2019 Season II Artists

Supported by:

Ambache Charitable Trust is active in raising the profile of women composer

For Season II Illuminate Women's Music is delighted to introduce you to the Illuminate String Quartet with Soprano Patricia Auchterlonie

For Season II, Illuminate Women's Music is delighted to announce the formation of a new ensemble, the Illuminate String Quartet, who will be performing across the UK with soprano singer Patricia Auchterlonie!

In Season II, Illuminate Women's Music is commissioning new works by six women composers. The composers are Caroline Bordignon, Soul Zisso, Joanna Ward and the Illuminate composers in residence Angela Elizabeth Slater, Sarah Westwood and Blair Boyd. The composers will be collaborating with the performers of the newly formed Illuminate String Quartet and soprano singer Patricia Auchterlonie. The Illuminate String Quartet members are Clarice Rarity (violin), Christine Cornwall (violin), Katherine Clarke (viola) and Cecilia Bignall (cello).These new works will be programmed alongside a wealth historical works by composers such as Rebecca Clarke, Barbara Strozzi, and Ruth Crawford Seeger giving a rich context to the strong but neglected tradition of women’s music, and rightly bringing these works as well as new ones to the attention of new audiences across the UK.

Illuminate Women's Music 2019 seasons II is supported by Ambache Charitable Trust, RVW Trust and Arts Council England.

Illuminate 2019 season II composers

Joanna Ward (b.1998) is a composer and musician from Newcastle upon Tyne, currently based in Cambridge where she is completing her final year of an undergraduate Music degree. Joanna’s music has been widely commissioned and performed, and she has taken part in prestigious schemes such as Sound and Music’s Next Wave scheme, ensemble recherche’s Klassenarbeit, and most recently NYCGB’s Young Composer scheme. Achievements of note include her opera hunger (commissioned by Helios Collective) achieving 5* reviews and sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, and her piece to think at the sun being released on NMC Recordings and played on BBC Radio 3. Joanna is interested in the methods of communication and expression found across the breadth of her favourite music and draws on elements from these when creating her own work, which is often very personal as well as political.

Caroline Bordignon is a Manchester based Canadian fine artist and composer working in a variety of mediums including oil, water colour, acrylic, graphite, and mixed-media in correlation with musical composition. She seeks to explore aspects of colour, space, time and the ways in which these interrelate through visual and musical expression.
Her greatest artistic pursuit besides more traditional practice is to create visual and musical works together with the objective of establishing single, yet varied and complimentary art forms.
Her works have been performed in Canada and internationally and she is currently a composer on the 2019/2020 LSO Panufnik Scheme. She has participated in masterclasses with artists such as the BBC Singers lead by Judith Weir, Psappha, Eleanor Alberga, Margaret Schedel, Anders Hillborg and Deborah Pritchard.
Caroline is a PhD Candidate in composition at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK with Adam Gorb and Laura Bowler. She completed her Masters of Music in Composition at the RNCM under the tutelage of Adam Gorb and Gary Carpenter where she was generously supported as a Stanley Picker Trust Scholar as well as a recipient of the Waverley Fund. She completed her Honours Bachelor of Arts in Music and Fine Art at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Yfat Soul Zisso (born 1987) (composer)

Ever since commencing on her music studies at the relatively late age of 15, Soul has been dedicated to her dream of becoming a composer. She graduated from Cardiff University, studying with Arlene Sierra and Robert Fokkens and for a brief time studying with Alison Kay, before commencing on a Masters and later a PhD in composition at Birmingham Conservatoire under the supervision of Joe Cutler and Howard Skempton. Her music, which has been described as ‘curiously original’; (Wales Online) and having ’real character and sensitivity’ (Wales Arts Review), has been performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BCMG, Birmingham Opera Company, Xenia Pestova, Carla Rees, and the Fidelio Trio around the world in a wide range of venues including Wells Cathedral, Hoddinott Hall and St Johns Smith Square, and festivals such as the Cheltenham Music Festival, Occupy the Pianos and Birmingham Weekender festival. Her interests range from the use of different microtonal soundworlds and textures to children’s books and the exploration of various extended techniques. Her PhD focuses on creating a quarter-tonal compositional language suitable for singers, which includes the development of a step-by-step method to help singers learn to hear and sing quarter-tones.

Illuminate composers in residence

Angela Elizabeth Slater is a UK-based composer. In her AHRC-funded PhD at University of Nottingham, Angela developed an interest in musically mapping different aspects of the natural world into the fabric of her music. She frequently associate these concepts and phenomena from the natural world with ideas of movement, forging close links between her gestural language and techniques found in dance.
Angela enjoys working with professional and amateur musicians with equal enthusiasm. Highlights include the Atea Wind Quintet, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Bozzini Quartet, Assembly project, Aurea Quartet, BBC Singers, and Psappha, amongst others.
Recent significant achievements include being a Britten-Pears Young Artist through which Angela worked with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Michael Gandolfi, developing Soaring in Stasis which received its premiere at the 2018 Aldeburgh Festival. Her work Eye o da hurricane (for string quartet), was shortlisted in the British category ISCM world music days in 2017. She is also London Firebird Orchestra’s 2018 Young Composer of the Year resulting in the commission of Twilight Inversions. New England Philharmonic also recently named her as their 2018 call-for-scores winner resulting in the world premiere of Roil in Stillness in April 2019. Angela has recently become a 2018 Mendelssohn Scholar and will receive specialist mentorship from Michael Gandolfi, in Boston in Spring 2019.

Sarah Westwood writes acoustic and electronic music. Her compositions have a focus toward reflection and memory, with meditative lyricism. In 2015, she was awarded The Bliss Trust Scholarship for Artistic
Development to USA, and has since received commissions, performances and invitations from ensembles
and festivals in Europe, Asia and USA; with performances by Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Hong
Kong New Music Ensemble, Onix Ensamble and L'Imaginaire Musiques d'Idées, amongst others. This autumn, she has been commissioned by Eleven Farrer House to write dance music Circle of Perpetual Choirs at Siobhan Dance Studios, funded by Arts Council England, and commissioned by Après l'Histoire for a music-theatre work The Artists Kintsukuroi, at Constellations Chicago. Sarah is an artist on Ablaze Records, has been broadcast on Resonance FM and is being published by Tetractys Publishing. She has participated in residencies in France, UK and Madeira. Having studied at Trinity Laban, Bangor University and now Goldsmiths (MPhil/PhD), Sarah has also been a visiting scholar to UCSD and studied Theory and Analysis of Contemporary Music at Eastman School of Music. She has participated in shorter courses; Cheltenham Composers Academy, Phoenix Dance Theatre’s Choreographer and Composers Lab, and Ircam Academy’s In Vivo Danse with Xavier Leroy, as well as residencies in France, UK and Madeira. Since 2012, her composition mentor has been Patricia Alessandrini (Associate Professor, Stanford University). Alongside composing, Sarah is Co-organiser for Illuminate Women’s Music Concert Series, and is Event Coordinator and Guest Artist for Estalagem’s Contemporary Music and Electronic Residency in Madeira. www.sarah-westwood.com

Blair Boyd is an American composer currently based in the UK whose highly energized compositions engage with physical movement and the perception of time. Most recently her work has been performed by members of the Heath Quartet, Dr. K Sextet, and Cardiff University’s Contemporary Music Group. She has also worked extensively with Bristol CoMA who performed her piece for flexible ensemble Tracing Outside the Lines at both Bristol University’s Victoria Rooms and Colston Hall in 2014. In 2016 Shadow Woman, recently recorded for future release, was premiered by harpist Gwenllian Llyr and soprano Sarah Dacey as part of a collaboration with the Coma & Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre at Cardiff University. She was also commissioned by the Girls’ Day School Trust to compose and conduct the finale piece for the GDST Young Musician of the Year Competition in 2018. Boyd holds degrees from the University of Tennessee (BMus) and the University of Bristol (MA). She has also studied with Michael Zev Gordon (Cheltenham Composers’ Academy), Judith Weir (Dartington), and Kenneth Hesketh (MusicFest Aberystwyth) on summer festival courses. Her piece for string quartet Juncture was recently presented in masterclass with Helmut Lachenmann as part of the HighSCORE New Music Festival in Pavia, Italy, where she also received tuition from Amy Beth Kirsten, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Dmitri Tymoczko. Currently a postgraduate at Cardiff University, Boyd is writing her first chamber opera The Yellow Wallpaper under the supervision of Dr. Arlene Sierra. She is also co-organizer of Illuminate Women’s Music Concert Series, anew project to promote the work of emerging women composers and performers.

Illuminate Season II 2019 performers in residence Illuminate String Quartet and soprano singer

Clarice Rarity (1st violin) studied at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal College of Music. She has focused her career on performing the works of contemporary classical composers such as John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Michael Finnissy, Hans Abrahamsen and Luigi Nono. Clarice’s interest in this repertoire led her to work with some of the most exciting young composers in the UK. Performance premieres include pieces by Oliver Leith, Thomas Colt and Mark Simpson. Clarice’s performance highlights include working with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group at Wigmore Hall and Birmingham Festival Hall and working at Viitasaari new music Festival with Ensemble Modern/IEMA in 2017, for the conducting masterclasses lead by Susanna Malikki. She featured in the 2018 Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival along side her colleague Nathanael Gubler as part of their emerging artists scheme ‘huddersfield shorts’. She also, is currently on a world tour with Akram Khan performing in his final solo performance ‘XENOS’.

Described by the Guardian as “especially impressive,” Patricia Auchterlonie (soprano) is a young Canadian soprano living and working in London. She is a passionate performer of new, experimental and unheard music, equally at home in opera and chamber music. She is interested in innovative uses for the voice, experimental performance practice and cross-arts collaboration as well as more traditional forms of music-making. Her 2018/19 season has included work with Music Theatre Wales and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group as well as creating a new role in Rasmus Zwicki's Duncan House at Tête-à-Tête Festival and performing the role of The Writer in Alastair White's techno-fashion opera WEAR at the Bridewell Theatre.
Patricia has performed in the London Symphony Orchestra’s award-winning festival This is Rattle, with An Assembly on BBC Radio Three, and with London Contemporary Music Festival, Borough New Music, the Ubu Ensemble, Filthy Lucre, and recorded with ShevaCollection for Naxos. She was the 2017/18 Carne Junior Fellow at Trinity Laban and holds a master’s degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She is co-artistic director of 2021 Concerts and one half of experimental flute-voice duo, teethe.

Christine Cornwell (2nd violin) is a freelance performer/composer with strong connections to improvisation and collaboration. After studying with Nic Fallowfield and Simon Smith at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire she continues to seek contemporary music projects in the UK and most recently the Netherlands, where she is based.
2018's professional projects include a premiere of experimental film with live music at Amsterdam's EYE Film Instituut, producing a site-specific music/circus arts/dance collaboration in Rotterdam and working as a guest teacher at an arts focussed upper school to present workshops exploring 'from the everyday' inspiration and encouraging collaborative practice.
Christine has upcoming performances in the UK and the Netherlands which present new works for various line-ups including solo, ensemble and cross disciplinary performances. She is currently in MA studies for composition at Codarts, Rotterdam with Hans Koolmees.

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Katherine Clarke (viola) is a talented viola player, with a particular interest in contemporary repertoire and a versatility that allows her to explore many different aspects of music, from playing in chamber groups to performing solo recitals. Having completed her undergraduate studies at the Royal College of Music, she went on to achieve a Distinction in her Masters in Performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, with scholarships from the Goldsmiths’ Company and the Guildhall School Trust. Katherine enjoys working with composers to write new works for the viola, showcasing the depth and range of this underrated instrument. Last year she premiered four new works for singing violist, commissioned with funding from Arts Council England, and more recently she premiered Cantare et trepidarefor singing viola by Sadie Harrison, written specially for her. With more commissions on the way, Katherine will continue to perform and contribute to this unique and exciting repertoire.

Cellist and composer Cecilia Bignall is passionate about chamber music and contemporary music.
Cecilia graduated with a first class honours degree from the Royal Academy of Music in 2015, where she studied with Robert Cohen and Patrick Nunn. She has performed extensively across the UK and Europe, including at the Oslo Opera House, St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Wigmore Hall, the International House of Music in Moscow, Kings Place Festival, Solti’s music studio and St John’s Smith Square, and has performed world and international premiers at festivals in the UK, Russia, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Japan and Italy, as well as at the Aldeburgh Festival. She has been broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 during ‘Sound Frontiers’ Festival at the Southbank Centre, and was featured on Proms Extra in 2016 performing music by Gabriel Prokofiev, along with the composer himself.
Cecilia regularly performs contemporary music and jazz, including improvisations with electronics, and has played with contemporary groups such as London Sinfonietta, ensemble x.y and the Riot Ensemble. She has toured with jazz sax legend Chris Potter and recorded with Tim Garland for his next album at Abbey Road Studios, as well as appearing on albums with vibraphonist Ralph Wyld and saxophonist Tim Ridout. She is cellist of Trio Derazey (formalerly known as the Jorgensen Trio), who won both the prestigious St Martin’s Chamber Music Competition and the Malta International Music Competition. She is a member of exciting accordion-and-cello ensemble Duo Bayanello, with whom she is currently on a 21 concert tour of Russia. She has a duet with pianist Joseph Havlat, and also cofounded ‘Imprint’, a contemporary collaboration with Ralph Wyld, as well as being a member of his jazz sextet Mosaic. Projects in the near future include a contemporary trio recital at the ambassador’s residence in Rome with Ben Smith and Scott Lygate, and a tour of the UK with jazz legends Dinosaur and the Ligeti Quartet, as well as world premiers in London and Cardiff with Duo Bayanello.