John Palmer
started playing the piano at the age of 6 and composing at the age of 15. He graduated in Piano Studies from the Conservatory of Music in Lucerne, Switzerland, having undertaken courses in composition and experimental improvisation with Edison Denisov and Vinko Globokar. In London he studied Composition at Trinity College of Music and completed a PhD in Composition at City University. Further studies include composition with Jonathan Harvey and conducting with Alan Hazeldine at the Guildhall School of Music. Since 1977 he has equally been active in different musical genres: from experimental and popular music to free-jazz. Since 1987 he has focused on instrumental, orchestral, vocal and chamber music, and in the early nineties he extended his compositional interests with electroacoustic resources.

Much of John Palmer’s music is characterized by a distinct awareness of sound, time and space. Sound unfolding in time and experienced as a syntactic priority of the musical discourse: a sensitivity for subtle transformations of timbre combined with a highly individual perception of space and silence. The latter proposing psychological and spiritual dimensions taking shape beyond any stylistic clichè. His compositional techniques vary from work to work, from the application of vigorous methodologies to the most spontaneous unfolding of musical ideas based on pure intuition. (Stephen Hawkes, New York, 2004)