Tim Souster

Tim Souster (29 January 1943 – 1 March 1994) was a British composer and writer on music, best known for his electronic music output.
Born Timothy Andrew James Souster in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, Souster was educated at Bedford Modern School (from 1952 through 1961) and New College, Oxford (from 1961 through 1964). His teachers included Bernard Rose, Sir David Lumsden and Egon Wellesz. In 1964, he attended summer courses at Darmstadt taught by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and took composition lessons with Richard Rodney Bennett the following year.
Before the end of 1965, Souster was a producer with the BBC Third Programme, and put on many performances of contemporary music by composers such as Boulez, Berio, Barraqué, Cardew, Feldman, Henze and Stockhausen. After leaving the BBC in 1967, he began to devote more time to composing and songwriting. In the late 1960s Souster began experimenting with electronics. His first acknowledged composition involving electronic techniques was Titus Groan Music (1969) for wind quintet, ring modulator, amplifiers and tape…… (read more at Wikipedia)
== Links to Peel ==
In the late 1960s, Tim Souster was one of the figures from the classical music world who started to take an interest in pop and rock music. As well as being a composer, he was active as a journalist, writing many pieces on both contemporary classical and popular music from a number of publications including the Listener, to which Peel also contributed. According to the list on his official website, these included articles on Peel favourites of the time such as Cream, the Who, the Beatles, Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead and Captain Beefheart. In one of his Listener columns he indicated that he listened to Peel's Night Ride shows: "Connecting the bits of these reviews is always a tiresome business which breeds the kind of anxiety that John Peel must experience at the need for a smooth transition from Ligeti to Leadbelly...."
Tim Souster did a session for one of the final "son of Night Ride" programmes, on 17 September 1969. In the following year, he presented one of the programmes in the BBC Radio Three series The Pop Scene, to which Peel also contributed. Radio Times wrote: "Tim Souster, a young 'serious' composer, examines the musical content of pop music which appeals to him and comments on its relationship to other kinds of contemporary music". A composition by him was also featured at the twenty-sixth of the 1970 Proms, at which Soft Machine became the first "pop group" to appear at a Proms concert. 
For the rest of his career, Tim Souster continued to compose and seemed to belong to the "classical" rather than pop world, despite providing music for films and TV programmes, continuing to work with electronics and occasionally collaborating with rock musicians; however, he doesn't appear to have had any further contact with Peel.
==Festive Fifty Entries==
*None
==Sessions==
*One session. No commercial release
1. Recorded: 1969-08-27. First broadcast: 17 September 1969
*Sonata 2 & 4 / Sonata 5 & 6 / 2nd Interlude / Sonata II
==Other Shows Played==
*None, according to available playlists
== See Also ==
*Disc & Music Echo: Peel Columns
==External Links==
*Wikipedia
*Official site
Category:Artists