Mervyn Burtch

Mervyn Burtch MBE (7 November 1929 – 12 May 2015) was a Welsh composer, best known for his work with children's music projects.

Burtch was born in Ystrad Mynach in 1929. Except for his two years of National Service in the RAF, he lived his entire life in the Rhymney Valley. He attended Lewis’ School in Pengam, and was inspired to become a composer when he watched his teacher, David Wynne, copying out parts, and decided that was the kind of work he would like to do. He studied at Cardiff University, and subsequently became Head of Music at Bargoed Grammar Technical School, and then Head of Music at Lewis Girls’ School in Ystrad Mynach. In 1979 he joined the staff of the then Welsh College of Music and Drama (WCMD) and was Head of the Performance course at the College until 1989. After that he devoted himself to composition. His extensive output of instrumental and vocal works included 17 string quartets, 14 concertos, 13 operas for children and numerous choral and brass band pieces.

Drawing on his experience as a teacher, he was especially successful in composing for young musicians. In 1984 the WCMD began its Schools’ Opera Program under his direction, and he wrote some dozen short children’s operas that were performed by more than 80,000 schoolchildren. Then in 1996, together with the Welsh-Canadian author and educator Mark Morris, he founded the international KidsOp project. This won a prestigious Cable and Wireless Childnet Award in 1998. In 2003 Mervyn Burtch was awarded the MBE for his services to music and education in Wales, and for his work as President of KidsOp.

In collaboration with Mark Morris he wrote six operas combining the resources of young performers and professional musicians, and he developed close ties with Canada. He coached and took part in productions at The Banff Centre and other venues in Alberta, as well as assisting in the exchange of both child and adult musicians and singers between Canada and Wales. Their first collaboration, Coyote and the Winter that Never Ends was produced in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, in 1997. The second opera, Wizard Things, was produced the following year in Cardiff, Wetaskiwin, Edmonton and London (UK). Their most successful work, The Raven King was first produced in Blackwood, Wales in 1999, with subsequent productions in Canada (Banff Arts Festival), South Africa, Cardiff, Germany, Ireland (Wexford Festival Opera), and Mexico (XIII International Music Festival, Morelia). These were developed as a collaborative project via the internet; children in the different countries exchanged their ideas through chat-rooms on the KidsOp web-site and contributed stories and drawings. The following year, 500 Welsh schoolchildren took part in a performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The opera’s subject, inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest, is the complex relationships between humans and animals, and how they can learn to communicate and live together in harmony. Scoring is for Orff percussion orchestra, piano duet and solo percussionist.

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