Anthony Gustav Morris, (as the name might suggest), was born of mixed-nationality parentage, (Father Welsh, Mother German), in a small suburb of Romford in Essex which in itself is a suburb of London. After attending "not the best educational establishment in the area", he left secondary school at the age of 15 to continue studies at better ones.
Acoustic folk guitar was his first instrument and basically enough drums to drive everyone mad, he picked up an old French Horn and began taking more of an interest in musical subjects than academic ones.
At the age of 17, having proven to be a modest instrumental prodigy after lessons with a very nice Horn teacher called John Winch, Anthony found himself accepted into Trinity College of Music in London. He did many things including winning joint first prize in the college brass competition in his first term, thus alienating himself from many of the other students. He obtained the diploma (Licentiate of Trinity College London, L.T.C.L.) in the third term of the normally six term course.
Whilst at Trinity, not only did Anthony start the electronic music department with his composition teacher Richard (Tony) Arnell but also heard the Vienna Philharmonic in concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London and was so impressed by the sound of this orchestra that he decided to leave England and study in Vienna. The choices at that time were fairly simple, either join Margaret Thatcher’s “Orchestra of the Mass Unemployed” or further studies elsewhere.
In the summer of 1976 Anthony therefore left England for Vienna with only 45 UK Pounds in his pocket and managed to get a place at the Vienna Akademie (which he thought rather good, having been the place where such people as Bruckner and Mahler has studies) studying horn with Professor Josef Veleba. The money soon ran out and further funds from playing on the street and 35 performances of “La Bohéme” in the theatre in nearby St. Pölten managed to keep him to the end of two terms there. Anthony auditioned at the Cologne Highschool for Music and was accepted into the prestigious class of Professor Erich Penzel.
Again funding his studies through extra-work in some local and more remote orchestras (which included incidentally some of Europe’s best), he saved enough money to return for another two terms at Vienna. Again the funds became short and Anthony moved to Germany for a term this time at the Richard Strauss Conservatoire in Munich. He felt it was time to give up the student life and managed to get a full-time job in the 98 man Brucknerorchester in Linz, Austria. He was at this time the only British Horn player to play the Viennese style of instrument professionally.
Anthony spent 4 years in Linz as an orchestral player enjoying large scale repertoire. Alongside his work in the orchestra Anthony was composing and learning about the first generation of Electronic Musical Instruments that were emerging into studio usage. The ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL in Linz saw Anthony alongside the best in this field playing live horn coupled with pitch to voltage converters, Kurzweil, Fairlight and PPG CMI’s in front of an audience numbering 10,000 in Linz Cathedral during Hubert Bognermayer’s “Sermon on the Mount” in 1982.
Anthony left the orchestra in Linz in 1985 and headed back to England for a career in composition as well as playing in the Orchestra of Kent Opera.
The company AGM was formed at this time and Anthony wrote numerous compositions for industrial clients for large AV shows as well as other works for Channel 4 TV, Video Arts TV and other large clients such as the UK National Grid Company.
At this time there was no surround sound processing equipment available for large events. Anthony collaborated with several friendly engineers to create systems that allowed sound to be programmed in surround sound and replayed in large environments. The largest processor probably to be used in a large event was used by AGM already in 1987 (16 channels with overhead channel) in the opening of the Graphite Microsystems manufacturing facility in Landgraaf, Holland.
Anthony became increasingly interested in surround sound and made several other related devices and products at this time. Anthony consulted on the creation of the Virtual Room at Touchdown Studios Munich in 1990 which generated the creation of the AGM MR1 microphone recording system as well as a studio decoder system that managed 8 surround channels in a studio environment.
These systems are even now considered to be ahead of their time and such developments have stood Anthony in good stead as a person able to predict future developments accurately enough to be interesting to his clients.
AGM moved in 1992 completely to Germany where the company remains to this day.
Experience with both good and bad business relationships has established Anthony as an extensive and reliable source of knowledge in the world of media business.
AGM continued to produce hardware and software designs for professional audio processing. The AGM TSS “Three Speaker Stereo” device is used in several dozen feature film post production studios to process stereo sound into three channels. A new software version has been released recently.
Anthony as also acts as a "Web consultant", GUI evaluation expert and project manager for several large web developments (see other news postings). He is also a valued consultant to several major companies which include Fujitsu, DTS (Digital Theatre Systems) and a few other rather large companies that can’t be mentioned.
Anthony continues his career as composer and Audio Visual Events Producer. He managed the Schering “Image 100” event in Berlin in 1995 for example with a stunning 19-Meter-wide screen, show and surround sound system.
The Austrian State Theatre in Innsbruck commissioned a ballet score from Anthony in 1998 making Anthony the only British composer to be commissioned for such work by an Austrian state funded organisation. Again in 2001 Anthony wrote and produced the music for the Malaika Kusumi Ballet Theatre Frankfurt performances of “Winter”. Anthony has recently also established a base for himself in Vienna and has composed a new ballet score and several other pieces that are due for production (please see the other pages related to these projects).
Please feel free to contact Anthony if any questions arise and any interest is shown in potential services!
PS The reason this is written in the third person is to avoid starting every paragraph with the word “I” and it also sounds a bit more “professional” this way. If you would like a more serious CV for some reason I can’t imagine, or even a more lighthearted one (as there are really a lot of odd things that I have done that I haven’t mentioned here), please just ask.