Handel House Museum’s Composer-in-Residence scheme is an innovative and forward thinking approach to education and new music at the House.
Since its beginnings in 2006 we have had a pool of highly talented composers to choose from and each has offered us something different. However, we don’t only want composers who can engage with Handel’s music and his house in new and innovative ways we also want excellent educators who can engage with diverse audiences. So far all have met these challenges with great enthusiasm and success.
The current Composer-in-Residence is Kerry Andrew and you can find out more about what she is up to at the House at her blog here.
Listen to Kerry's first work for Handel House - Graininess and Sheen - here
Kerry Andrew is a composer, performer and educator working chiefly in contemporary vocal and choral music, with a twist of jazz, pop, folk, world music traditions and electronica. Her choral music is published by Oxford University Press and Faber Music and is released on the Boreas Music label. She has been nominated for a British Composer Award this year for her choral work 'Fall'. Her music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and Classic FM, and has been heard at LSO St Luke's, the Royal Academy of Art, King's Place, Wigmore Hall and the South Bank. This year she created the soundtrack to the show WOLF which garnered 5 star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Kerry performs with the experimental vocal trio juice ('the 21st century's answer to the Swingles or the King's Singers' The Times) who frequently perform her music. They have performed at the South Bank and Wigmore Hall to excellent reviews and appeared at countless new classical series including BMIC Cutting Edge, OutHear at King’s Place and Blank Canvas. In 2007, they were the first UK prizewinners in the history of the internationally-renowned Tampere Vocal Festival. juice have performed a live vocal/electronic score at the London College of Fashion Graduate Show, and devised a live original vocal score to the 1916 film The Danger Girl, which they presented at the BFI Southbank, Latitude Festival and King’s Place with the Bird’s Eye View Film Festival. They recently premiered a large songbook-style project, Laid Bare: Ten Love Songs, which commissioned artists including Gavin Bryars, Micachu, Jim Moray, Errollyn Wallen and Anna Meredith. Their debut album will be released in Spring 2011 on the cutting-edge Nonclassical label.
Kerry also performs on vocals, keys and melodica with DOLLYman ('what Tom Waits' band would sound like if he popped out for a smoke' - Time Out), and sings with prog-jazzers Metamorphic. Her looped-based alt-folk solo project, You Are Wolf, released an EP, 'hunting little songs' this year. You Are Wolf was picked as one of the EDFSS's Folk Rising artists in 2010 and has been heard on BBC Radio 3 and BBC 6Music.
Kerry is an experienced and passionate music educator, having led large-scale educational and community projects with the likes of Wigmore Hall, Aldeburgh Music, Drake Music and Trinity Laban.