Meet the ComposHer: Gemma Peacocke

Check out today's Meet the ComposHER interview with Gemma Peacocke!

Gemma is a composer from New Zealand that has a diverse and incredible career - she has even studied industrial design (but she uses these skills to design posters and draw pictures of dogs!)

She is a co-founder (along with Shelley Washington) of Kinds of Kings, a composer collective focused on amplifying under-heard voices and producing immersive new music shows.

Nowadays, she is currently working on a concerto with Kings of Kings for Eighth Blackbird and the Cincinnati Symphony and he is a PhD candidate at Princeton University.

Learn more about her and her works in the Meet the ComposHer of this week!

Well, I've always composed. My parents were given a crappy piano when I was a little kid and I loved mucking around on it. I grew up playing violin, but my teacher only ever gave me music by dead white men to play, so I wasn't really aware that there was such a thing as a living composer. In a high school music class I learnt about the wonderful New Zealand composer Gillian Whitehead, and from that point on, I knew I wanted to at least try to be some kind of composer.

I have had so many extraordinary people in my life. The amazing composer John Psathas, one of my professors at the New Zealand School of Music, has never understood my lack of confidence in my work, and he pushed me back to composing after a long hiatus in my twenties. Julia Wolfe taught me so much about how to make music breathe, and to go with my gut instincts.

I stopped composing twice in my twenties – the first time because I needed a day job to pay rent (and no one was commissioning me to write music), and the second time because I had no community around me (...and no one was commissioning me to write music). It's incredibly difficult to continue writing in a vacuum; one person dancing alone looks like a bit of a weirdo, but two people dancing is suddenly something beautiful, and a whole group of people dancing at the same time is a fantastic party.

A heady mixture of the Voice Memo app, late night scrawls, and hours and hours in Ableton Live.



My song cycle Waves & Lines sets to music poems by Afghan women. It's the piece that is closest to my heart. https://gemmapeacocke.bandcamp.com/album/waves-lines

Don't Say A Word by Annika Socolofsky. Annika has written a set of dark lullabies for the child version of herself. They're incredibly moving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbjGG7ghvcs

Don't worry about what anyone else thinks; just follow your heart.

Don't get hung up on theory and score study and perfect ear training. If you have something to say, say it in the most powerful way you can. You get better with every piece you write, so write as much as you can and keep trying new things. Surround yourself with kind, talented people. And most importantly, live your life outside of music. Take days off. Go get some sun, see some friends, and enjoy a good night's sleep. 

With Shelley Washington, I founded a composer collective, Kinds of Kings, and we're all very different composers (and we're all women). We are currently artists-in-residence at National Sawdust in New York.

FOLLOW GEMMA:

WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | TWITTER | KINDS OF KINGS

APRIL 28

ESTHER ALLAN - POLAND
Born 28 April

More about her here

Find scores by Esther Allan:

CATHY VAN ECK - THE NETHERLANDS
Born 28 April

More about her here

Find scores by Cathy Van Eck:

 Check here last year's composers of the day

28 APRIL 2019

NICOLA LeFANU - UK 

BORN 28 APRIL

Nicola LeFanu was born in England in 1947, the daughter of Irish parents: her father William LeFanu was from an Irish literary family, and her mother was the composer Elizabeth Maconchy. LeFanu studied at Oxford, RCM and, as a Harkness Fellow, at Harvard. She has Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Durham, Aberdeen, and Open University, is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College Oxford, and is FRCM and FTCL.

She has composed around one hundred works which have been played and broadcast all over the world; her music is published by Novello and by Peters Edition. She has been commissioned by the BBC, by festivals in UK and beyond, and by leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists. Many works are available on CD, including music for strings (Naxos), Horn Concerto (NMC) and Saxophone Concerto (NEOS).

She has a particular affinity for vocal music and has composed eight operas: Dawnpath (New Opera Company, London, 1977), The Story of Mary O’Neill, a radio opera, libretto Sally McInerney, (BBC, 1987), The Green Children, a children’s opera, libretto Kevin Crossley-Holland, (Kings Lynn Festival, 1990), Blood Wedding, libretto Deborah Levy (WPT, London 1992), The Wildman, libretto Crossley-Holland, (Aldeburgh Festival, 1995), Light Passing, libretto John Edmonds, (BBC/NCEM, York, 2004), Dream Hunter, libretto John Fuller (Lontano, Wales 2011, London 2012) and Tokaido Road, a Journey after Hiroshige, libretto Nancy Gaffield, (Okeanos, Cheltenham Festival, July 2014).

She is active in many aspects of the musical profession, as a composer, teacher, director and as a member of various public boards and new music organisations. From 1994 - 2008 she was Professor of Music at the University of York, where many gifted composers came to study with her. Previously she taught composition at Kings’ College London; in the 1970s, she directed Morley College Music Theatre.

Recent premieres include works for chamber ensemble, for solo instrumentalists, and Threnody for orchestra, premiered in Dublin, January 2015, RTE NSO.

In 2015 she was awarded the Elgar bursary, which carries a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society for BBCSO.

♫ LISTEN

The Old Woman of Beare by Nicola LeFanu

► NICOLA LeFANU's website 

MARGARET VARDELL SANDRESKY - USA
BORN 28 APRIL

Margaret Vardell Sandresky (b. 1921) was born in Macon, Georgia and educated at the Salem College School of Music and the Eastman School of Music in organ and composition with Harold Gleason, Howard Hanson, and Bernard Rogers. After teaching at the Oberlin Conservatory, and the University of Texas in Austin, she joined the faculty of Salem College where she taught until her retirement in 1986. She also founded the organ department at the North Carolina School for the Arts in 1965. Sandresky has composed music that has been widely performed and commissioned. Her output contains numerous works for organ, but also chamber, choral, and orchestral music. In 2004, she was the receipt of the American Guild of Organists Distinguished Composer's Award.

Sandresky is distinguished among the contributors as the first woman in SMT’s history invited to make a presentation at its national Conference of Music Theory and the first woman to be published in Music Theory Spectrum. In her recordings for SMT, Sandresky recounts her first experience with the newly formed Society, the contributions of well-known music theorists at the time, and her own evolving interest in and development of music theory pedagogy.

As the fourth generation of professional women musicians in her family, Sandresky taught at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the University of Texas at Austin, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and at Salem Academy and College, where she taught Music Theory for 19 years, from 1967 to 1986. A prolific composer for organ, piano, solo voice, choral, and various ensembles, many of her commissions have been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, the North Carolina Music Teachers Association, and the American Guild of Organists. Sandresky continues to perform and write well into her later years, including a new composition that was commissioned and performed by Carson Cooman, composer-in-residence at Harvard Memorial Church at Harvard University, around her 91st birthday in 2012.

♫ LISTEN

Six Variations on a Ground Bass by Margaret Vardell Sandresky 

 ► FIND SCORES BY MARGARET VARDELL SANDRESKY