Martin Jarvis (conductor)

Martin Jarvis OAM (born 17 September 1951, Ebbw Vale, Wales) is an Australian violinist and viola player, founder of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, and professor and lecturer of music at Charles Darwin University.

Jarvis was the third of five children, and the only boy, born to Dorothy and Bernard Jarvis. Bernard Jarvis was a police officer and eventually became a superintendent. Dorothy Jarvis had been an actress. He has been married three times; he and his third wife Erna have two children and he has three children from his previous marriages.

He won a scholarship to the Welsh College of Music, Cardiff, where he studied violin under Garfield Phillips, concertmaster of the BBC Welsh Orchestra. He studied 1971–75 at the Royal Academy of Music, London, under Clarence Myerscough for violin and Winifred Copperwheat for viola.

Jarvis founded the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, which gave its first concert in 1989 - he ended his term as its artistic director at the end of 2009. Jarvis is also a professor and lecturer of music at Charles Darwin University.

Jarvis was a recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2007 Australia Day Honours.

During his studies at the Royal Academy of Music, his viola teacher Winifred Copperhead made him aware of problems with the published editions of the six suites for unaccompanied cello commonly attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. After research of his own, Jarvis has controversially postulated, using handwriting analysis heuristics, that the suites were composed by Bach's wife Anna Magdalena. Other academics such as Stephen Rose have responded that, while Anna Magdalena may have contributed to the labours on his manuscripts, "there is not enough evidence to show that she single-handedly composed the Cello Suites."

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