Emma Townshend
Emma Townshend (born 1969) is an English writer, journalist, musician and lecturer, and the elder daughter of The Who's Pete Townshend. She has taught courses since being a postgraduate at Cambridge in 1994, most recently for the Department of Continuing Education in Oxford.
Townshend also appears as a regular guest on radio and TV including the World Service, Woman's Hour, A Hard Act to Follow, and Newsnight. Emma Townshend is the Independent on Sunday’s garden columnist and also writes for The Times’ arts pages.
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[edit] Biography
Emma Townshend was the first child born to Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend and his wife Karen (née Astley) in 1969. Pete Townshend was the eldest son of jazz musician Cliff Townshend and his wife Betty Dennis who sang with The Squadronaires during World War II. Karen Astley was the daughter of composer Ted Astley, best known for TV themes for shows including The Saint, and his wife Hazel Balbirnie, and also sister of record producer Jon Astley and singer/songwriter Virginia Astley. The couple met while attending Ealing School of Art and married in 1968. Emma has one sister, Aminta (b. 1971), and a brother, Joseph (b. 1989).
Of Townshend's four grandparents, three were professional musicians, all of whom had been in armed forces entertainment during the war. Emma's father Pete Townshend was the lead guitarist and principal songwriter of the rock band The Who.
Emma studied history at King's College, Cambridge then specialised in history of science, receiving a Masters from Imperial College, London. She then returned to Cambridge for a Ph.D. She has taught for Oxford University's Department of Continuing Education since 2000 and is also a Visiting Lecturer at City University, London.[1]
[edit] Music career
In 1982 Emma and her sister Aminta made their professional music debut singing back-up on A Bao A Qu, a four-track EP by their aunt, singer-songwriter Virginia Astley. Emma also sang back-up on Pete Townshend's White City: A Novel album released in 1985, and appeared in the film of the same title.
In 1985 Emma Townshend also performed as a guest vocalist at two London Brixton Academy charity concerts with the Deep End band including Pete Townshend and David Gilmour. These concerts were later released as the album Deep End Live!
Townshend's record deal with EastWest Records, part of the Warner Music Group, extended from 1995-1998, and she released the album Winterland in 1998. The album was well received, garnering good reviews. Her song "We Can Fly Away" was the theme song in the 1999 made for TV movie The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns, which also featured The Who's Roger Daltrey in an acting role. The same song was used in the Eragon Video Game in 2006.
[edit] Discography
Releases:
- Five-A-Side-Football Remixes (Maxi) (2 versions), EastWest, 1998
- Five-A-Side-Football Remixes (CD, Maxi), EastWest, 1998
- Five-A-Side-Football (12", Promo), EastWest, 1998
- The Last Time I Saw Sadie (12", Promo), EastWest, 1998
- The Last Time I Saw Sadie (CD, Maxi), EastWest, 1998
- Winterland (CD, Album), EastWest, 1998
Appeared On:
- A Bao A Qu (Single), "We Will Meet Them Again," Why Fi Records, 1982
- White City: A Novel (Album), ATCO Records, 1985
- White City: A Novel (CD, LP), ATCO Records, 1985
- White City: A Novel (CD, Album, RM, RE), Hip-O Records, 2006
- Pearl + Umbra (CD), "Canyon: Split Asunder," Bella Union, 1999
Tracks Appeared On:
- Platinum (2xCD), Five-a-Side Football, Warner Music UK 1998 [2]
[edit] Lecturing and writing career
Emma Townshend writes on general arts subjects for magazines and newspapers including The Times and The Observer, and is The Independent on Sunday’s gardening columnist. She maintains a blog for The Independent.
Emma Townshend participated in the AllLearn project, a consortium of Stanford, Yale and Oxford Universities. This was an ambitious online learning project which provided 110 high-quality enrichment courses from Oxford, Stanford, and Yale Universities to over 10,000 participants from seventy countries.[3] [4]
[edit] Literary work
Emma Townshend is the author of Darwin's Dogs: How Darwin's Pets Helped Form a World-Changing Theory of Evolution (2009). This book looks at how Darwin used his much-loved dogs as evidence of his continuing argument that all animals including human beings descended from one common ancestor, examining parts of Darwin's own writings in The Descent of Man. Her postgraduate thesis involved research about Darwin’s correspondence with plant breeders and gardeners which appears in her book. She has also written on Darwin’s connections with the Royal Botanic Garden for Kew Magazine, and led special guided tours of Kew in Darwin’s bicentenary year, 2009.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ Townshend, Emma (17 January 1998). "Her Generation". The Times (London). http://www.thewho.net/articles/emma.htm. Retrieved 19 January 2010.
- ^ "Discography". http://www.discogs.com/artist/Emma+Townshend.
- ^ "Failure of a Prestigious Venture". http://www.checkpoint-elearning.com/?aID=2553. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
- ^ Townshend, Emma (2009). Darwin's Dogs: How Darwin's Pets Helped Form a World-Changing Theory of Evolution. Francis Lincoln Ltd., London.
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