Deborah Pritchard

Last updated

Deborah Pritchard Deborah Pritchard .jpg
Deborah Pritchard

Deborah Pritchard is a British composer. She is known for her concert works, a compositional approach informed by her synaesthesia, and her work in response to visual artists, most notably Maggi Hambling, Hugie O'Donoghue and Marc Chagall. She also paints music in the form of visualisations and music maps. The London Symphony Orchestra premiered her large orchestral piece The Angel Standing in the Sun at LSO St Lukes in 2015, her violin concerto Calandra was premiered by Jennifer Pike and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, London in 2022 and Radiance for solo cello, responding to The Peace Window by Marc Chagall at the United Nations, was premiere by Natalie Clein at the Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival in 2022. She won a British Composer Award for her solo violin piece Inside Colour in 2017, [1]

Contents

Education

Pritchard was awarded an undergraduate degree and postgraduate diploma from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she studied as both composer and double bassist. [2] She then completed a MMus degree in composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Simon Bainbridge, subsequently holding the position of Manson Fellow in Composition. She was awarded her DPhil from Worcester College, Oxford where she studied with Robert Saxton, now holding Associate Membership of The Faculty of Music, Oxford. She was made Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2019 and held the tenure of Visiting Research Fellow at Keble College, Oxford, from 2022 to 2023.

Career

Her work received early attention following the inclusion of her piece Chanctonbury Ring on the album "The Hoxton Thirteen", released by NMC Recordings in 2001. [3] [4] Her music has since been released by labels including Signum Records, Nimbus, [5] Linn Records, BIS Records, Hyperion Records and Orchid Classics.

Her music has been premiered, performed and broadcast worldwide by ensembles including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Philharmonia Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, English String Orchestra, Orchestra of the Swan, Chamber Domaine, the Composers Ensemble, [5] BBC Singers, Choir of New College, Oxford, Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Gesualdo Six and the Marian Consort.

Recent works includes her large work for choir and symphony orchestra Kandinsky Songs premiered at the Forbidden City Concert Hall, Beijing, China in 2024; her new song Everyone Sang for Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton, premiered at the Wigmore Hall in 2023 and Chagall's Light for solo violin and orchestra, inspired by the Marc Chagall windows of All Saints Church, Tudeley, premiered by Greta Multu and Chamber Domain, conducted by Thomas Kemp in 2023.

She was composer in residence at the 2016 Lichfield Festival [6] and the 2022 Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival where Natalie Clein premiered her new work for solo cello.

Synaesthesia

Pritchard experiences synaesthesia, specifically perceiving sound as colour, light and darkness. In her own words;

"Ever since I was a child, I’ve been aware that some harmonies seemed warm whilst others appeared cold. The relationship between colours and intervals seemed so natural to me that I didn’t question it ... When I engage with colour, light and darkness in my work, I become aware of a broader emotional content and hope to illuminate some kind of beauty to the listener. [7] "

Pritchard frequently paints visualisations of her musical works, and has also been commissioned by the London Sinfonietta to paint music maps of works by other composers (such as György Ligeti, Unsuk Chin and Thomas Adès) for inclusion in concert programme notes. [8] [9] [2] Her visualisations and music maps were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Music's Amazing Women of the Academy exhibition from 2018 to 2019. In 2020 she was commissioned a graphic score Colour Circle by the London Sinfonietta to launch their Postcard Pieces project over lockdown, inspired by Wassily Kandinsky's book Concerning the Spiritual in Art .

Pritchard's visualisation of her solo violin piece Inside Colour Visualisation of 'Inside Colour' by Deborah Pritchard.jpg
Pritchard's visualisation of her solo violin piece Inside Colour

Works inspired by visual art

Pritchard has written several pieces inspired by Marc Chagall including Radiance for solo cello responding to The Peace Window at the United Nations premiered by Natalie Clein at the Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival in 2022, and Chagall's Light for solo violin and orchestra, written after the series of windows at All Saints Church, Tudeley, premiered by Greta Mutlu and Chamber Domaine at the 2023 Music@Malling Festival in Kent.

She has also written a number of pieces after the contemporary artist Maggi Hambling, working in collaboration at her studio in Suffolk. [7]

The first of these was the violin concerto Wall of Water (2014), which was premiered by violinist Harriet Mackenzie and the English String Orchestra during the Frieze Art Fair in London. Images of Hambling's series of seascape paintings, also titled Wall of Water, were projected during the performance. [10]

Subsequent pieces written in response to Hambling's work were Edge, a double concerto for violin, harp and string orchestra (after Hambling's paintings on global warming), premiered by Harriet Mackenzie, Catrin Finch and the Aldeburgh Festival Orchestra, conducted by Jonathan Berman at the 2017 Aldeburgh Festival [11] and a solo violin piece for Harriet Mackenzie called March 2020 in response to Hambling's painting of the same name, with both painting and music created over lockdown.

Other artists on whose work Pritchard has drawn on include Hughie O'Donoghue, George Shaw, Yinka Shonibare, Steinunn Thorarinsdottir, J.M.W. Turner and James Turrell.

Selected works

[14] [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oliver Knussen</span> British composer and conductor (1952–2018)

Stuart Oliver Knussen was a British composer of contemporary classical music and conductor. Among the most influential British composers of his generation, his relatively few compositions are "rooted in 20th-century modernism, [but] beholden to no school but his own"

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Tower</span> American composer, concert pianist and conductor

Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.

Natalie Clein is a British classical cellist. Her mother is a professional violinist. Her sister is the actress Louisa Clein.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pēteris Vasks</span> Latvian composer

Pēteris Vasks is a Latvian composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grażyna Bacewicz</span> Polish musician (1909–1969)

Grażyna Bacewicz Biernacka was a Polish composer and violinist of Lithuanian origin. She is the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition, the first being Maria Szymanowska in the early 19th century.

Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.

Hilary Tann was a Welsh composer based in the United States.

Philip Cashian is an English composer. He is the head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music.

Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus.

Brian Elias is a British composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvie Bodorová</span> Czech composer

Sylvie Bodorová is a Czech composer. During a career spanning from the late 1970s to the present day she has composed a large number of works for various instruments, both solo and orchestral pieces, and produced commissions for cities, festivals and organisations around the world. She was a founder member of the Czech classical group Quattro, formed in 1996.

Onutė Narbutaitė is a Lithuanian composer.

Hanna Kulenty is a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. Since 1992, she has worked and lived both in Warsaw (Poland) and in Arnhem (Netherlands).

Ella Milch-Sheriff is an Israeli composer, winner of ACUM award for lifetime achievfment (2022). Born in Haifa, Israel on September 1, 1954, Milch-Sheriff began her career as a composer at the age of 12. During her military service she composed, performed and interpreted her own songs after which she returned to classical music studying composition under the direction of Professor Tzvi Avni and graduating in composition from the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University.

Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian is a British composer, singer, and harper. She is considered one of today's leading emerging composers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Svante Henryson</span> Swedish musician and composer

Svante Henryson is a composer, cellist, bass guitarist and double bassist, active within jazz, classical music, and hard rock.

Charlotte Bray is a British composer. She was championed by the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London Sinfonietta and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been performed by many notable conductors such as: Sir Mark Elder, Oliver Knussen, Daniel Harding, and Jac van Steen.

Vivian Fung is a JUNO Award-winning Canadian-born composer who writes music for orchestras, operas, quartets, and piano. Her compositions have been performed internationally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sebastian Fagerlund</span> Finnish composer

Sebastian Fagerlund is a Finnish composer. He is described as “a post-modern impressionist whose sound landscapes can be heard as ecstatic nature images which, however, are always inner images, landscapes of the mind”. Echoes of Western culture, Asian musical traditions, and heavy metal have all been detected in his music.

Graham Whettam was an English post-romantic composer.

References

  1. "Winners of 2017 British Composer Awards announced - Rhinegold". Rhinegold. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  2. 1 2 "Interview: Deborah Pritchard, composer". www.churchtimes.co.uk. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  3. Richard_Whitehouse (9 January 2013). "(The) Hoxton Thirteen". www.gramophone.co.uk. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  4. "The Hoxton 13 | NMC Recordings". www.nmcrec.co.uk. Archived from the original on 20 September 2020. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 "Pritchard, Deborah | NMC Recordings". www.nmcrec.co.uk. Archived from the original on 20 May 2020. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  6. Clements, Andrew (3 July 2016). "Manchester Camerata/ Gernon review – stirring elegies for the Somme". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  7. 1 2 "Interview: Deborah Pritchard - M Magazine". M magazine: PRS for Music online magazine. 14 March 2018. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  8. Morrison, Richard. "Concert: Adès Deconstructed: In Seven Days at Festival Hall". ISSN   0140-0460 . Retrieved 12 August 2020.
  9. "Music Map: Unsuk Chin's cosmigimmicks". London Sinfonietta. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  10. "Deborah Pritchard- Wall of Water | English Symphony Orchestra". www.eso.co.uk. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  11. "Blog by Deborah Pritchard - The Sampler". The Sampler. 10 August 2017. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  12. "Seven Halts on the Somme - Hyperion Records - CDs, MP3 and Lossless downloads". www.hyperion-records.co.uk. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  13. "Deborah Pritchard Archives - Signum Records". Signum Records. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  14. "Deborah Pritchard". British Music Collection. 4 April 2009. Retrieved 2 September 2018.