My Story:
I am very surprised (and delighted!) to be making a career as a composer. Music was not in any way part of my upbringing and a friend took me to my first ever classical concert when I was 16. I come from a non-musical, working class background. My parents didn’t complete school so, understandably, encouragement toward a PhD in music and then a musical career wasn’t easy to give. It was really hard for friends and family to understand that I wanted a career in something so financially risky and culturally alien as music, especially when I was so new to it. This is the thing of which I am most proud – sticking to my gut, persevering and finding a home in music via first learning electric guitar and putting on (terrible!) gigs and then finding joy in classical music and following the journey toward composing professionally. I am never happier than when writing music and working with performers. Alongside composing, I teach part-time at Middlesex University and in my spare time I play cricket badly.
Music & Collaborations:
Most of my music draws on other art, especially text for inspiration, from poetry and literature to Twitter feeds and graffiti. Current projects include a collaboration with Lotte Betts-Dean exploring art-song settings of poetry by Thomas Hardy and a spin-off project with the Ligeti Quartet which responds to Hardy's poem 'Afterwards'. I am also working with the Philharmonia Orchestra, toward a premiere performance and recording of a new work for sinfonietta in May 2023. I am also developing a dance+video project based on the tale of Dorian Gray, development work for this was undertaken with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2022. In 2021 I wrote a song cycle commissioned by Wild Plum Arts and the Estate of T.S. Eliot as well as an overture for the University of Bristol Symphony Orchestra. I am a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists 2020.
My music has been broadcast on UK radio (BBC Radio3) and is performed across the UK as well as in the US and Canada.
I am very surprised (and delighted!) to be making a career as a composer. Music was not in any way part of my upbringing and a friend took me to my first ever classical concert when I was 16. I come from a non-musical, working class background. My parents didn’t complete school so, understandably, encouragement toward a PhD in music and then a musical career wasn’t easy to give. It was really hard for friends and family to understand that I wanted a career in something so financially risky and culturally alien as music, especially when I was so new to it. This is the thing of which I am most proud – sticking to my gut, persevering and finding a home in music via first learning electric guitar and putting on (terrible!) gigs and then finding joy in classical music and following the journey toward composing professionally. I am never happier than when writing music and working with performers. Alongside composing, I teach part-time at Middlesex University and in my spare time I play cricket badly.
Music & Collaborations:
Most of my music draws on other art, especially text for inspiration, from poetry and literature to Twitter feeds and graffiti. Current projects include a collaboration with Lotte Betts-Dean exploring art-song settings of poetry by Thomas Hardy and a spin-off project with the Ligeti Quartet which responds to Hardy's poem 'Afterwards'. I am also working with the Philharmonia Orchestra, toward a premiere performance and recording of a new work for sinfonietta in May 2023. I am also developing a dance+video project based on the tale of Dorian Gray, development work for this was undertaken with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2022. In 2021 I wrote a song cycle commissioned by Wild Plum Arts and the Estate of T.S. Eliot as well as an overture for the University of Bristol Symphony Orchestra. I am a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists 2020.
My music has been broadcast on UK radio (BBC Radio3) and is performed across the UK as well as in the US and Canada.