DAVE BILLINGE

Dr Dave Billinge CertEd, BA (Hons) Philosophy, MSc Information Systems, PhD, FRSA was a Principal Lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Portsmouth until he retired after 20 years. Prior to this he spent 17 years working as an expatriate teacher in Africa and the Middle East, and in UK in primary education and in adult education as a lecturSer in music appreciation and in philosophy. At the University of Portsmouth he researched data handling in the arts world, particularly music. This led on to research aimed at answering the question “is there sufficient consistency in artistic descriptions for them to be formally modelled?” He gained his PhD in 2000. His research also included figurative language, interpersonal communication and modelling artistic decision making. He has published more than 20 papers and 2 book chapters. He has been a concertgoer since the age of 13 when he first attended the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Groves. He has been a classical record collector and an audio enthusiast for almost as long. He has for many years been particularly interested in the music of Carl Nielsen, Bohuslav Martinu and Jón Leifs. He has taught FE and WEA music appreciation classes in Chichester and Portsmouth, given talks to the Bognor Regis Recorded Music Club, pre-concert lectures at Portsmouth Guildhall and has been an assessor for Southern Arts. He has been at various times technical manager for Day Schools in Poole and Chichester as well as the Portsmouth pre-concert lectures. He has published articles on concert planning for Classical Music Magazine. Whilst an expatriate teacher he wrote a fortnightly record review column for Saudi Arabia’s English language daily The Arab News and programme notes for local concerts. He has reviewed concerts for the Portsmouth News and CDs for Music Web International since 2002. He is a member of the Dvorak Society, the Martinu Society, a Gold Member supporter of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.