Marcus Blunt was born in Birmingham in 1947. Although around the age of 9 he had piano lessons from his father for a year or more, and made his first attempts at composition, his interest in music did not really take off until he was 14. He went on to study composition at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, graduating in 1970. After a remarkably wide variety of abodes – in rural Warwickshire, Manchester, York, and London – and occupations – ranging from warehouse packer and photographic processor to department manager at a music publisher – he settled in Derby in 1976 as a teacher of woodwind instruments. In 1990 he and his wife Maureen decided to seek a more congenial environment for his composing work, and are now enjoying the gentler pace of life just North of the Border. In 1997 Dumfries Music Club appointed him as their Hon. Composer-in-Residence.