London-based Philip Clark studied music and composition at the Universities of Huddersfield and Sussex. A freelance musician and writer, he writes in the main about classical, jazz and new music for magazines such as Gramophone, Classic FM and The Wire as well as UK broadsheets.
Philip’s list of interviewees is extensive including key players such as Simon Rattle, Pierre Boulez, Andre Previn and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ornette Coleman, Dave Brubeck, Ray Davies and Anita O’Day. Aware of the over-use of stock phraseology in music journalism Clark has tried to produce writing that plays with the form and teases reader expectations. In 2012 he created a piece for Gramophone online about the nature of tonality using not only text but sound clips for the viewer. For The Wire he became an embedded correspondent reporting on an improvisational workshop he attends every Friday evening which blended reportage with hard-core musical analysis.
His writing about jazz, modern composition and free improvisation has also allowed him to transpose his findings about processes and the quality of the sounds themselves into the classical world thereby widening his perspective in his writing.