The year-long Adopt a Music Creator project matches vocal and instrumental music groups from the vibrant leisure-time music scene with some of the UK’s most promising composers, culminating in a première performance and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. This unique scheme challenges both music groups and composers to work together to create a brand new piece of music.
For more information for our current programme and new applications, please visit Adopt a Music Creator.
We are delighted to announce the Adopt a Music Creator pairings for 2022 below:
Caitlin Harrison
Paired with Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra and Reading Youth Orchestra
Caitlin Harrison is a British composer based in Oxford. Her works have been performed by ensembles including the Kreutzer Quartet, Oxford Philharmonic, BBC Singers, Trio Atem and Exeter College Choir (Oxford).
She was shortlisted for the NCEM Young Composers Competition 2020, Ernest Read Symphony Orchestra’s Emerging Composers Competition 2020 and the Henfrey Composition Prize 2021. Caitlin studied composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and the University of Oxford.
Dominic Matthews
Paired with Singing for Pleasure, Warwick
Dominic Matthews is an experimental composer, guitarist and conductor. His music explores new ways to define the concept of colour in music, delving into distinct, different and often peculiar timbres and textures.
In addition, he is excited by multi-disciplinary collaboration, fusing different musical genres and artistic practices to create unique, often primal and visceral soundscapes.
Edgar Divver
Paired with Bedfordshire Woodwind Academy Flute Ensemble
Edgar Divver is an award-winning composer and educator from London who has had works performed by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Singers, Psappha and The Ossian Ensemble, among others. He studied at both the University of Birmingham and then at the Royal Northern College of Music, staying in the Northwest following his time in education, where he currently lives in Cheshire.
He balances his freelance composing and instrumental teaching career with working for the Hallé in Manchester as part of their Youth Ensembles team, based at Hallé St Peter’s in Ancoats.
Emily Peasgood
Paired with Oxted Band
Emily Peasgood is an award-winning composer and artist. She creates research-led and site-specific artworks for galleries and outdoor public spaces, ranging from large-scale community events to intimate sound installations.
Her work invites people to connect with people and places that are forgotten, overlooked or surrounded in histories that can be remembered and celebrated through sound.
Hannah Fredsgaard-Jones
Paired with Voices of Exmoor
Hannah Fredsgaard-Jones is a composer, vocalist, songwriter and audio producer originally from Denmark, now residing in Oxford. Hannah’s work spans Scandinavian folk music, alternative pop music, sound art, and audio documentary.
Recent and current projects include a new commission for Love Music and Freedom of Mind Community Choir, a residency with Oxford Contemporary Music exploring moving, site-specific performance, and a collaborative songwriting project ‘Missed Connections’ with songs based on ‘Craigslist’ classifieds.
Joshua Brown
Paired with Glasgow Orchestral Society
Joshua Brown is a composer from Lancashire, and completed his PhD in Composition with Professor Philip Grange at the University of Manchester in 2018. From 2019-2020 he was Artist in Residence at the John Rylands Research Institute, and a London Philharmonic Orchestra Young Composer.
His music often explores a dichotomy of precision processes alongside elements of chance, and embraces the unique qualities individual musicians bring to a piece of music, so that each composition feels like a premiere every time it is played.