To celebrate the selection of this year’s New Voices cohort, we caught up with all the selected artists and composers for a quick chat.
Here, we speak to New Voices 2022 composer Dr Sonia Allori. Text.
Can you tell us about your musical influences?
A combination of having a singing Italian dad with a fine voice and attending ballet classes from a very young age provided the soundtrack to my earliest musical memories. I think this definitely imbued a sense of melody which has lingered albeit in a bit of a fragmented form. Later I came to admire Ives, Debussy, Dallapiccola, Berio, Nono, Feldman, Copland, Prokofiev, MacMillan together with Joni Mitchell, Bjork, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey and a bit of Scottish folk music here and there for good measure!
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on Room to Breathe, a commission from Drake Music Scotland and Nevis Ensemble which explores breath and breathing post-Covid in five imagined movements or rooms. It will be performed at Sound Festival 2022 in Aberdeen later in the year.
What are you looking forward to most about New Voices?
I’m really looking forward to focusing on being a composer! That sounds ridiculous but sometimes there is so much else going on that it is hard to really bring your attention into one specific thing when you’re a freelancer. I love how the programme is designed with 6 months of exploration followed by 12 months of action. It will be amazing to be immersed in ideas and writing and meeting and working with lots of interesting folks.
Learn more about Sonia
Learn more about the New Voices programme
Meet all of the New Voices 2022 Composers
Sound and Music gratefully acknowledges support from PRS Foundation as a Talent Development Partner:
