Laura Stevens | |
---|---|
Born | Cape Town, South Africa |
Genres | Film score, contemporary classical, ballet music |
Occupation(s) | Composer, arranger, producer |
Instrument(s) | Piano, cello, keyboards |
Laura Stevens is a South African and British composer [1] of music for concert hall, film and media, stage and dance. [2]
Stevens composed the original score for the documentary Elephant Refugees [3] (2022, dir. Louise Hogarth) , narrated by Jerome Flynn; and various ballet music works for the English National Ballet. [4] [5]
She is also known for collaborating with living poets on musical settings of their work, among them Katharine Towers [6] and Hollie McNish [7]
Stevens created the original score for documentary Elephant Refugees [8] [9] [10] in 2022, directed by Louise Hogarth, an account of elephants fleeing drought in Botswana
In 2016 the English National Ballet commissioned Stevens to compose the music for Unsilenced, the youth ballet accompaniment to their She Said triple bill project. [11] [12] The work was danced at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London and the Britten Theatre.
Previously, she had worked with the company on their Choreographics showcase at Sadler’s Wells, collaborating with choreographer Morgann Runacre-Temple on her work Give my Love to the Sunrise [13] [14]
Stevens has written in cross-disciplinary genres, having also collaborated with poets Katharine Towers on a musical setting of her poem “the way we go”, [15] for Soprano and Piano, with a subsequent choral arrangement for Swedish choir Linköping Studentssangerer; [16] [17] and Hollie McNish on her debut music and poetry album album Versus [18] recorded at Abbey Road.
In 2015, her orchestral work Long Walk [19] an homage to late president Nelson Mandela was performed in South Africa by the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra [20] [21] under Tokyo Philharmonic conductor and LA philharmonic assistant-conductor Yasuo Shinozaki.
In 2012 Stevens created music for animations produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Central St Martins. These were broadcast on BBC Arts Channel and at the Edinburgh Festival. [22]
Stevens worked with Swiss director Christina Ruloff and artist Beat Toniolo, creating the original music for their TV film Z Kiev redt mer Mundaart, [23] [24] about the life and exploits of Swiss dialect poet Albert Baechtold. It was distributed and broadcast on Swiss Channel SRF1 and featured Swiss actor Andrea Zogg. [25]
A frequent musical partner is Turkish composer Nazım Çınar . In 2023 she played and arranged cello on his score for theatre work Imparator [26] [27] by Turkish thespian and activist Genco Erkal. [28]
Stevens was born in Cape Town, South Africa, lives London, United Kingdom . [29]
She attended the Royal College of Music and the South African College of Music, at the University of Cape Town. [30]
Michael Torke is an American composer who writes music influenced by jazz and minimalism.
New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company's first music director. City Ballet grew out of earlier troupes: the Producing Company of the School of American Ballet, 1934; the American Ballet, 1935, and Ballet Caravan, 1936, which merged into American Ballet Caravan, 1941; and directly from the Ballet Society, 1946.
The Firebird is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Michel Fokine, who collaborated with Alexandre Benois and others on a scenario based on the Russian fairy tales of the Firebird and the blessing and curse it possesses for its owner. It was first performed at the Opéra de Paris on 25 June 1910 and was an immediate success, catapulting Stravinsky to international fame and leading to future Diaghilev–Stravinsky collaborations including Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913).
Carl Davis was an American-born British conductor and composer. He wrote music for more than 100 television programmes (notably the landmark ITV series The World At War and BBC's Pride and Prejudice, created new scores for concert and cinema performances of vintage silent movies and composed many film, ballet and concert scores that were performed worldwide, including the Liverpool Oratorio in 1991. Davis's publisher was Faber Music.
Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.
John Cyril Cranko was a South African ballet dancer and choreographer with the Royal Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet.
Bramwell Tovey was a British conductor and composer.
The Wedding, or Svadebka (Russian: Свадебка), is a Russian-language ballet-cantata by Igor Stravinsky scored unusually for four vocal soloists, chorus, percussion and four pianos. Dedicating the work to impresario Sergei Diaghilev, the composer described it in French as "choreographed Russian scenes with singing and music" [sic], and it remains known by its French name of Les noces despite being Russian.
Scheherazade, also commonly Sheherazade, Op. 35, is a symphonic suite composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888 and based on One Thousand and One Nights.
Sir Wayne McGregor, CBE is a British choreographer and director who has won multiple awards. He is the Artistic Director of Studio Wayne McGregor and Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet. McGregor was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) 2011 for Services to Dance.
Homage to the Queen, Op. 42, by Malcolm Arnold was written as the official coronation ballet in 1953, commissioned by the Sadler's Wells Ballet in honour of Queen Elizabeth II, the ballet company's musical adviser Humphrey Searle having recommended Arnold for the job. The original choreography was created by Frederick Ashton. It was first performed by the Sadler's Wells Ballet on Coronation night 2 June 1953 at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, with original scenery and costumes by Oliver Messel. The Orchestra was conducted by Robert Irving.
Bryce David Dessner is an American composer and guitarist based in Paris, and a member of the rock band the National. Dessner's twin brother, Aaron is also a member of the group. Together, they write the music in collaboration with lead singer and lyricist Matt Berninger.
Altin Kaftira is a former danseur with the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He danced with the Ballet from 1995 on, and from 2000 to 2007 was the Ballet's principal dancer, and has danced in almost a dozen George Balanchine ballets. In 2007, he left to pursue a career as a filmmaker. One of his first film assignments was the production and direction of the 75th anniversary gala for Hans van Manen.
Crystal Pite is a Canadian choreographer and dancer. She began her professional dance career in 1988 at Ballet BC, and in 1996 she joined Ballett Frankfurt under the tutelage of William Forsythe. After leaving Ballett Frankfurt she became the resident choreographer of Montreal company Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal from 2001 to 2004. She then returned to Vancouver where she focused on choreographing while continuing to dance in her own pieces until 2010. In 2002 she formed her own company called Kidd Pivot, which produced her original works Uncollected Work (2003), Double Story (2004), Lost Action (2006), Dark Matters (2009), The You Show (2010), The Tempest Replica (2011), Betroffenheit (2015), and Revisor (2019) to date. Throughout her career she has been commissioned by many international dance companies to create new pieces, including The Second Person (2007) for Netherlands Dans Theater and Emergence (2009) for the National Ballet of Canada, the latter of which was awarded four Dora Mavor Moore Awards.
Derek Rencher was a British ballet dancer. A commanding figure among Royal Ballet character dancers for more than four decades, he was probably the most prolific performer in the company's history.
Brian Shaw was a British ballet dancer and teacher. As a leading dancer with the Royal Ballet during the 1950s and 1960s, he was widely regarded as "one of the finest classical male dancers of his generation".
Hollie McNish is a poet and author based between Cambridge and Glasgow. She has published four collections of poetry: Papers (2012), Cherry Pie (2015), Why I Ride (2015), Plum (2017) and one poetic memoir on politics and parenthood, Nobody Told Me (2016), of which the Scotsman suggested “The world needs this book...and so does every new parent” and for which she won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. The latter has been translated into German, French and Spanish. McNish's sixth publication - a second cross-genre collection of poetry, memoir and short stories - Slug, and other things I've been told to hate, was published in May 2021 with Hachette with a further collection Lobster, due to come out in 2024, also with Hachette. In 2016, she co-wrote a play with fellow poet Sabrina Mahfouz, Offside, relating the history of British women in football. This was published as a book in 2017.
Mette HenrietteMartedatter Rølvåg is a performing artist, saxophonist, band leader and composer from Norway.
The Quest is a ballet score by William Walton, written for a ballet of the same title, now lost, choreographed by Frederick Ashton in 1943. Two versions of the score exist: one for the small orchestra for which Walton wrote, and a posthumously constructed version rescored for an orchestra of the larger size usually favoured by the composer. The ballet, with a scenario by Doris Langley Moore, was based on The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. It was first given by the Sadler's Wells Ballet company.