Sadie Harrison (born 1965) is an Australian-born composer, performer and academic.
Harrison was born in Adelaide, Australia and moved to England in 1970. She studied composition to doctoral level at King's College, London under Nicola LeFanu and David Lumsdaine. Her music has been performed worldwide by ensembles including London Chamber Symphony, Bournemouth Sinfonietta, the Kreutzer Quartet and the Kaskados Trio. Harrison's music is published by the University of York Music Press. [1] Coming from a household of musicians, her father brought Sadie and her family to Britain from Australia in 1970 to pursue a career as an opera singer. She learned the piano and violin as a child but did not take to the instruments with much enthusiasm. [1]
Harrison was first introduced to modern classical music during a composition class at Surrey University and described it as "ridiculously emotive but honestly, it was like coming home. I wrote my first piece the same day, eventually played by the brilliant composer and clarinettist Sohrab Uduman, and from then I’ve been on my composing journey." [1] From 2015 to 2016, Harrison worked on a substantial collaboration with US Ensemble Cuatro Puntos, for whom she is currently Artist-in-residence. The project resulted in a commission for string sextet and youth ensemble. The project was generously supported by two Arts Council England Grants for the Arts, a PRSF Women Make Music Award and others. [2]
Sir Harrison Birtwistle was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include The Triumph of Time (1972) and the operas The Mask of Orpheus (1986), Gawain (1991), and The Minotaur (2008). The last of these was ranked by music critics at The Guardian in 2019 as the third-best piece of the 21st century. Even his compositions that were not written for the stage often showed a theatrical approach. A performance of his saxophone concerto Panic during the BBC's Last Night of the Proms caused "national notoriety". He received many international awards and honorary degrees.
Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music. In this regard, she was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983. Ran was a professor of music composition at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 2015. She has performed as a pianist in Israel, Europe and the U.S., and her compositional works have been performed worldwide by a wide array of orchestras and chamber groups.
Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead is a New Zealand composer. She is of Māori Ngāi Te Rangi descent. Her Māori heritage has been an important influence on her composing.
Jody Diamond is an American composer, performer, writer, publisher, editor, and educator. She specializes in traditional and new music for Indonesian gamelan and is active internationally as a scholar, performer, and publisher.
Chantal Francesca Passamonte, known professionally as Mira Calix, was a South African-born, British-based audio and visual artist and musician signed to Warp Records.
John Roger Smalley was an Anglo-Australian composer, pianist and conductor. Professor Smalley was a senior honorary research fellow at the School of Music, University of Western Australia in Perth and honorary research associate at the University of Sydney.
Pamela Z is an American composer, performer, and media artist best known for her solo works for voice with electronic processing. In performance, she combines various vocal sounds including operatic bel canto, experimental extended techniques and spoken word, with samples and sounds generated by manipulating found objects. Z's musical aesthetic is one of sonic accretion, and she typically processes her voice in real time through the software program Max on a MacBook Pro as a means of layering, looping, and altering her live vocal sound. Her performance work often includes video projections and special controllers with sensors that allow her to use physical gestures to manipulate the sound and projected media.
Hilda Paredes is one of Mexico's leading contemporary composers, and has received many prestigious awards for her work. She currently resides in London, and is married to the noted English violinist, Irvine Arditti.
Jonty Harrison is an electroacoustic music composer born 27 April 1952 in Scunthorpe, and currently living in Birmingham, England.
Jane Marian Manning OBE was an English concert and opera soprano, writer on music, and visiting professor at the Royal College of Music. A specialist in contemporary classical music, she was described by one critic as "the irrepressible, incomparable, unstoppable Ms. Manning – life and soul of British contemporary music".
Lucy Wilkins is an English music educator and composer known for opera.
Avril Anderson is an English music educator and composer.
Mary Finsterer is an Australian composer and academic.
Jennifer Joan Fowler is a British composer of Australian birth. She was born in Bunbury, Australia, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in music and a Bachelor of Music from the School of Music, University of Western Australia in 1960 and 1967, respectively. During her time at University of Western Australia, she won several composition prizes and received the University Convocation Awards for outstanding results. While a student, her pieces were performed in the Festival of Perth and broadcast by ABC. She spent a year working at the Electronic Music Studios of the University of Utrecht in 1968. In 1969 she settled in London and works as a free-lance composer. Fowler married computer programmer Bruce Paterson and has two sons.
Erika Fox is a British composer and teacher. Born in Vienna, she grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. In 1939 at the age of three, Fox emigrated to England as a refugee. There she went on to study composition at the Royal College of Music with Bernard Stevens, and later with Jeremy Dale Roberts and Harrison Birtwistle.
Eve de Castro-Robinson is a New Zealand composer, professor and graphic designer. Her compositions include orchestral, vocal, chamber and electroacoustic works. She studied at the University of Auckland, where in 1991 she became the first person to receive a DMus from the University. She is Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Auckland.
Alison Margaret Bauld is an Australian writer and composer who lives and works in London, England.
Janet Beat is a Scottish composer, music educator and music writer. She was born in Streetly, Staffordshire, England and studied piano privately and horn at the Birmingham Conservatoire before reading music at Birmingham University, graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1960.Master of Arts [Birmingham University] 1968
Christine Berl is an American composer, pianist, and Egyptian-style Oriental dancer.
Nina C. Young is an American electro-acoustic composer of contemporary classical music who resides in New York City. She won the 2015 Rome Prize in musical composition, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2014 Charles Ives Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.