Sandy Moore
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Sandy Moore

biografia

Sandy Moore
Sandy V. A. Moore

Sandy (Victor Alexander) Moore completed his formative training in music at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada, where he received a Bachelor of Arts (Music) in 1968. He then traveled extensively throughout Europe and Canada until 1974, teaching, writing, performing, and exploring folkloric and classical traditions. For the next ten years he continued to develop as a musician and composer seeking contracts with theatre, dance, and film companies while actively writing and producing his own music related events.

During 1984, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he began to concentrate on more personal compositions.  His studies with Dr. Robert Turner at the University of Manitoba, provided further grounding in the theory of orchestration. From this 'Winter Period' there emerged stylistically mature new works for concert programming. Since then, master classes with Professor Dimiter Christoff from Bulgaria, and the late Professor Ton deLowe from Amsterdam/Paris, and studies in Prague with Czech composer, Sylvie Bodorova, in the early 1990’s, have greatly influenced his conceptual thinking of music.

His keen interest in the traditional and contemporary music from other cultures has lead him to seek opportunities to work with musicians and composers from Zimbabwe, The Czech Republic, Slovakia,  Ireland and Japan. The Winds of Lyra concert tour of Japan in 1991, compositions scored for Irish harp and Japanese traditional instruments, marked the first international concerts of his music.

Creative collaborations with national award winning poets, choreographers and performers, as well as internationally acclaimed musicians, have made him a versatile and inventive composer and his significant repertoire includes compositions for solo instrument and voice, small chamber ensembles and orchestra.

In 1989 he was invited to become one of the founding members of the UPSTREAM music ensemble to create original works which are often experimental and improvisational in nature. This new music ensemble, which embraces many styles of music, provided many challenging opportunities for innovative fusion in a practical concert setting where Moore performed on the Irish harp, piano, accordion and synthesizers.

From 2001 to 2003 he was a part time instructor with the Department of Music at Dalhousie University where he created a course on scoring for Film and other dramatic media. Since then he has been invited every year by the Drama and Cultural Affairs Department of the University of Toronto at Scarborough to present and instruct voice and music workshops with 3rd year acting student. The Mount Allison University Music Department offered him 2 composer residencies last year to work with performance and composition majors to workshop and develop two of his compositions. Presently, Moore teaches at the Centre For Arts And Technology instructing a creative scoring class for Television and Film. 

The Canadian Music Centre, in 2004,  introduced a ‘new music in new places’ program with a ‘site specific’ mandate. This offered member composers a new opportunity to take their music out of the conventional concert setting into more public spaces. This directive allowed Moore to create compositions that were highly structured yet spontaneous and innovative in nature and further developed his conceptual  thinking of music. It also allowed him to mentor and involve his students in many practical and creative ways.

Notable awards for his work in film include Best Original Score for DINNER FOR ONE - 2006, a fauxopera short by Anita McGee. In May of 2004 Sandy was nominated for a Genie Award for his score in Thom Fitzgerald’s feature film, THE WILD DOGS. Of his film scores for the TRUDEAU miniseries, the Globe & Mail responds: “Music is used with great skill to establish a time and propel the story. Often it’s eerily perfect and moving.” and MacLean’s, “Scene after scene is heightened by a superb soundtrack.” Sandy is a member of the  Canadian League of Composers, Atlantic Federation of Musicians and the Canadian Music Centre.

Moore often uses music as a metaphor and through every movement of every piece there resonates an authentic texture of heartfelt personal expression.