biography

Biography

In Short : British composer (b. 1977) exploring the relationship between electronic and acoustic sound, currently living in the U.S. along with my husband, sonic artist Michael G. Breece.

As regards to my music, I find there is something so fascinating about sound. And thats what I love exploring when I compose. I dont really think in terms of development and form and such within pieces, I think more in terms of pure sonics. And one of the things I find most exciting about living today is that there are so many options for combinations of sounds, acoustic instruments, electronically generated sounds, acoustic sounds treated electronically, field recordings, anything that can be heard can be used and I love that freedom and almost bottomless depths of possible exploration.

In Long : I was born in 1977, in Lowestoft, England and music has always been a huge part of my life. I’ve always used it as an emotionally expressive tool, right from the age of 5, when I remember playing on the piano, a piece of my own devising, called fairies and trolls. Low, heavy, loud clusters showed the trolls, whilst the fairies, in contrast, were light, quiet, single notes. However, it was at the age of 7 that I met my first love, the French horn. I was at a concert with my mother, and I can’t remember the piece that was being played, but all of a sudden, the most beautiful sound I had ever heard came at me from the orchestra, I was transfixed by it, and fell in love with it immediately. I told this to my mother, who then set me up with lessons on the instrument, the French horn, via the school. This led to my first real composition at the age of 7, entitled fish. It consisted of 4 notes, and was for solo French horn. At that time, I thought I was being pretty outrageous, going all the way up to an F. Not exactly a child prodigy, but we all have to start somewhere.

I continued playing the French horn, and at the age of 15 gained my grade 8 with distinction, and was playing and touring Europe with the Suffolk Youth Orchestra. Around this age, I also really began to become interested in 20th Century music and creating some sketches for classical pieces of my own in this style as by this point, this was the kind of music that made a lot of sense to me intellectually and emotionally and I wished to it create myself.

At the age of 18, I was accepted at the University of East Anglia, to study music. Although I had been accepted at the Royal Northern College of Music to study performance, I chose the UEA, because it has such an excellent composition department, including a leading reputation in electro-acoustic music, something I was also becoming increasingly interested in. By this time, I was entirely devoted to composing, and any thought of being a performer had gone out of the window. I had taken the composition option for my music A level, and received good marks, plus the other sketches I had made during the years, helped me to secure the place on the BA (hons) in music. Right from this point I was interested in a combination of acoustic and electronic writing, something, which is a constant undercurrent of my continuing work.

Majoring in composition, I emerged from the UEA with upper second-class honours in a Bachelor of Arts. A year later I was back, this time to undertake an MMus in Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art. Here I began to write pieces that were much more expressive, interesting and complicated than hitherto, and researched deeper into the exploration of the hybridisation of live instruments and electronic sound manipulation, finding out more about computer programmes that could affect the instruments which gave more options than the analogue effects that I had previously employed. I had written complete computer pieces before, using Peak and Pro Tools and a few others, but had not used the computer to explore the possibility of real time sound manipulation. I discovered the programme MAX/MSP and found this to be ideal for this purpose, giving me more effects and more parameters within the effects that I had found via analogue electronics, thus wider scope to create the sounds I wished.

Also, within this time there were a number of concerts where my work was performed, including one of entirely my own work, in association with the Sonic Arts Series, at the Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich, UK. Also I had pieces included in the Sonic Arts Festival of 2001 and played many gigs with my French horn affected by electronics in conjunction with the Siren Suite in London, which brought mostly contemporary, although some other more traditional classical was played, to a new audience, by putting it into a bar environment, where people could sit, and chat, listen or even dance, if they were feeling brave. This brought the music to a whole new audience, who would not go to a concert hall to hear it, but felt comfortable in a bar. I think that at all those gigs, the audience really appreciated something different, something new that they had not experienced before, and this is something that I feel strongly about, bringing the modern classical genre into new places, where people might not experience it otherwise. Too many people have the view of modern classical music as a pretentious genre, the performance of which takes place in a stuffy concert hall, where they are unable to express themselves. I have the belief that music is something to be used for expressing emotion, both the composers and the listeners, and I wish for the audience to have the freedom to respond to the music how they wish. For this to happen, though, there needs to be a certain familiarity in the performance environment, like that of a bar or club. I take care not to create a crossover, but to present my music pure in these environments. I feel that the field of modern classical music is one which is full of beauty and intelligence, and wish for more people, from all backgrounds, to discover and enjoy it, and that for this to happen, our attitudes towards the performance, and accessibility of this music have to change.

Currently, I’m living in the USA (with my husband, the wonderful sonic artist Michael G Breece) and continuing to explore the relationship between electronic and acoustic sound in many different ways.