Nicholas Bannan

Nicholas Bannan studied music at Clare College, Cambridge University, and went on to teach at Eton College, the Yehudi Menuhin School, and Desborough School, Maidenhead, where he directed a choir that regularly performed with London orchestras and on radio and TV. He subsequently taught at the University of Reading before moving to the University of Western Australia, where he founded The Winthrop Singers. His PhD research at Reading focused on the evolutionary origins of the human singing voice, a topic he addressed alongside colleagues in the edited book Music, Language, and Human Evolution (OUP, 2012). The conceptual framework this provided for the role of music in human cultures led him to devise multisensory methods for eliciting musical creativity in children. Working with the primary-age members of the Reading University Children’s Choir, he developed the pedagogical system now known as ‘Harmony Signing’, which led to the publications Every Child a Composer (Peter Lang, 2019) and First Instruments (OUP, 2020). The supportive reception for Harmony Signing around the world indicates the need for the dissemination and exchange of materials and experience that this website aims to provide.