We are excited to be working with the eight composers and creative artists who will be our New Voices 2019.
New Voices is Sound and Music's major artist development programme, lasting 18 months with an annual intake. Spanning a broad range of genres and practice, all eight New Voices want to make changes to, and effect development within, their work. We are hugely excited they have joined the programme and look forward to working alongside them on this next step in their creative practice.
The New Voices 2019 composers are: Lisa Busby, Mella Faye, Sharon Gal, Jamie Hamilton, Emily Levy, Marv Radio, Max Syedtollan and Otto Willberg.
Composers
Lisa Busby is a Scottish composer, vocalist and improviser based in London. Situated across experimental music, performance art, and pop culture, her practice often explores processes of making, and “availablism” and lo-fi intermediality, and sound in/of movement.
Mella Faye is a musician, actor and director. In 2016 Mella set up Pecho Mama, to begin creating work that fused her two creative obsessions; theatre and music. Mella creates progressive, music-driven performance that boldly experiments with form, and digs deep into the human condition.
Sharon is currently developing Études, a collection of scores and propositions for voice, presented as a deck of 78 cards. A music and performance art resource, the work acts as a catalyst to inspire and trigger the imagination. Etudes is an invitation to play, engage, contemplate and explore, to enhance and expand one’s experience, thinking, practice and performance.
Jamie Hamilton is a composer, performer and technologist. He is a founding member of the performance art collective London Topophobia, and is curator and performer for Phaedra Ensemble.
Emily is a singer and composer with musical influences that range from medieval to classical, folk to jazz. Songs of Belonging combines music, voice, recorded interviews and visuals to bring together disparate experiences of belonging and explore common threads running through contrasting lives.
Marv is currently working on his album Mantra, a hip-hop odyssey that pulls in futuristic afro punk and spiritual influences. The album is a revolution in the way we think about music, the voice, mental health and spirituality.
Max Syedtollan is an artist-composer living and working in Glasgow. 4 Assignments is experimental music theatre for narrator & ensemble which examines how legacies of European imperialism persist in the stock character of the secret agent, currently working with Plus Minus Ensemble.
Otto Willberg is a musician and double bass player involved in improvisation and other exploratory music. He is working among real and imagined threshold spaces, using Old English language and Wyrd mythology along with experimental techniques of speculative and synthetic reverberation to resound, compress and unpack.
The panellists
Sound and Music would like to thank our New Voices panel for the work they put into the process of shortlisting 18 candidates from 174 applicants to the programme.
The panel consisted of Sound and Music Co-Heads of Artist Development Hannah Bujic and Will Dutta, alongside Denys Baptiste, Kuljit Bhamra, Rose Dodd, Emily Hall and Elaine Mitchener
In line with our Fair Access Principles, we want to have an open and transparent selection process and this year, as in previous rounds, we have rotated the external selection panellists to refresh and renew the process.
Seed Award 2019
Alongside the eight composers selected for New Voices, ten additional composers who were also shortlisted for the final stage in the selection process in 2019 were recipients of the first Sound and Music Seed Award.
The artists who received the Seed Award in 2019 were: Andre Borges, Olie Brice, Laura Campbell, Cameron Dodds, Kassia Flux, Una Lee, Ben Lunn, Daniel Potter (Warsnare), Ana Quiroga and Emmanuelle Waeckerle
Designed as a targeted package of support, the artists received:
- £100 contribution to support the research and development of a particular project
- A coaching session with an accredited coach
Thanks to our funders
See also
Alice Boyd, Georgia Denham, Tamsin Elliott, Cassandra Gurling, Elijah Maja, Frazer Merrick, Shirley Tetteh and Melanie Wilson.
Vicki Bennett, Stuart Brown, Bex Burch, David Austin Grey, Alex Ho, Edmund Hunt, Johnny Hunter, Andy Ingamells, Liz Johnson, Marcus Joseph, Eunseog Lee, Daniel McBride, Eska Mtungwazi, Supriya Nagarajan and Gugak Sounds.
Adopt a Music Creator is a unique scheme that pairs composers with leisure time music ensembles and groups to collaborate on the creation of a new piece.