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Martin Pring MMus

Martin has had thirty years experience in the music profession as a violinist, teacher, conductor and composer; he took up the role of Head of Strings at Clifton College in February 2010.

Martin began conducting whilst studying for his M.Mus at Surrey University in 1980. In the same year he was appointed Principal Conductor of the Varese Ensemble. In this capacity he performed many contemporary works and twentieth century classics and over thirty premieres of works by young British composers over an eight-year period.

In 1985 he made his debut with Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet conducting "Petrushka" and was appointed conductor of London City Ballet. In 1986 he became Music Director of Dance Advance for which he composed and arranged several ballet scores and toured widely throughout the UK, Germany, Spain and China.

From 1995–2004 Martin enjoyed a close relationship with the National Chamber Orchestra of Wales conducting contemporary Welsh works for S4C's "The Composers" and giving a wide range of concerts including opera and ballet galas and open-air firework spectaculars, working with many fine soloists including Sian Cothi, Ros Evans, Alan Opie, Jason Howard and Charlotte Church, and conducting for Igor Oistrakh's 70th birthday tour.

Martin's first concert with the London Schools Symphony Orchestra in 2000 at the Barbican included Vaughan Williams' "A London Symphony" and won a Sainsbury's Award for Youth Orchestras. He also featured in the TV programme "Maestros in the Making" for Artsworld, and in September 2001 conducted the world premiere of Sir John Taverner's Mystagogia at the Guildhall.

In 1999 Martin's Concerto Grosso No.3 was premiered at the Jardins Musicaux Festival in Cernier, Switzerland, to considerable acclaim one critic saying “for years we have been waiting for a composer like this: capable of strong music, who goes straight to the essential, who obeys his own creative instinct and who, in a word, establishes himself as a master“. The premiere resulted in a commission for a major music drama Au Coeur des Tenebres, which was premiered by Opera Decentralise, Neuchatel in 2004, and will be re-staged, in an expanded version, in 2010.

In 2002 he conducted the live broadcast of the opening spectacular of Swiss Expo 02 for Suisse Romande of a large-scale new Swiss work for choir and orchestra.

He conducted Sur Incises by Boulez, to critical acclaim in last year’s Jardins Musicaux festival, and is currently working on a second music drama, for the Swiss company, based on Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell.

In 2007, Martin wrote, arranged and conducted for Derek Paravicini, the blind, autistic piano genius. The concert, accompanied by Bristol’s own Emerald Ensemble, was the centrepiece of the ITV documentary, The Two Dereks, which was broadcast on Good Friday, 2008. The success of this concert led to a South Bank premiere in the QEH.

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