Maxwell Steer

Michael Maxwell Steer's career combines the worlds of music, drama and journalism.

A chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, he later ran away to Paris at the age of 15 hoping to study with Olivier Messiaen but in fact began his professional life three years later as a silent film pianist at the National Film Theatre, London. Since then Steer has composed music for more than 120 drama programmes on tv and radio, from Alan Plater's Trinity Tales in the 70s to the BBC's 1989 Prix Italia entry Mr V - including the Emmy awarded Greta Garbo - the Swedish Years. He was musical director for the opening of two new theatres and, while Associate Director of Music at the Royal Shakespeare Company, conducted the world premiere of Nicholas Nickleby in 1981.

As a harpsichordist Steer has broadcast on BBCr3 with leading baroque music performers - Roy Goodman, Nancy Hadden, Jeremy Barlow and others - recorded Falla's Harpsichord Concerto for Capital Radio, performed in the UK premiere of Stockhausen's Die Jahresläuf and toured Europe and the US playing baroque music. For a time he was a BBC Radio 3 Producer.

During the 70s Steer maintained a dual career, composing and recording drama music while also working as 1st Asst in Film production for major directors including Christopher Miles and even appearing with Hugh Grant in a C4 film.

From 1983 he began to concentrate more on original writing, and scripted 25 major Drama & Feature programmes for the BBC featuring many artists including David Suchet, Sam Wanamaker, John Wells, Robert Stephens and Elizabeth Spriggs. The (Royal) National Theatre commissioned A Tormented God, a one-man show for (Sir) Robert Stephens based on Berlioz's memoirs. Steer's 1991 stage play The Watcher in the Rain, about James Joyce's schizophrenic daughter and Jung, was reviewed in The Guardian as 'fascinating and unpredictable ... with a wealth of theatrical invention.'

From 1986, when he and Ian Dearden received an Arts Council commission to create The Glass Tower, an interactive electro-acoustic music drama, Steer was much involved with experimental music technology, and as Head of 20thC Studies at the Royal College of Music Junior Department 1987-1991 pioneered electro-music tuition for young people, also co-directing Soundscape with Dr Denis Smalley at the University of East Anglia. In 1990 he was commissioned by BBCr3 to create the experimental drama Notes from Janàcek's Diary at the BBC Radiophonic workshop -'a kaleidoscope of subtle and bewitching effects' (The Times)- and subsequently presented the BBCr4 Kaleidoscope documentary MIDI Magic. In 1991 the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM) premiered Maxwell's 30 minute electro-acoustic work Elegy, with soprano Nancy Long.

This work marked the end of a chapter in Steer's life. Wishing to evolve his own musical perceptions without the philosophical constraints of establishment musicianship he resigned from the Royal College of Music in 1991. Shortly afterwards he was commissioned to visit India for the BBC, recording two programmes, a radio feature In Search of Sai Baba, and a documentary about the philosophy of Indian music for BBC World Service.

Following a commission to guest edit an issue of the academic journal Contemporary Music Review on Music & Mysticism, which led to its establishment as a regular event. Maxwell also presented a BBCr4 series Music As Sacred Experience whose individual programmes dealt with Ideas of the Sacred, The Aesthetics of Ecstasy and Music, Meaning & Value.

Maxwell Steer writes regularly in the UK technical journal Audio Media on state-of-the-art developments in music information technology and broadcast audio systems. His writings on the broader philosophical questions surrounding technology are published in a number of journals including Classical Music and Quaker Quarterly.

He sees a need for music to recover its ancient role as vehicle for self-integration, and to this end has embarked on a series of compositions designed to express these values. His colour score Spinther II and a work for solo violin, The Cruelty of Dreams, have both recently been selected for performance by the SPNM.

Part of his life-process has been to reconcile his musical and his spiritual idea(l)s - for a view of this see his Spiritual CV or Migrating to the Source, part 3 of See Through Music.