James E. Gardner

I was born in Liverpool, and during the 1980s played keyboards in The Umbrella and thereafter for a variety of well-known artists, including Pete Shelley's band and Luxuria. In 1990 I co-founded the band and remix team Apollo 440.From my mid-teens, however, an intense interest in notated music had formed a parallel stream to these activities, and in 1991 my solo piano piece 'Shattered/Blue Ground', was runner-up in the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival Composers' Competition. I left Apollo 440 in 1993 in order to concentrate on composition, and moved to New Zealand in 1994. In 1996 I established the contemporary music ensemble 175 East.I'm also an active broadcaster on music, having written, compiled and presented programmes on John Cage, Morton Feldman, Brian Ferneyhough, Conlon Nancarrow, Iannis Xenakis, Frank Zappa, the Moog synthesizer and the James Bond soundtracks of John Barry, all for the wonderfully eclectic Radio New Zealand Concert.I perform regularly, usually on laptop or piano, in the Vitamin-S evenings of improvised music at the Wine Cellar in Auckland.I shall soon be returning to active service as a keyboard player in the wonderful 'SL Macombee and the Absolute Truth' and completing work on my clarinet concerto 'Rank and File Movements'.I'm not bored yet.