Sound and Music’s Seed Award brings together a diverse group of composers, each with a unique voice and vision. This Q&A series offers a glimpse into their creative worlds, revealing their musical influences, current projects, and aspirations for the future.

Here, we speak to Seed Award 2024 composer Lucy Hackett.

Can you tell us about your musical influences?

Lucy draws inspiration from a diverse range of influences spanning various genres and specialties. Her childhood fascination with The Beatles’ psychedelic sounds and Chopin’s emotive Nocturnes laid the foundation for her musical journey. Bittersweet musings from artists including Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits and Eels added depth to her understanding of music as a means of human connection. In contrast, her years spent as a jazz flautist led her to engage with music that challenged her preconceptions and to explore more abstract, free jazz genres through artists such as Eric Dolphy and Sun Ra. In recent years, Lucy has been influenced by contemporary artists who seamlessly blend acoustic and electronic elements, such as Anna Meredith, Hania Rani, and Hildur Guðnadóttir, which has inspired her to explore the space between and beyond the traditional expectations of her instruments.

What are you working on at the moment?

Lucy’s current collection of compositions sees her exploring the intricate relationship between music, narrative, and animated visuals. The scores integrate live recorded musicians with electronic elements and real-world sounds, employing digital manipulation and destructive editing to create immersive soundscapes that merge sound design and music.

Key areas of exploration between the music and the visuals include: the initial aesthetic impact on sonic identity; the movement and textural qualities influencing instrument selection, dynamics and tempo; the spatial context shaping acoustic production and structure; as well as considering the musical enhancement or subversion of a perceived narrative within the visuals.

Lucy seeks to expand her project through collaboration with a select team of character design animators, focusing on non-verbal animated characters. She aims to create a further series of compositions that engage and challenge an audience’s perception of character development and story dynamics.