Keith Potter
Keith Potter studied at the University of Birmingham, University College Cardiff and the University of York. Dissertations on Roberto Gerhard and Morton Feldman, plus several published articles on these composers, have been followed by a range of research and publications covering many different areas of contemporary music, with a particular emphasis on British and American work. Scholarship has been extensively supplemented with reviewing for many magazines, journals and newspapers. He was the co-founder and, for seventeen years, Chief Editor of Contact: a Journal of Contemporary Music , and for ten years a regular music critic on The Independent daily newspaper.
Invited lecture and other appearances since 2005 include a paper given in a session on Earle Brown at the Society for American Music Conference, Eugene, Oregon, USA; participation in a roundtable discussion on 'Marketing New Music' at the Fourth Biennial International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music at the University of Sussex; papers on aspects of musical minimalism at symposia at University College, Cork, Ireland and at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; two lectures on the music of Steve Reich and participation in a roundtable discussion at Carnegie Hall, New York; a paper on Earle Brown's writings at the Royal Academy of Music, London; a paper (with Geraint A. Wiggins) on the use of information-dynamics in analysing the early compositions of Philip Glass at the Fifth Biennial International Conference on Music Since 1900 at the University of York; the opening keynote lecture at the First International Conference on Music and Minimalism at the University of Bangor, Wales; and a pre-concert talk (with Robert Worby) on Philip Glass's Music in Twelve Parts at the Barbican Centre, London.
Since 1982 he has been a trustee of the Hinrichsen Foundation, also serving on several of its sub-committees. In 1989 he taught at the University of Redlands, California. He developed the pioneering MMus in Contemporary Music Studies which has been offered at Goldsmiths since 1998. He was organiser of the Second Biennial International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music, Goldsmiths College in 2001 and of several other conferences at Goldsmiths, including a one-day event to celebrate and commemorate the British composer Cornelius Cardew in 2006.
From 2004 to 2007, he was Head of the Department of Music at Goldsmiths
and also a member of College Council. From 2006 he has been on the
Advisory Council of the Institute of Musical Research in the School of
Advanced Study, University of London, and from 2007 on the Goldsmiths
Honorary Degrees and Fellowships Committee. From 2007 he has been a
founding committee member of the Society for Minimalist Music.
Areas of supervision
Current PhD Students
David Cline (Morton Feldman)
Andriana Minou (Jani Christou, Performance Practice, piano)
Timothy Rutherford-Johnson (Reception of Hungarian and Polish Music after
1945 in the West)
Stephen
Graham - Contemporary Music Studies: 'Experimental Music in the
Twenty-First Century: non-notated "classical music" and non-popular
"popular music"
Ryan Hepburn - Contemporary Music Studies: 'John Adams's "On the
Transmigration of Souls" and Steve Reich's "Daniel Variations": contextual,
hermeneutic and musical analyses of two post-9/11 musical responses to
Islamic extremism and as simulacra for American post-9/11 personal, public
and commercial visual culture'
Anastasios Mavroudis - Performance: 'Greek Music for Solo Violin/Violin and
Piano
Nikolas Stavlas - Performance: 'Kagel's Ludwig Van
Research interests
Present research work includes books on the American composers Earle Brown and Steve Reich, and collaboration with colleagues from the Departments of Computing and Psychology at Goldsmiths, and from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Queen Mary College, University of London, in a project on information and neural dynamics in the perception of musical structure, including particular reference to minimalist musical compositions.Selected publications
Book
Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; and in paperback, 2002)
Other Scholarly Publications Since 1995
'1976 and All That: minimalism and post-minimalism, analysis and listening
strategies', keynote lecture to the First International Conference on
Music and Minimalism, published on the website of the new Society for
Minimalist Music, www.musicminimalism.org
with Geraint A. Wiggins and Marcus T. Pearce, 'Towards Greater Objectivity in Music Theory: information-dynamic analysis of minimalist music', Musicae Scientiae , 11/2 (2007), pp. 295-324
'A Conversation with James Dillon', in Peter O'Hagan, ed., Aspects of British Music of the 1990s (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 131-40
Entry on David Bedford in L. Finscher, ed., Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart , 2nd edn. (Kassel: Barenreiter, 2001)
Entries on 20th-century British composers in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell, eds., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 2001) and Grove Online: www.grovemusic.com : 'Minimalism'; 'Bedford, David', 'Bryars, Gavin', 'Fitkin, Graham', 'Martland, Steve', 'Montague Stephen', 'Skempton, Howard'
Four revised articles on contemporary American composers in Amanda Holden, ed., The New Penguin Opera Guide (London: Penguin Books, 2001; extensively revised and updated edition of The Viking Opera Guide [1993]): 'Adams, John', 'Glass, Philip', 'Monk, Meredith' and 'Reich, Steve'; also versions of previously published entries on 'Kagel, Mauricio' and 'Schnittke, Alfred'
'The pursuit of the unimaginable by the unnarratable, or some potentially telling developments in non-developmental music', Contemporary Music Review , vol. 15, nos. 3-4 (1996), pp. 3-11
'Cornelius Cardew: some (Postmodern?) reflections on Experimental Music and political music', Mark Delaere, ed., New Music, Aesthetics and Ideology/Neue Musik, Asthetik und Ideologie (Wilhelshaven: Germany: Florian Noetzel, 1995), pp. 152-69
Some Examples of Journalism and Other Writings Since 2000
Profile of John Adams for BBC Proms and other concert programme books
(most recently, BBC Symphony Orchestra/Mikhail Agrest, Maido Vale Studios,
London, 22 February 2008) and for BBC Music Online:
www.bbc.co.uk/music/profiles
Obituaries for James Tenney, Carla Hinrichsen, Hugh Davies, Earle Brown and Jonson Dyer in The Independent
Programme notes for works by Steve Reich (Los Angeles Master Chorale/Grant Gershon, 28 October, 2006, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York)
Programme notes for works by Steve Reich (London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Xian Zhang, Barbican Centre, London, 30 September 2006)
'What's the score?', [feature article on John Cage], The Independent , 12 January 2004, Review section, p. 16
'Hi-tech tales for a weird, wired world' [review of the world premiere, at the Museumsquartier in Vienna, of Three Tales by Steve Reich and Beryl Korot], The Independent , Tuesday 28 May 2002, Review section, p. 18
Programme notes for the British premieres of Philip Glass's Second and Third Symphonies (BBC Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop, Barbican Centre, 6 December 2001)
'Klinghoffer resurrected' [feature review of Tony Palmer's new production of Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer for Helsinki Opera], The Independent , 23 February 2001, Review section, p. 16
Review of the world premiere of John Adams's El Nino , Chatelet, Paris, The Independent , 19
December 2000, Review section, p. 11
'A ripe harvest of Eastern promise' [feature article on the Chinese- American composer Tan Dun], The Independent , 22 September 2000, Review section, p. 16
Booklet essay for Philip Glass: Violin Concerto, Prelude and Dance from Akhnaten and Company (Naxos 8 554568), April 2000
'Notes on Cage', booklet essay for 'John Cage: The Seasons' (ECM New Series 1696), April 2000