Early Work
David Prior was born in the UK and studied Music and Religious Studies at the University of Wales, Bangor where he studied composition with Andrew Lewis. He was awarded the prize for composition in his final year for his piece Dense which went on to win a Prix de Residence at the 1996 Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, leading to a residency at Xenakis' UPIC studio in Paris the following year. The piece was short-listed by the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM) and following a performance at the Purcell Room in 1998, it was selected by then SPNM artistic director Howard Skempton for the George Butterworth award – a prize awarded annually by the SPNM for the most outstanding piece performed in that artistic season. From Bangor, Prior went on to study composition with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, graduating with a PhD in 2001. During his time in Birmingham, Prior's work was often concerned with integrating acoustic space as a compositional parameter in his work. This theme stimulated interests which still define the work he is involved in today, whether that be through his installations, sound-walks, acousmatic compositions or the sound designs he has made for museums and galleries. Another feature of the work Prior was producing during this period but less evident in more recent projects, was the attempt to assimilate free improvisation into the devising of his ultimately 'fixed' compositions. Somewhere Submarine (1996), for piano and tape (joint winner of the 1997 Cornelius Cardew Composition Competition) and Another Poisonous Sunset (1998), both being good examples of this. Prior was awarded a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) stipendium in 1999, funding a one-year residency at the Technische Universität Berlin, where he completed the work submitted for his PhD. Following the completion of his residency, he stayed living in Berlin, undertaking a commission from the DAAD Kunstlerprogram which lead to his twenty-four channel acousmatic piece Love and Death, premiered at the Parochialkirche, Berlin as part of the Inventionen festival, 2000. In 1997, Prior collaborated with Swiss choreographers Jürg Koch and R. Lucia Baumgartner on the piece an die Materie and the music from this piece went on to win an honorary mention at the 1998 Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition and first prize in the 1998 EAR (Hungarian Radio) composition prize. When Koch went on to join CandoCo dance company, he worked with Prior again, commissioning him to write the score for Amaze in You in 2002.
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