David Haines

Trained at Bristol University, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada, David has spent all his adult life writing and composing numerous songs for both adults and children, some fifteen music theatre works and music for large-scale community drama productions. Three of his music theatre pieces have received professional productions: The Hypnos Hormone (Northcott Studio Theatre, Exeter), The Worship of Shadows (Canmore Opera House, Calgary) and Shelf Life (Southwark Playhouse).

Other works have been produced as youth productions (Armadadrama, Granny Galactica, The Puzzle-Jigs, The Hengebourne Visitors, The Terrorthon, Dog's Life) or as community theatre productions (The Hengebourne Visitors, The Terrorthon, Prince Donald and the Average Family, The Chronovirus, A Pedestrian Accident, Octopera, Taking Pictures). In April 2003 David attended nine performances of The Puzzle-Jigs by North Cambridge Family Opera in Massachusetts.

David's songs and song cycles have been performed at dozens of venues, both grand and humble, including the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York, the Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room, Leighton House, and have been broadcast on local and national radio and television, including Radios 3, 4 and 5.

David's theatre music has included commissions for productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, All's Well That Ends Well, Nicholas Nickleby, The Tempest and Henry IV Part One (twice!). His work as a musical director has led him to perform at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Drum Theatre, Plymouth and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

David has worked with thousands of schoolchildren and students as a Composer in Residence in dozens of pre-schools, primary and secondary schools and colleges in both the UK and USA, and at several National Trust properties. He has a special interest in using music and songs to help deliver other aspects of curriculum, especially science. Two of his projects have been funded by the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science.

He spent most of 2004/5 writing, composing and running a major schools/community project involving thirteen schools which included the premiere of a science oratorio about Life and Evolution performed by around 400 people in July. The Lifetime Project continued until July 2005 with songwriting workshops and further concerts of new work written collaboratively with the participants. The USA's first full-scale science festival - based in Cambridge, Massachussetts - featured three performances of Lifetime at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and other venues in April 2007. Lifetime was performed again at Ivybridge Community College in December 2007 with children from five local schools and adults from two community choirs forming the 150-strong choir.

The director of the MIT Museum, John Durant, personally invited David to return to Cambridge for the second science festival in April/May 2008 when a much-extended version of his science oratorio Powers of Ten received its North American premiere. John Durant & David Haines are planning a large community performance, with orchestra, of his new science oratorio Darwin Songs for Cambridge Science Festival 2009.

David lives in Devon and, as well as composing, teaches jazz and classical piano, music theory, singing and composition. He is currently working on creating a web resource of science educational songs for teachers and learners worldwide and runs both the Ivybridge and Teignmouth Community Choirs.