ACOF 2004 Participant - Chris Watson

Chris Watson

Biography

Chris Watson was born in Tauranga in 1976 and received piano tuition from an early age from Margaret Carryer. He spent two years at St. Peter's School in Cambridge on a music scholarship before completing his secondary school studies at Tauranga Boys' College, where he won the prize for top student in arts subjects.

In 1994, Watson was a finalist in the New Zealand National Award for piano, where he played at Wellington's Michael Fowler Centre. In the same year he gained his ATCL in performance piano and declined an invitation to study performance piano with Judith Clark, instead pursuing a degree in composition (as well as a BA in history), receiving first class honours in 1999. He completed his masters degree with distinction under the tutelage of Ross Harris in 2002 and hopes to undertake doctoral studies overseas.

Watson has had pieces workshopped at the Nelson Composers' Workshop and by the New Zealand String Quartet. In 2001 his Piano Quintet was performed by the new music ensemble Stroma in a concert to mark New Zealand Music Week and an orchestral work Adversaria, was workshopped by the Auckland Philharmonia under Marc Taddei.

In May 2002, Watson travelled with funding from Creative NZ to Seoul and Korea to represent New Zealand in the Young Composers' Competition section of the Asian Composers' League Conference with his mixed ensemble piece Derailleurs. The piece was awarded First Prize by a panel of judges including Theo Loevendie, Unsuk Chin and Isao Matsushita.

Watson's primary compositional activity for 2002 is the writing of a 10-minute orchestral piece for workshopping and concert performance by the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra in Perth in October. This opportunity arose when the composer was invited by the Australian Music Centre, through the Centre for NZ Music's Composers' Advisory Panel, to be the first non-Australian to participate in the long-running Australian Composers' Orchestral Forum, which allows emerging composers the chance to write for a major regional Australian orchestra.