Issie Barratt - composer

Issie Barratt is an internationally active composer, conductor, arranger, baritone sax player and educator, who has performed at a majority of leading concert halls, jazz clubs and festivals in Britain, Sweden, Switzerland and more recently, the East coast of Canada. Issie has been awarded commissions by The Philharmonia Orchestra, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Bohuslän Big Band, The PRS Foundation for New Music, Swiss Gemeinderat and Burgerkanzlei of Unterägeri, Delta Sax Quartet, 4th Dimension String Quartet, Voice of the North Big Band, North Chesire Wind Orchestra, Vortex Foundation Big Band, Conservatoires UK Big Band,Trinity College of Music’s Contemporary Jazz Ensemble and Youth Music .She was also featured as one of the Jerwood Foundation’s Rising Stars in the Cheltenham Jazz Festival of 2001 and has had her music recorded by the Delta Sax Quartet, Bohuslän Big Band, Vortex Foundation Big Band as well as her own big band and quartet projects Astral Pleasures and Meinrad Iten Suite (available on Fuzzy Moon Records). Over the last 5 years various European performances of her works have facilitated collaborations with internationally acclaimed artists such as Anders Bergcrantz, Tim Garland, Mark Lockheart, Joe Locke, Dennis Rollins, Steve Waterman, Annie Whitehead, and more recently Swiss composer, organist and pianist Carl Rütti, who joined Issie in her newly formed quartet’s debut performance in Canton Zug, Switzerland, along side two of Issie’s long time UK collaborators, Rowland Sutherland (flutes) and Mick Foster (clarinets). Issie also directs her own ensemble Arrange of Space (comprising 20 of Europe’s leading jazz artists), which recorded its debut album in October 2007, produced by Mike Gibbs and released on Issie's own label fuzzy moon records. In 1999 Issie was asked to set up a Jazz Faculty at Trinity College of Music, London, which she headed until 2004, when Trinity offered her the post of Jazz Fellow, allowing her more time for her compositional and performance activities. She is also a frequent visiting professor at the Royal College of Music and Leeds College of Music; co-director of the Conservatoires UK Big Band; Artistic Director for the National Youth Jazz Collective; regular member of the adjudication panels for various festivals including the National Festival of Music for Youth; an active member of the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters, a Trustee for the Womens' Jazz Archive; a member of the All Party Parliamentary Awards advisory Committee and managing director of Fuzzy Moon Records and Fuzzy Moon Music (a website that sells the music of 35 European jazz composers).