* Feb. 22, 1935 Stratford (Taranaki, New Zealand) † May 27, 1987 Paris - Michael Barrie Gordon Anderson was educated at Wanganui Collegiate. He travelled to England in 1952 on a New Zealand Government bursary to study piano, viola and composition at the Royal Academy. Piano studies with Edwin Fischer and Paul Badura-Skoda until 1960. From 1956 he also began freelance teaching and performing, and in 1960 became involved in adult education. Barry Anderson has been Head of Music at the South Bank Institute in London since 1970. From 1969 he was associated with the Mouth of Hermes Ensemble as composer/co-director - the group's concerts in England and in Europe included many first performances of works by British, European, American and Japanese composers. In 1971 Anderson was appointed to a music post at the South Bank Institute (Inner London Education Authority), later becoming HOD music, dance and drama. Founder Director, 1971 of the Institute's West Square Electronic Music Studio, Kensington, he set up the West Square Electronic Music Workshop to provide composition, theory and technical courses for students at all levels and to create studio and rehearsal facilities for an increasing number of composers and performers. During summer 1975 Barry Anderson toured Australia and New Zealand with the Australian pianist Sally Mays, giving broadcasts, lectures and recitals of new music including his own Piano Pieces 1. 2. & 3 with tape mix and sine tone modulation. In 1979, he became Founder Chairman of the Electro-Acoustic Music Association of Great Britain. Later he worked extensively at IRCAM in Paris where he was instrumental in realizing the electronic part of Harrison Birtwistle's opera "The Mask of Orpheus". Barry Anderson died in Paris on 27 May 1987, a few hours after the first performance of his new chamber work, ARC. His hectic life-style with its incessant demands had burned him out. The immediate cause of death was heart failure, but the real cause was exhaustion from years of overwork as a composer, teacher, concert organizer, 'ghost' writer, and pioneer in the dissemination of electro-acoustic music in this country. He was 52 years old and, sadly, just beginning to be recognized as a composer of international stature. Biography-Sources: (1) http://sounz.org.nz/contributor/compo... (2) http://www.jstor.org/pss/945905 (3) Leaflet on a concert by the West Square Electronic Music Ensemble at The Round House (London), 20th June, 1977
