Introducing the first Music Patron cohort!
We are so excited share the ten composers who make up our first Music Patron cohort; presenting a diverse range of composers across multiple genres has been the driving force behind putting together this group. It's been an incredibly rewarding process forming this cohort and we hope you enjoy getting to know each of them as much as we have.
What happens next?
We're looking for 100 founding patrons to join Music Patron as we launch our beta site in April. These patrons will help us shape the platform by interacting with our composers and providing invaluable feedback to us. If you'd like to support the creation of new music and help us change the way composers are funded, sign up here.
Composers
Stuart is a composer whose work explores themes of humanity in/as nature, the use of language through the singing voice, and mythology. His music brings emotion to the fore, and spans a wide variety of genres, including opera, instrumental, vocal and electroacoustic music.
Supriya Nagarajan is a UK based vocalist/composer who creates cross- cultural/genre, concept driven immersive music work. She has toured the globe and created work for international festivals like the hcmf//, Ultima Oslo and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. She is a Performing Rights Society/Jerwood composer and an alumni of New Voices 2018. Supriya is the Artistic Director of Manasamitra, a Yorkshire based arts charity and a passionate advocate for fair access in the music sector.
Yshani is a pianist, composer and music director from London, specialising in not specialising. Her music is a happy mash of an ever-increasing number of strands of her musical and personal worlds; this currently includes elements of contemporary classical music, dirty grooves, Sri Lankan parents, game and play, melancholy, and activism.
Mark is a composer of chamber, orchestral, and vocal music and regularly collaborates with writers, artists, and dancers. His music often comes with bundles of extra-musical connections, embracing far-reaching literary and philosophical ideas, but its impact is a physical one. Mark’s work is constructed in detailed and intricate layers, whilst always focussing on the drama, energy, and expressive power of the music.
Laura Bowler is a composer/vocalist based in the UK. She pre-dominantly works in experimental music-theatre exploring socio-political content with a desire to provoke dialogue, action and change.
Gareth Cutter is a multi-disciplinary artist working across music, writing and performance. "The work is casual, sensuous, and erotic. It queers systems from the inside. It’s kind of like taking poppers: vaporous and heady, disorientating but pleasurable. I usually use voice, keyboard, guitar and other string instruments and arrange in Ableton, but I’ll experiment with anything I can get my hands on."
Elliot is a composer and improvisor based in London. His work spans several mediums, working in the worlds of jazz/improvised music, contemporary classical, sound installation and alternative music. He is interested in the intersectionality of disciplines and the role of improvisation and chance to bring worlds together.
Ayanna Witter-Johnson is a multi-talented singer/songwriter, cellist, pianist and composer. She has a phenomenal mastery for seamlessly crossing the boundaries of classical, jazz, reggae, soul and R&B, to imprint her unique musical signature collaborating with artists including Anoushka Shankar, Nitin Sawhney, Andrea Bocelli and Jools Holland. As a composer, Ayanna has been commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Güerzenich Orchester, Ligeti Quartet and Kronos Quartet.
A British born Jamaican, her music is a body of work that represents, celebrates and pays homage to her ancestral heritage, culture and identity.
Marc is a composer, landscape painter and artistic practice researcher. Together with explorations of temporality, perceptual obfuscation, serendipity, play, geology, layering, erosion, landscape and place-specific resonance, these art-forms, structures and approaches cross-fertilise and influence each other to find embodiment in his work. Understanding, researching and developing this self-referential relationship remains his life-long challenge and passion.