University of West London

Faculty Member, Faculty of Arts

Chair & Head of Composition, London College of Music

About

Francis Pott [b.1957] is a national and international prizewinning composer (1st Prize, Second S.S.Prokofiev International Composing Competition, Moscow, 1997) and a professional pianist. A former private pupil of the distinguished British pianist Hamish Milne, he has a particular research interest in the music of the exiled Russian composer Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951), who spent the last 16 years of his life in England, and he is currently working on a full-length critical study of Medtner's oeuvre under contract to Ashgate Press. He is also keenly interested in the piano repertoire and performing pedagogy of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, particularly Russian late romanticism, and is researching the work of the British pianist composer York Bowen (1884-1961). A scholarly interest in the transcription and paraphrase literature for the piano has led to concert paraphrases of his own on songs by Rakhmaninov and Richard Strauss, with more planned for the future. Other key interests are British music of the 20th century, the Scandinavian symphonic tradition (with a particular focus on the Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar, 1871-1927) and the music of the Czech composer Vitezslav Novak (1870-1949).

Despite becoming recognized particularly for his sacred choral and organ works, Francis is an agnostic who has moved away from writing for an established church in order to collate devotional, mystical and secular texts from a wide range of sources (sometimes to uncomfortably ironic effect), interrogating issues of war, atrocity, pacifism and human conscience, a concern now extending into certain areas of his instrumental, secular vocal and orchestral output. Current composition projects include a commissioned song cycle of poems by Akhmatova and Pasternak in German translation, a cor anglais concerto (the oboe being his second instrument), a violin concerto (with sinfonietta-sized orchestra) and a large-scale symphony. Francis Pott's works are published by four major houses within the UK, have been performed and broadcast in over 30 countries worldwide and are extensively released worldwide on commercial CD.

Formerly John Bennett Lecturer in Music and Choragus at St Hilda's College, Oxford, Francis Pott joined London College of Music in 2001 as its Head of Music, the following year becoming its Head of Composition as well as Head of Research Development with a Faculty-wide remit spanning Music, Music Technology, Media Studies, Creative Technologies and Art & Design. He was appointed to Thames Valley University's first ever Chair in Composition in February 2007. The University formally and legally changed its name on 06 April 2011, when it became The University of West London, disbanding its Faculty structure and devolving a degree of autonomy to its eight separate Schools, of which London College of Music remains one.

Francis Pott's personal website may be visited at www.francispott.com. He also has a personal page within the website of the British Association of Songwriters, Composers and Authors [BASCA] and an entry within Wikipedia. He is married with two children and has lived since 1991 in Winchester, having also been a music scholar at Winchester College in the early 1970s.

Francis Pott holds the qualifications MA[Cantab.], MusB, PhD and FLCM.

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