Christopher
Maxim was born in Wrexham in 1971.
From the time he was able to climb up onto the stool, he played
his grandmother’s piano at every opportunity, testing his grandfather’s
patience to the limits with his early experiments at the keyboard.
He received his first musical training in the choir of St Margaret’s
Church, where the seeds of his love of choral and organ music were sown.
He was educated at Calday Grange
Grammar School on the Wirral
and took organ lessons with the late Patricia Phillips (St Andrew’s, West
Kirby) and Roger Fisher (Chester Cathedral). Aged sixteen, he was appointed Organist & Choirmaster
of St Michael & All
Angels, Newton
where, in addition to providing music for the liturgy, he conducted concerts
of choral and orchestral music.
At
eighteen, Chris won an Organ Scholarship to the University of Bristol
where his academic tutor and organ teacher was Dr
Glyn Jenkins. He played the organ and conducted in many cathedrals
and for BBC radio broadcasts. He also played organ solos for a recording
of Tudor music on the Herald label. He wrote
his BA dissertation on the solo organ music and sacred choral music of
Kenneth Leighton. He was a recipient of the Napier Miles Prize.
In 1992 Chris was awarded
a Research Studentship to Cardiff University
where, under the guidance of Dr David Humphreys, he wrote his PhD thesis,
British Cantus Firmus Settings for Keyboard
from the Early Sixteenth Century to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.
Chris undertook post-doctoral work on the Mackworth and Aylward
Collections of music in Cardiff
University and he worked with
Prof. John Caldwell (University
of Oxford) on the
bibliography to the article Keyboard Music to 1750 in the 2001 edition
of the New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians. He has published
academic articles in Early Music, The Organ
Yearbook and The Musical Times; has given papers at conferences; and has
been interviewed on musical topics on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Wales. As the author of hundreds of reviews, Chris has contributed
to almost every edition of Church Music
Quarterly and Organists’
Review for about a decade. He has also
reviewed for Early
Music.
Chris was the first President of the South
East Wales Organists’ Association and, for seven years, was
Organist and Director of Music at the University Anglican Chaplaincy Church of St Andrew & St Teilo
in Cardiff and was responsible for the restoration of the church’s
1886 Vowles Organ. Since January 2003,
he has been Organist of
St Matthew's Bethnal
Green in London
where he enjoys the opportunities to improvise music within the liturgy.
He has held a number of conducting posts, including The University of
Bristol Church Choir, The Cardiff University Chamber Choir, The Cardiff
Bay Singers and The Elizabethan Singers of London. He directs The
St Teilo Singers (a peripatetic liturgical choir) and he is founder-conductor
of The Giltspur
Singers. Keen to encourage young conductors, Chris introduced
and taught for several years choral and orchestral conducting courses
at Cardiff University. He holds the diploma of FVCM (with Honours) in choral
conducting.
Chris’s
teaching experience embraces Higher Education, Secondary Education and
private tuition. Between 1993 and 2000, he lectured at
Cardiff University
in the Department
of Music. He also gave courses in the Department for Continuing
Education. He lectured at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama from 1996 to 2000;
and he has tutored on Open
University Summer Schools since 1996. He is currently Assistant
Headteacher at a large secondary school in East London.
He
holds a PGCE in Secondary Music from the Institute
of Education of the University of London and two Certificates in
the Advanced Professional Practice of Education (both with Distinction)
from Oxford Brookes
University. Chris was among the first people to be awarded
Chartered
London Teacher Status and he is a Fellow of the College
of Teachers. His submissions for CLTS
and FCoT
have been published on-line.
Composition lies at the
heart of Chris’s musical life. Although this is the area
of music in which he is largely self-taught, he holds the diplomas of
FLCM in church music composition
and FTCL in composition.
He specialises in composing for choirs and for the organ, but his output
also includes instrumental music, piano music and songs. Some
of his choral pieces are published by the Royal School of Church Music, while other works are
published by Stainer & Bell. Additionally,
many of his compositions are now available on the Sibelius Website. Competition
successes include the anthem Behold
now, praise the Lord, which won joint first
prize in the RSCM’s
2002 Harold Smart Competition; the motet
Salve Regina, which
was picked from the entries in the 2003 Harold Smart Competition to
be published in Sunday by Sunday
I. His motet Felix
Namque was chosen in a Composers
of Wales competition to be performed at the 2006 Vale
of Glamorgan Festival by the Latvian Radio Choir.
Chris's most widely known piece to date is probably Toccata
Nuptiale,
a humorous organ work based on the music hall ballad ‘Daisy, Daisy,
give me your answer do’. It is regularly performed in concerts
and at weddings, has been recorded by Andrew Wilson on the Regent label and is currently
included in the diploma syllabus
of the London College of Music.
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