Anna Clyne (born 9 March 1980, in
London) is an English composer, now resident in New York City, US.[1] She has worked in both acoustic music and
electroacoustic music.[2][3][4]
Biography
Clyne began writing music as a child, completing her first composition at age 7. Her first composition to receive a public performance was at the Oxford Youth Prom when she was 11. She formally studied music at the
University of Edinburgh, from which she graduated with a first-class
Bachelor of Music degree with honours. She later studied at the
Manhattan School of Music and earned a
MA degree in music. Her teachers have included Marina Adamia,
Marjan Mozetich and
Julia Wolfe.
Clyne was director of the
New York Youth Symphony's "Making Score" program for young composers from 2008 to 2010. In October 2009, Clyne and
Mason Bates were named co-composers in residence with the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), as of the 2010–2011 season.[5] She took up the residency in 2010, for a scheduled term of 3 years. In January 2012, her CSO contract as co-composer in residence was extended through the 2013–2015 season.[6] Clyne was announced as the composer-in-residence for
Orchestre national d'Île-de-France from 2014 to 2016, the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's 2015–2016 season, and The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra from 2017–2019. Clyne was appointed Associate Composer with the
Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 2019–2022.[7]
In 2013, the concert overture Masquerade was commissioned by
BBC Radio 3 to open the
Last Night of the Proms, where the
BBC Symphony Orchestra was conducted by
Marin Alsop.[17][18] Clyne was nominated for the 2015
Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her double violin concerto, Prince of Clouds. Works for soloist and orchestra form an important part of her output, as is also evident from The Seamstress (2015), a single-movement violin concerto that incorporates a whispered recitation of the poem A Coat by
Yeats,[18] and the five movement cello concerto Dance (2019), commissioned by
Inbal Segev and recorded by her in 2020, which has received more than eight million plays on Spotify.[19][20]
Clyne has explored her fascination with visual arts in several projects: five contemporary artworks inspired Abstractions (2016); Color Field (2020), takes inspiration from the artwork of
Mark Rothko; and a film collaboration with
Jyll Bradley, entitled Woman Holding a Balance (2021).[24][25][26]
Clyne has been described as a ‘composer of uncommon gifts and unusual methods’ in a
New York Times 2015 profile and ‘fearless’ by
NPR.[27] In 2018, the music critic Corinna da Fonseca Wollheim selected Clyne's composition, Lavender Rain, for a New York Times feature on "5 Minutes that Will Make You Love Classical Music."[28]
A CD of her orchestral music, Mythologies, was released in October 2020.[18]
Compositions
Orchestra
Wild Geese for orchestra and live electronics (2023)