Biography
Chris Harper's first musical endeavours were as a teenager in Reading playing guitar and writing music for various experimental rock bands i whilst beginning his guitar teaching career at the secondary school that he had just left. After a few years teaching and playing in Reading Chris moved to London and was accepted on an adult education course in music at Goldsmiths College. During the one year he spent on this course he was introduced to a wide variety of music, particularly whilst studying composition with Tim Steiner, in whose classes Chris would hear everything from Led Zeppelin to Ligeti.
This course led to Chris being offered a place on the classical music honours degree at the same college during the three years of which he studied classical guitar with Charles Ramirez and composition with Roger Redgate and David Owen. In his third year Chris wrote the music for a song cycle which was performed by a large chamber ensemble of twenty players. It was also during his third year that his experiments in electroacoustic composition began. This in turn led to his decision, upon completing his degree, to accept a place on the masters degree course in electronic composition also at Goldsmiths.
The year on this masters degree produced work such as a radio play inspired by Stanislav Lem's book Solaris and a fifteen minute aural journey through the various mental stages of eroto-phonophilia (lust murder) employing eight speakers, the musical material of which was entirely derived from one female vocalist.
Following the completion of his studies Chris' attention once again turned to guitar playing with a view to being in a band once more and after auditioning many vocalists he was lucky enough to be introduced to Victoria Bourne with whom a successful creative partnership began immediately. Chris and Victoria spent the next three years performing under the name Vanity Press in which Chris combined his interests in songwriting and electroacoustic music with guitar, voice, percussion and midi triggering of pre composed samples. They gigged around the country and were received well in many venues, festivals and publications.
The Vanity Press project was completed in November 2007. This was followed by a hiatus from ensemble work in which Chris developed his current interest in solo flamenco and classical guitar playing (aided by lessons with guitarist and teacher Alan Thomas www.alanthomas-guitar.com) and began again composing electronic works.
2009 saw Chris once again teaming up with Victoria Bourne this time to perform Spanish and classical songs that complemented the solo guitar pieces that he had been learning, and with the addition of Jim Tetlow on cajon the HarperBourne group was born. This group wrote and performed original Spanish influenced material using the poetry of Lorca and Victoria Bourne throughout 2010.
2009 also saw the emergence of the experimental acoustic/vocal ensemble Bluestave within which Chris was able to explore his interests in flamenco, classical and folk orientated composition and his extant love of female voices.
Having relocated to Bristol Chris is now developing a career as a composer of film music and is once again recording with Victoria Bourne, this time a new collection of experimental/folk material to be performed under the name of 'And Then We Danced'.
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