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Magical sound: Nadia Saharova and Ken Baldry |
Ken’s classical take on the art of composing by computer
HE ran a campaign for London mayor candidate in 1999 as “sensible Labour” but these days it’s classical music rather than politics that takes up much of Ken Baldry’s time.
When he is not working as a computer consultant, Ken, who lives at the Angel with his artist wife Avis, is busy creating music in his head before writing it down.
In June this year he was honoured with an invitation to submit a piano piece for a concert in Vienna, the city of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. “Listening to it being performed on the piano by Nadia Saharova was really magical”, said Ken this week, “especially the approval of other composers present.”
While some creative people write poems or prose to commemorate special events in their life, Ken writes music.
The sad deaths of his father and first wife Jane, and then Labour leader John Smith, have all been marked by specially composed music, much of which is available on a CD.
A former child chorister, Ken was inspired by the music master, Emile Spira, himself a pupil of the great Anton Webern, at school in Isleworth. He began writing classical music seriously in the 1960s, but this early material has been destroyed.
He doesn’t play a musical instrument apart from the recorder, so he composes music in his head before putting it down into a computer programme (like a word processor, only for music) which plays the piece back with all the required instrumentation.
His music was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1995 by Catherine Nardiello, and he has had two works commissioned.
Ken has written a total of 17 and a half hours of music so far.
Pieces vary in length from seven minutes to one-and-a-quarter hours. He also presents audio-visual music lectures, including one for the Islington mental health charity the Stuart Low Trust.
“It’s not going to make me rich or famous, at least not in my lifetime,” he said. “But making music is a great joy to me.
“If others are happy to listen to my work, I’m delighted.”
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