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From the Welland Tribune, January 10, 2002.
Mike Roberts
Early
love of music
By
JOANNA MANNING
High above Welland's busy main street, in his eyrie of a music studio Mike Roberts is composing music he enjoys and hopes you and I will too. It all began More than 40 years ago, when the young Roberts became fascinated by the sound of brass and was playing the cornet when he was eight, later turning to one of his favourite instruments the trumpet.
"I was born in the wrong era," he says with a jovial laugh. "I just love the big band sound" He later admits to loving most types of music, with the edge on classical, rock and jazz, and recalls the first recording he bought in his teens was a vinyl disc of Duke Ellington and Rosemary Clooney Growing up in Britain in the '60s he played in several small semi-professional jazz bands. "We may have been terrible," he muses, "but we enjoyed ourselves"
Enjoyment is a. key word when Mike Roberts talks about music and it's one reason his music is available on the internet music site MP3.com. "It's open to all, and for me it's the perfect first step to get my music out there until I can get it performed live" That of course is the aim for every artist; to see their paintings hung in a gallery; their words in print or on stage, their music performed and. heard, all providing feedback and recognition.
In the spring of 2001 Roberts heard one of his compositions live for the first, and so far, only time. The Peninsula Strings, conducted by Michael Reason, premiered his 'Adagio for Strings'. I considered it an expressive work, though in traditional form, and since hearing it have intended to find out more about this now local, musician. Born and brought up in the south of England, Mike Roberts had decided, despite his love of music, a career as a musician was not for him. "I didn't see myself making a living as a performer," he says. After graduating from the University of Manchester he made a career in banking, a career that brought him to Montreal in the '70s. For many years his connection to music was purely as a listener. |
Largely self taught, Roberts is fairly new to the art of composition, but determined nonetheless. He carefully planned his retirement towards the pursuit of music, and it is his expertise in computer technology, gained in his earlier career, that enables him to score, perform and produce his music using synthesizers and a Technics console organ he bought in the '80s. This latter has every conceivable sound, from a penny whistle to the full range of organ stops, string instruments and rock band effects. "I can 'perform' every instrument and learn about its capabilities," he explains. As he composes at, his keyboard, beginning with a melody or a harmonic progression, the synthesizer allows him to hear how it sounds played by an. orchestra or ensemble and the computer realises the score, which can then be printed out.
Roberts' music, while not strictly programmatic, is pictorial and impressionistic, creating a sense of place or mood through soundscapes or images in music. He still needs to find his own voice. Some of his pieces have too many diverse influences, from Aaron Copland to early twentieth century English composers, from swing to dance music. Emphasising he does not want to create electronic music, he has composed a ballet, pieces for solo piano and symphonies. Some day he would love, he says, to write film scores, but is pulled between writing what people want to hear and what he enjoys composing.
Maybe he is getting closer to his inner convictions. Recently he has gone back to school. Last fall, aware gaps in his musical education, Roberts began courses in theory and composition in the Music Department at Brock University "It's partly a refresher, part teaching me about things I knew and used intuitively in, my music without knowing I knew them. Apparently there are a lot of augmented sixths in my music that I didn't know about" The composition classes, he says, make him "sit and write to a score, rather than just layering sounds. I used, to write the music then the score. Now I'm moving to writing the score first." Going back to school as a. mature student, when even some of the professors are younger than you are, takes some enterprise.
In 1998 when lie and his wife Jan. Newman, bought Rinderlins, it must have seemed like serendipity The proximity of Brock with its well regarded music department, the fertile Niagara landscape to explore in sound, and the time and freedom to devote to his dream. Last year he began to write pieces inspired by the Canadian landscape, pieces which are indicating originality of composition and musical thought. A CD of relaxation music is with a recording company that has an interested client. His compositions are played at Rinderlins, though he admits Frank "Sinatra is the artist most heard in the bistro, Choices.
He spends on average 12 to 14 hours a day on some aspect of his music, composing because he enjoys it. Composing because be has a dream. Because, as a character in a well known musical asks, how else you gonna have a dream come true? |
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