A World Orchestral Music composer whose music should appeal to listeners of nineteenth century orchestral music, folk, jazz, Irish, eastern and electronic music
Hugh Flynn has had a passion for music since his early childhood. His musical appreciation covers nearly all music genres.
He was born on 29th January 1956 in east London. Growing up in Ilford during the 1960s and early 1970s he fought against a formal grammar school education and came a credible second.
His love of music was started by a large collection of Irish and 1950s records that his father had built up. He has early memories of drumming along to those records with knitting needles on the arm rests of the front room chairs. He began his musical odyssey on an old piano that was acquired in the mid 60s. He took piano lessons between the ages of 10 and 13 but he found the Victorian method of teaching to be detrimental to his enthusiasm towards music, and the lessons did not improve his awareness of music.
During his childhood years in the 1960s Flynn quickly built up an empathy for the newly developing types of rock and pop music. He was interested in the sounds that the new electronic instruments and recording techniques were capable of producing.
He started playing guitar at 16 and within the following 6 years he had established a large repertoire of chords and scales. He found that he had a natural gift for improvisation, and he could easily transcend into most types of music In 1978 synthesisers became the tools for his musical creativity. He was able to exploit the full potential of the instrument. He used the early 1980s to form the basis of his current music philosophy. He initially composed multi timbrel synthesiser music, but he quickly moved away from the contemporary synthesiser based music of the early 80s to a freer form of orchestrated music.
Flynn has always loved orchestral music. His preforence is for late 19th and early 20th century music, although he has been heavily influenced by Baroque music. He is not too fond of the classical period.
His early interest in music technology grew further when he got a tape recorder at the age of 13. He discovered that he could make multi layered recordings by covering the erase head with a matchstick. His first serious attempts at multi track recording were made during the 1978 to 1980 period. He developed further by adding more synthesisers during the early 80s. On his web site www.hugh-flynn-composer.com .there are 20 MP3 downloads of works from 1979 - 1989. The downloads are full length examples of the free spirit music he was composing at the time. All the music you will hear in the earlier works section of the site was created spontaneously. Most of the music in this period was composed live to tape.
Content is most important to Flynn than style. By the latter part of the 80s the synthesiser sounds had given way to digital representations of acoustic instruments in his recordings. The orchestra in Flynn's music behaves similarly to a large crowd of people. He uses individualists to help/augment/compliment/hinder/contradict/degrade each other, and ensembles to support and give direction. Rhythm is critical. He uses combinations of pulsing strings and full percussion sections.
Flynn would like his genre of music to be known as World Orchestral Music..World Orchestral Music is a term for a fully integrated meeting of the world's musical development and not a fusion of world music styles. He wants to gain an international status for World Orchestral Music. He would like it to be a universal platform of like-minded composers, conductors, musicians and alternative venues. He would like to start a network of communication between composers, musicians, conductors and alternative venues.. Composers were drunks and generally badly behaved in life, it is a shame that their legacies have become the property of the cream tea set.
The Wexford Symphony is Flynn's most ambitious work to date. It was conceived under the World Orchestral Music banner. He wanted to dedicate a symphony to this subject since the early 1990s, but work started in October 1997. The conceptual ideas for the 4 movements occurred over 4 nights, but the full score took a further 2 years including breaks. The final note was written on 23 December 1999, making it possibly the last orchestral work written in the second millennium AD. MP3 recordings of the intros can be downloaded from his web site http://www.hugh-flynn-composer.com/hughflynnWexaud.htm .
Flynn is actively using the Internet to get his music and philosophies online direct to his audience. He is totally in touch with developments in music. He is a firm believer in the MP3 format. If it can kill off the fat cats, bullies, and the middlemen good luck to it! . His ambition is to work with a World Orchestral Music orchestra of younger musicians who would tour between two dozen or so venues around the world. He looks forward to World Orchestral Music being the exiting live experience of the new millennium.
