Cheryl Frances-Hoad

“At a time when it is harder and harder for young composers to establish a distinctive voice - too many styles, too much music easily available to them - Frances-Hoad's approach is individual, quirky perhaps, but distinctly special.” Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 29th November, 2004 Cheryl Frances-Hoad (b.1980) received her musical education at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Cambridge University and Kings College London. Her works have won many prizes and awards and she is in ever increasing demand as a composer, with her music being described as “mercurial, impassioned, and always compelling in its authority” (The Spectator), and “highly wrought, yet piled high with emotional content” (The Guardian).Recent awards include the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize (2007), which resulted in the premiere of My day in Hell at the Cheltenham Music Festival 2008 by the Dante Quartet (later broadcast by BBC Radio 3), and a 2008 Leverhulme Trust Artists in Residence Fellowship which has enabled Cheryl to begin a ten month residency at the Cambridge University Psychiatry Department in October 2008, investigating aspects of the mind that will inspire a major new work for ‘cello and orchestra. In 2008 she was also awarded the Wicklow County Council Per Cent for Arts Commission, a major award in Ireland which is currently funding the composition of Cheryl’s first piano concerto, to be premiered by Bobby Chen and the Greystones Orchestra in Bray and Wicklow in May 2009.Cheryl’s debut CD was recorded in September 2008, and is due for release late in 2009. Many of the UK’s most talented artists feature on the CD, including Nicholas Daniel (oboe), The London Mozart Trio, the Lendvai String Trio, Natalia Lomeiko (violin) and the Kreisler Ensemble, performing Cheryl’s recent solo and chamber works. The CD was funded by awards from the Arts Council, the Worshipful Company of Musicians, the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, the PRS/Bliss Trust, the Exuberant Trust, the Hildon Foundation and the Nicholas Boas Charitable Trust.Cheryl began studying at the Yehudi Menuhin School in 1988 (at a time when the school accepted only five international pupils per year) after playing the ‘cello for six months, and was soon praised by Lord Yehudi Menuhin for her “beautiful composition” after writing a piece for his 90th Birthday and winning the BBC Young Composer Competition in 1996 at the age of 15. During her ten years at the school she had the privilege of working with some of the greatest musical artists (Rostropovich, Menuhin, Shafran, Robert Tear, David Willcocks) and playing in many prestigious venues in the UK and abroad: experiences which have greatly influenced her compositions and given her an innate understanding of the perspective of the performer.During her time at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge (where she achieved a Triple 1st in her BA(Hons) in Music (2001) and an MPhil with Distinction in Composition (2002) she received several major commissions, including a work for the Almeida Festival (Tread Softly, performed by the Composers Ensemble), A Refusal to Mourn (for oboe and string orchestra) for Nicholas Daniel and CUCO (premiered in 2001 at the Cambridge Music Festival in West Road Concert Hall), a Chamber Opera for the New Cambridge Opera Group (commissioned by the N.C.O.G and the Britten@25 Festival in 2001), and Memoria for Nicholas Daniel and the Schubert Ensemble (commissioned and performed at the 2002 Spitalfields Festival).During her PhD at Kings College London, Cheryl received many commissions and premieres, including three at the Wigmore Hall (Melancholia (piano trio), Excelsus (solo ‘cello) and My fleeting Angel (piano trio)) and two at the Purcell Room (The Glory Tree (for soprano and six instruments), and The Ogre Lover (for string trio)). She was one of the six composers (chosen to write two scenes each) for the opera company Tête à Tête’s month-long production of The Guilty Mother (the third in the Beaumarchais Figaro trilogy, with a libretto by the Olivier-award winning Amanda Holden) at the Bridewell Theatre, London, in 2004. She also spent a week as Composer in Residence at the University of South Florida, giving lectures and master classes after winning the first Robert Helps International Composition Prize in 2005.Other awards won by Cheryl include the Cambridge Composer’s Competition, The Purcell Composition Prize, the Birmingham Conservatoire Composition Competition, the International String Orchestra Composition Competition, the Mendelssohn Scholarship 2002, the Bliss Prize 2002, The Harriet Cohen Award 2002, and Newby Trust, Sidney Perry Foundation and Earls Colne Educational Trust awards in 2003.Future commissions include a Psalm setting for Gonville and Caius College Choir (to be performed along side other new psalms by Judith Weir, Alexander Goehr, and Robin Holloway as part of the University’s 800th Anniversary Celebrations at the 2009 Cambridge Music Festival), a vocal work for Jane Manning (to be premiered at the South Bank Centre in 2010), a cello sonata for Leonid Gorokhov, and a violin sonata for Akiko Ono (winner of 1st prizes in the Menuhin and Stradivari International Violin Competitions). Cheryl has also just received a commission from the Aronowitz Ensemble (a string sextet and piano ensemble who were BBC Young Artists in 2008 and this year performed at the BBC Proms) for a Concerto for Septet and Symphony Orchestra. This major commission has been enabled due to the Aronowitz Ensemble’s winning of one of the largest awards for ensembles in the UK (unfortunately which cannot be named until the Award’s press conference in February 2009!), and will be guaranteed a high profile and well publicised premiere. The ‘cello concerto that she will write as a result of her Leverhulme Artists in Residence Fellowship is in demand from many talented ‘cellists including Leonid Gorokhov, David Cohen, Alexander Chausian, and Marie Macleod, and each cellist is currently working at securing performance dates for the new work.