Dan Morgan

Dan Morgan was born in Pretoria, South Africa, but spent the first decade of his life in what was then the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana). This semi-desert was something of a musical desert as well until his older brother introduced him to the joys of opera in general and Maria Callas in particular. Piano lessons were interrupted by a move to Nairobi, Kenya, where he bought his first turntable (a secondhand Lenco) and raided the bargain bins at a local supermarket looking for classical LPs and cassettes.

He moved back to South Africa in 1976 and went on to take his MA in English Literature (E. M. Forster) at the University of the Witwatersrand ('Wits'). He also scored a First in Music History from the Wits School of Music; there he encountered Mahler's symphonies for the first time, igniting a lifelong passion for the composer's work.

A short stint teaching English at the University of Cape Town was followed by a change of career and emigration to the UK in 1985, where he took up a sub-editor's post with a property magazine in Pemberton Row. He witnessed the demise of the 'old' Fleet Street and was a chief sub-editor in London Docklands when the IRA bomb at South Quay in 1996 put paid to his career as a jobbing journalist.

Dan now lives in Kent, where he divides his time between parenting, listening to music and producing a quarterly magazine for a disabled children's charity. The Royal Festival Hall holds a special place in his affections, not least for a Messiaen recital by Jennifer Bate in the presence of the great man himself.

Dan's musical interests are wide, with special emphasis on the 19th and 20th century repertoire - Berlioz, Mahler, Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Janácek and Messiaen. He also enjoys opera from Bellini to Britten, as well as taking a keen interest in all forms of music-related technology.