lyon et Paris. In 1983, he founded the ensemble "George W. Welch".

Hugill has composed pieces inspired by the writings of Jean-Pierre Brisset: Les Origines humaines (1996), a large-scale choral work for 36 unaccompanied voices, commissioned by the Elysian Singers; Brisset Rhymes (1990) for soprano and early instruments, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1993; Catalogue de Grenouilles (1988) for massed frog recordings and George W. Welch, first broadcast in 1991. Aside from Brisset, Hugill has worked on other aspects of French literature and is an occasional translator and editor for Atlas Press. His new CD, The Pataphysical Piano, will be issued on the UH label in November 2007, and contains works for piano and electronics spanning three decades.


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