After studies at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of London, Paul Harris has now established an international reputation as one of the UK’s leading educationalists.

He studied the clarinet with Professor John Davies, winning the August Manns Prize for outstanding playing; composition with Timothy Baxter and conducting with Maurice Miles. He then went on to study music education at the University of London where he was a pupil of Professor Keith Swanwick. He now has over four hundred and fifty publications to his name; among them The Music Teacher's Companion, which won the UK's MIA Best New Book award, the Improve Your Scales!, Improve Your Practice! and Improve Your Sight-reading! series, through which he has assisted hundreds of thousands of young players worldwide to develop these vital musical skills.  In addition he has written many other works ranging from short education pieces to five concertos, a ballet and a children’s opera. 

He writes regularly for many of the major international music magazines, including Music Teacher, BBC Music Magazine, the ABRSM's Libretto, and the American ICA journal, and is in great demand as a workshop and seminar leader and adjudicator in the UK, the USA and the Far East, Australia and New Zealand. Paul has also undertaken research into specialist music education for the highly talented (the clarinet prodigy Julian Bliss number among his pupils), an interest that has taken him to many musical institutions around the world. He recently presented a paper on teaching gifted young musicians at a convention at the University of Oklahoma.

He is an examiner and adjudicator and is frequently asked to take part in national events including the Chamber Music for Schools Competition, Music for Youth, the BBC Young Musician of the Year and he is a regular judge for Classic FM’s teacher of the year.
He has also recently co-authored (with Anthony Meredith) a major new biography of the British composer Sir Malcolm Arnold, Malcolm Arnold: Rogue Genius, and is presently working on a biography of the late Master of The Queen’s Music, Malcolm Williamson.

Paul's innovative teaching techniques have found support all over the world and combine thoroughness, imagination and practicality, the defining qualities of his outstandingly successful work.