Marcus Blunt (b. 1947) - Full biography
http://www.scottishmusiccentre.com/marcus_blunt/
Marcus Blunt was born in Birmingham in 1947. Although around the age of nine he had piano lessons from his father for a year or more, and made his first attempts at composition, his interest in music did not really take off until he was 14. He went on to study composition at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, graduating in 1970.
After a remarkably wide variety of abodes - in rural Warwickshire, Manchester, York, and London - and occupations - ranging from warehouse packer and photographic processor to department manager at a music publishers - he settled in Derby in 1976 as a teacher of woodwind instruments. In 1990 he and his wife Maureen decided to seek a more congenial environment for his composing work, and are now enjoying the gentler pace of life just North of the Border. In 1997 Dumfries Music Club appointed him as their Hon. Composer-in- Residence.
His output so far is mainly instrumental, for anything from piano solo to large orchestra, and has been performed, internationally (Canada, Finland, India, Italy, Japan, Mallorca, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, USA) as well as throughout Britain and on BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM, by artists such as the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, the Joachim Piano Trio, and Kathryn Stott. Competition successes include 2nd place in the Purcell Composition Prize in 1995 (Fantasy on SCRiABin for piano), and 1st in the Surrey Sinfonietta Composers' Workshop in 2000 (Sonatina No 2 for clarinet and piano). In July 2002 he was a featured composer at the Victoria International Arts Festival, Gozo (Malta), with seven performances and a pre-concert talk, all broadcast on local radio. His latest commission was for a Fanfare to open the Dumfries and Galloway Silver Arts Festival (May 2004). In 2006 Murray McLachlan recorded a CD of his complete solo piano music forthe Dunelm label.