Marc Yeats is a British composer, abstract landscape painter, writer, poet, and artistic practice researcher. His work as a painter and composer is closely linked to techniques developed over many years, with compositions influencing new approaches to painting and techniques in painting influencing musical development. Although interested in surfaces represented in sound, colour, form, and texture, his work is further influenced by a fascination with layering, geology, erosion, landscapes, and place-specific resonance and its manifestation and embodiment in his work. Understanding, strengthening, and researching this self-referential relationship remains a life-long challenge and passion and sits at the heart of Marc’s work.

Yeats’s creative output is diverse, spanning music, painting, and literature. His recent Collected Poems Volume 1 (2005-2024) and Timecode-Supported Polytemporal Music: What It Is and How to Write It (November 2025), published by Vision Edition, are a testament to his versatility. As a researcher, his book Music, Painting, Landscape, and Me (April 2024, Vision Edition) delves into the deep interconnection between his roles as composer and painter, examining media, landscape, philosophy, neurology, perception, interpretation, walking and embodiment.

The John Davies Gallery in Moreton-in-Marsh represents his paintings, while his music is published by Composers Edition and available through Alexander Street Press libraries. His compositions have been performed by leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists worldwide, including by the BBC Philharmonic with I See Blue (1995) and PAGAN II (1997), and most recently the unimportance of events (2021) for 22 players with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. At Tectonics Glasgow 2024, this time with the full orchestra, his spatialised polytemporal orchestral work ‘a point in the landscape’ was also featured and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Other commissions include the round and square art of memory (1999), a piano concerto for the BBC Philharmonic; My Blood is as Red as Yours (2008) for the Hallé Orchestra to mark World Aids Day; the choral piece sturzstrom (2012) for the Cultural Olympiad; and Forget-Me-Not (2016), a vocal installation on dementia commissioned by Yeovil District and Dorchester County Hospitals. His chamber and ensemble works are numerous and widely recognised.

Dr. Yeats has significantly advanced the study of polytemporal composition, presenting his research at institutions such as the University of Manchester, the University of Leeds, and the City University of New York. His AHRC-funded PhD research at the University of Leeds (2017-2021) focused on developing timecode-supported polytemporal composition methods, pushing the boundaries of how complex, unsynchronised musical structures can be performed without a conductor or unified pulse. His compositional method involves fully notated lines of material operating in different tempi, synchronised via mobile phone stopwatches and part-embedded timecodes. This technique enables performers to follow their temporal paths while maintaining structural coherence.

Marc’s innovative approach explores the balance between composer control and performer flexibility, yielding unpredictable yet recognisable results with each performance. His conductor-less, scoreless method allows musicians to interpret their tempi, using timecodes to navigate the music’s complex polytemporal structure. This pioneering method opens new possibilities for writing and performing multi-tempi orchestral music, enabling complex sonic relationships by managing indeterminacy.

I'm an Irish composer, sound engineer/programmer and improviser with a research interest in the philosophy of sound, music and aesthetics. 
If you want to collaborate or chat, send me a message here or via email.
Please see my links for more information.
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Ben

Chris McGovern is The Gen-X Muse, and the host of that podcast

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