ROBERT JARVIS (b. 1963) began his professional music career in 1985 as a trombonist playing in wide range of spaces - from busking outside to performances in schools, residential home and hospitals. This soon grew into project work where the focus would be on the creation of a music composition and often involving collaboration with other art forms.
At the same time his interest in composition grew as he not only wrote pieces for the various ensembles he played with, but also continued his teenage experiments with manipulating raw sound using tape and whatever else was to hand. Over the years, as Robert refined his ways of working, he eventually found ways to bring together his project work with his composing, and this, in turn, lead him to the type of work he finds himself involved with today.
Currently Robert is based in Faversham, in Kent, and is involved in a wide range of creative activities. As a keen collaborator he works with 'experts' from many disciplines, including outside of the arts; however, much of his work also engages with those who do not see themselves as specialists.
His projects have at their centre not only the creation and performance of new work but also the process of creating that work. As a result, he often engages with local communities as a piece is developed, making the connection in order to understand how others interpret a particular concept as well as to help demystify his creative process.
In recent years Robert has been concentrating on soundscape composition using sounds related to specific areas or scientific data collected from natural processes. This work is concerned with encouraging people to listen to the often-neglected sound of their environments and for them to question how they relate to their surroundings. As a result, his pieces open up new worlds for those that come into contact with his work, posing new questions and enticing new appreciations of the sonic landscape.
These pieces haven taken many forms, for example as surround sound gallery pieces such as his Sound and the City installation for Chongqing or his Disappear composition; as interactive games, such as Magic Stones and Keybird; as well as outside pieces such as gr0w for the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden in Surrey. In 2005 and 2006 Robert received the accolade of winning the New Media category of the British Composer Awards, and in 2008 he was shortlisted for the New Music Award.
In addition to this composition work, Robert still plays trombone, working internationally as an improviser, performing with the Dutch NDIO project and the London Improvisers' Orchestra.
Sounds of Oxfordshire:
Working with sound artist and composer Robert Jarvis, OCM has been commissioned by BBC Oxford to produce Sounds of Oxfordshire as part of a nationwide project called Made in England. Over the space of 6 months, Robert has been working with the BBC, its listeners and diverse communities around Oxfordshire to collect people’s favourite, meaningful, disappearing or characterful sounds from the county. Their stories have been on radio, TV and online. On
1st November the BBC will broadcast an hour long programme about the project and premiere Robert’s newly commissioned piece of music incorporating these unique sounds.
Made in England is a collaboration between Arts Council England and BBC English Regions which explores the relationship between the landscape and the artist from a diverse range of artistic perspectives across BBC TV, radio and online.
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