Fonds MS-3-42 - Personal archives of Sandy Moore

Sandy (Victor Alexander) Moore completed his formative training in music at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. After receiving his BA in 1968, he travelled throughout Europe and Canada, teaching, writing, performing and exploring folklore and classical traditions in theatre, dance and film, and writing and producing his own music-related events.

In 1984 he studied orchestration with Robert Turner at the University of Manitoba: during this self-styled 'Winter Period' he created stylistically mature works for concert programming. His work and conceptual thinking about music were further influenced by master classes with Professor Dimiter Christoff from Bulgaria and Professor Ton deLowe from Amsterdam/Paris, as well as by his studies in Prague with Czech composer, Sylvie Bodorova.

Moore's interest in the traditional and contemporary music of other cultures has led him to work with musicians and composers from Zimbabwe, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ireland and Japan. His 1991 Winds of Lyra tour of Japan, with compositions scored for Irish harp and Japanese traditional instruments, marked the first of his international concerts.

Moore's collaborations with award-winning poets, choreographers and performers have enhanced his reputation as a versatile and inventive composer, and inform his repertoire of compositions for solo instrument and voice, small chamber ensembles and orchestra. He was a founding member of UPSTREAM music ensemble (1989), which provided opportunities for innovative and experimental composition in a practical concert setting, where Moore performed on the Irish harp, piano, accordion and synthesizers. He is an active member of Canadian Music Centre, Canadian League of Composers and Atlantic Federation of Musicians.

From 2001-2003 Moore taught part time in the Department of Music at Dalhousie University, where he created a course on scoring for film and other dramatic media. He is also a frequent guest instructor of voice and music at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, and has twice been appointed composer-in-residence at Mount Allison's music department. Most recently Moore taught a creative scoring class for television and film at Halifax's Centre For Art Tapes.

Moore's television and fim work includes the well-received score for CBC's Trudeau miniseries. In 2006 he won the Atlantic Film Festival's prize for Best Original Score for Dinner for One, a short film by Anita McGee, and in 2004 his score for Thom Fitzgerald’s feature film, The Wild Dogs, was nominated for a Genie Award.