Adam Meehan-Staines
*14 May 1992
Works by Adam Meehan-Staines
Biography
Born in Suffolk, England, Adam Meehan-Staines is a Conductor, Composer, and Teacher. He is the Choirmaster and Director of Chapel Music at Marlborough College, where he leads the aspiring and diverse programme of choral music; he directs the four choirs at the College, and the 250-strong Marlborough College Choral Society and Orchestra. In addition to weekly services at Marlborough College, he has also conducted services at St Pauls Cathedral, Leeds Cathedral, St George’s Chapel (Windsor Castle), The Queen’s College (Oxford), and has conducted in concerts at the Royal Academy of Music, and the Royal Overseas League. Meehan-Staines has conducted larger scale works with the Marlborough College Choral Society and Orchestra, such as Mozart Requiem, Bruckner Te Deum, and Mendelssohn's Elijah (unabridged) with soloists such as Mary Bevan, Martha Fontanals-Simmons, Rhian Lois, Andrew Tortise, and Dominic Sedgwick.
From a young age, he became inspired by choral music, leading him to his first professional post as a musician, holding a Choral Scholarship at St Edmundsbury Cathedral where he also began to learn the organ under David Humphreys. He graduated from the University of Leeds with an honours degree in Music, and the University of Buckingham with a Postgraduate Certificate of Education. Whilst at Leeds, he conducted the University Chamber Orchestra in his final year, and directed a vocal consort to win the University of Leeds Chamber Music Competition. In addition to this, he held a Choral Scholarship at Leeds Cathedral, where he was also invited to conduct the Boys’ Choir on occasion; he was also asked to deputise for Leeds Minster and Leeds College of Music. As well as recording choral works on the Brilliant Classics label, Adam has sung on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and as a soloist for the Headingley Academy of Operatic Research.
As a composer he began writing music from a very young age, and has continued to do so throughout his life. Meehan-Staines' compositions developed after his undergraduate degree where he studied for a Master's Degree in composition with Professors John Pickard and Emma Hornby at the University of Bristol. He now receives regular commissions, and has seen his music be requested to be part of the libraries of St George's Chapel (Windsor Castle), and also The Queen's College (Oxford), as well as being performed at Westminster Cathedral, St George's Chapel (Windsor Castle), and Chichester Cathedral, among many other places. Last year he was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Schools of Music, and was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
About the music
Meehan-Staines is predominantly a choral composer, but he also utilises other instrumental forces within his work. His interest in composition is found in the use of space and time, and diverse or alternative timbres; he is drawn to music that utilises sounds that imitate or blend with the human voice, pieces that exploit dissonance as both the centre of the harmonic identity of the piece, and those that use harmony as a cathartic release. As well as the exploitation of silence and reverberation within music, his music looks deeper into meaning and conceptual ideologies through the way particular theological concepts or principles are represented in music.