Composition Workshops at SWCHS

As part of the preparation for MazeMusic composer Elspeth Brooke and members of Britten Sinfonia are running composition workshops with A-level students at Saffron Walden County High School supported by the SWCHS music department staff. Examples of the music the students produce will feature in the concert.

Elspeth Brooke is a London-based composer. She studied composition with Tarik O'Regan and Alexander Goehr at Cambridge University and Simon Bainbridge at the Royal Academy of Music. Her studies were supported by awards from the Countess of Munster Trust, the RVW Trust and the AHRC. Her music is performed in the UK and internationally and has been commissioned by performers including the BBC Singers, Exaudi, Colin Currie, and The Clerks' Group.

Brooke collaborates with artists from many different fields and has worked with companies such as the Rambert Dance Company and the Actors Touring Company. She has written widely for the voice, including among banged fragments, which was nominated for the 2005 British Composer Awards and Airborne for Juice Vocal Ensemble, featuring live stylophones and an electronic soundtrack. From 2008 – 2010 she held a Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship together with writer Jack Underwood and video artist Ellie Rees to write the chamber opera The Commission, based on a poem by Michael Donaghy.

Current work includes music for Cameron McMillan's dance piece 'If Nobody Speaks' for ROH2 Exposure and 'Star', a new puppet theatre piece for the Midlands Arts Centre. She is a 'Creative in Residence' 2011/2012 at the Hospital Club and is participating in the London Sinfonietta Blue Touch Paper programme.