Here is a quick summary from present to distant past of my 'formal' employment:
Goldsmiths, University of London, Associate Lecturer for BA and MA Musical Theatre courses
Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, Visiting Lecturer for American Theatre Arts (BA)
The Arts Society accredited lecturer
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Head of Publishing and Interpretation
Musical Director, conductor, arranger and musical theatre performance coach
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Senior Internal Editor responsible for all entries on Light, Popular and Pop Music – from the Stauss family to Triphop
Network partner (2016-) in Leverhulme-funded international research project The Phantom on Film: Screen Adaptations of Le Fantôme de l’Opèra: Routes of cultural Transfer . John's specialist areas: ownership of the voice, genre identities in opera and the musical, opera and popular culture, spatial articulation of aesthetics. Presentations in New York (MAMI 2016), Tokyo (IMS 2017) and Hong Kong (2017), and Sao Paulo (OBITEL), Salzburg (Conference: 'When the Music Takes Over', 2018) and London (Phantom Project conference 2018)
Keynote speaker at Gaiety, Glitz and Glamour: Reawakening the “Silver Age” of twentieth-century Operetta (RMA study day, UCL 2017)
Keynote speaker at the Symposium on British Musical Theatre (University of Winchester, 2016)
The West End Musical 1947-54: British Identity and the 'American Invasion', PhD (University of Birmingham, 2003). This is the project that brought so much together and from which so much has followed.
'Shockwaves at a Distance: Ellis and Herbert's Bless the Bride' and Performing Paris: Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love' in Paris and the Musical: the City of Light on Stage and Screen, ed. Olaf Jubin, (Routledge, 2021)
'Controlling Voices: Singing in Phantom films', The Opera Quarterly, 34/2-3 (spring/summer 2018)
'The Waltzing Years: British Operetta 1907-1939' in Musical Theatre in Europe 1830-1945, ed. Michaela Niccolai and Clair Rowden (Brepols 2017)
'"Ordinary People" and British Musicals of the Post-War Decade' in Oxford Handbook of the British Musical, ed. Robert Gordon and Olaf Jubin (2017)
'"We Said We Wouldn't Look Back": British Musical Theatre 1935-1969' in the Cambridge Companion to the Musical, ed. William A. Everett and Paul Laird (expanded chapter for 3/2017)
How to Enjoy Opera (Oberon Books/Bloomsbury, 2016)
The Ring: an Illustrated History of Wagner's Ring at the Royal Opera House (Royal Opera House/Oberon Press, 2006)
Andrew Lloyd Webber (Broadway Masters Series, Yale UP, 2004)
Academic contributor to authoritative reference works including rev. New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Oxford Companion to Music, rev. Grove Dictionary of American Music, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Many programme book articles, including for the Royal Opera House, English National Opera and Salzburg Festivals.
Arranger: Gilbert & Sullivan Overtures [piano duets] Peters Edition, London
Education and Awards
PhD, Historical Musicology – University of Birmingham
PGCE, Music – University of Reading
BA (Hons) Music – University of Nottingham
LTCL (organ, performer's diploma)
Honorary Research Fellow in Music – University of Nottingham
Fellow, Arts & Humanities Faculty – Goodenough College
Also...
I love cooking, enjoy good wine, and have enjoyed learning how to paint botanical watercolours (see my painting of a camelia above)
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