To be always open, non-judgemental and curious.

My main motivation in music has been a curiosity about how it is constructed – how on earth are these amazing sounds made?- but more importantly the incredible effect music has on us as humans. I am primarily an educator, so I feel an imperative to help the next generations of musicians to develop and see the myriad of creative possibilities. Recently I have started teaching much younger children (8-9 years) to play brass instruments and I am constantly amazed at their curiosity, intelligence and enthusiasm – they just need the stimulus and the tools to fly.

Michael Searby was Principal Lecturer and Course Leader for the postgraduate music courses 1990-2017 at Kingston University and taught composition, analysis, music history, and performance at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His main research interests are contemporary music, music analysis and composition. He has written extensively about the music of the Hungarian composer Győrgy Ligeti including the book Ligeti’s Stylistic Crisis: Transformation in his Musical Style 1974- 85 published in 2009 by Scarecrow Press, and four articles for Tempo on the music of Ligeti, covering the Chamber Concerto, postmodernist tendencies in Ligeti’s music, the Horn Trio and his opera Le Grand Macabre. He organized a conference at Senate House, London University on the music of Ligeti in March 2012, and co- edited a double issue on Ligeti’s later music based on papers from the conference for Contemporary Music Review in 2013. In October 2013 he presented a paper on Ligeti’s approach to form at the Florida State University Ligeti Conference 2013. In 2014 he has given papers on Ligeti’s music at the Ligeti Soundscape Conference in Maccagno (July) and at the Music and Stage conference at Rose Bruford College (October) on humour in Le Grand Macabre. In May 2016 he gave a paper at the Ligeti's Legacy in Retrospect conference (Gheorghe Dima Music Academy – Cluj) on Timbre in Ligeti's music. In February 2017 he presented a paper exploring links between Ligeti and Kurtág at a Ligeti conference at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki.

He has given pre-concert talks for the BBC on Ligeti’s Violin Concerto and Kurtág’s music, and was interviewed about Ligeti’s Violin Concerto on BBC radio 3.

He has also composed works for a range of forces including the Delta Saxophone Quartet, the soprano Jane Manning, Paul Archibald (trumpet), Kate Ryder (piano) and Torbjörn Hultmark.(soprano trombone).