Nicola LeFanu introduces her music and talks about its context, and about some of her compositional concerns, both general and technical.

Nicola LeFanu has composed around one hundred works for a variety of mediums. Her music is published by Edition Peters and by Novello and has been widely played, broadcast and recorded. She has composed eight operas, which have been staged in UK, Ireland and USA.

She was born in England in 1947 to Irish parents; her mother was the composer Elizabeth Maconchy. LeFanu studied at Oxford, RCM and Harvard and is active in many aspects of the musical profession.

In April 2017 she celebrated her seventieth birthday, and was BBC Radio 3 ’Composer of the Week’. 2017 also saw premieres of five new works, including ‘The Crimson Bird’ for soprano and orchestra.  Commissioned by the RPS, it was premiered on February 17^th 2017 by BBCSO with Rachel Nicholls, soprano.

In 2018 her cantata ‘St Hilda of Whitby’, to a text by Wendy Cope, will be premiered in Oxford.

http://www.nicolalefanu.com